Canals, Castles and Camping

(Trip log part 4)

   Sue had read about some marvels of engineering along the Canal du Centre, which links the Scheldt and Meuse waterways through Belgium and the Netherlands. The canal is still a very active shipping lane for not only recreational boats, but commercial barges and hotel boats. We stopped to see a few spots on our drive from Geraardsbergen to Namur.

   Near the small town of Ronquières is the amazing canal incline that carries boats within huge trays of water along nearly a mile of rail up and down a height of 222 feet. The structure reduced the delays that would have been caused by the fourteen locks that are in place on the old canal.

   About a twenty-minute drive south in La Louviere on the old canal is the Elevator No. 1. This twin hydraulic lift carries boats 50 feet vertically. We arrived just in time to see the decent of a couple recreational vessels.

   Just east of Mons is the Sart Canal Bridge, which is technically an aqueduct carrying the Canal du Centre over a valley about three tenths of a mile wide, at an average of about 52 feet.

   Finally, we stopped at the colossal canal Strépy-Thieu Boat Lift, which carries its loads 240 vertical feet, avoiding the previous system of two locks and four smaller lifts.

   During stage 4 of the 2015 Tour de France (photo below), the route zigzagged the cobbled road up to and across the ramparts of the Citadelle de Namur, and the finish of last year’s Grand Prix de Wallonie traced the same beautiful course. When planning our trip, I realized our route from Flanders to Luxembourg would be passing nearby, and I quickly added it to our list of destinations.

   We stayed in a pretty farmhouse (above) overnight, just outside of Namur, and drove out to visit the town the next morning. The highways dive steeply into the valley carved by the meeting of the Sambre and Meuse Rivers, and we were soon looking up at the Citadelle, perched on the hill 328 feet above.

   The cobbled ramp to the top has three switchbacks, then passes through the main castle gatehouse. The road then loops around onto the fortification walls and crosses back over itself atop the gatehouse. At the summit is a small shop and cafe where you can pull over for a beautiful view.

   We didn’t feel the need to spend the time or money on the full tour, since we had seen a lifetime’s worth of castles in Wales, so we set off to Luxembourg. First we made a pit stop to see the Mur de Huy, the brutally steep finishing climb in the classic La Flèche Wallonne race. The picture doesn’t do the complete, brutal incline justice, but it does include the monument to the late Claude Criquielion, another favorite racer during my early years as a pro cycling fan.

   Again, we were taking more of a scenic route to the towns of Ettelbruck and Diekirch, where we planned to do a bit of family archaeology. The drive took us on hilly, curvy roads through neighborhoods that gave us the feel of Switzerland, but with much smaller mountains. We caught glimpses of chateaus everywhere, and made a brief stop at the Bourscheid Castle, mostly because it was right at the side of the highway on which we were driving.

   In Ettelbruck we were staying in unique accommodations, something Sue found called a “luxury safari tent”. We have been camping numerous times with our boys, and I think if it had been in something similar to these tents, everyone involved would have enjoyed it much more! We sure appreciated the hardtop roof, which eliminated the dewy morning sleeping bag/sheets that are an unpleasant camping staple. However, the main advantage was the tent size, particularly because when it rains (as it did off and on throughout our stay in Luxembourg), anyone inhabiting the tent would have some freedom to move around.

   Not only did the tent have a generously-sized covered porch, but it had a foyer space with chairs directly across from a kitchen with a stovetop of gas burners, small refrigerator and water supply tank.

   There were two bedrooms with a zipper-wall divider, one having space for three with a single bed and bunk, the other with two singles pushed together – “mom and dad’s room”. The mosquito net was only needed when we first arrived, as some flies were bothering me when I was trying to take a nap

   The camp bath and shower facilities were clean and well-maintained, and the staff was very friendly and helpful. It was amusing how they kept referring to us as the couple who had “the tent with a view”, but compared to the other similar sites on the grounds, we really did have the best scenery from our porch:

   Our first full day in Diekirch, we rented bikes and set off along the Sauer River. The forecast was for afternoon showers, but after about ten miles the skies opened up, with very little place for us to hide. There was a small roadside chapel near Moestroff, but we were soggy and probably should have just kept riding at that point. When things calmed down to a drizzle, we started back, and the clouds actually broke enough to make for a pleasant ride around town. The sun was out and a nice breeze kicked up, giving us hope that we could dry out our shoes for the next day.

   Since we were so close, we thought it would be fun to drive east into Germany. We headed through the beautiful town of Vianden and saw its castle high on the cliff and intended to stop for a picnic in the pretty little town of Echternacht. However, it started to rain heavily, and since we already had enough of being soaked in Luxembourg, we just had our lunch in the car before heading back to the campground.

   Our real mission here in Diekirch was to find a few locations related to Sue’s family, who for a long time owned/operated a restaurant directly across the street from the train station. Sue had found a cool old photo of her great-grandfather with his kitchen staff, and she framed it as a gift for our son Carrick when he graduated from culinary school a couple of months ago. We had seen from Google Maps street view that the building was still there, but apparently they hadn’t done any map updates in the past couple years, because we were extremely disappointed to find that the restaurant had been torn down and replaced with a forestry department headquarters.

Sue's great-grandfather Paul (lower right), equipped with mustache and wicked knife holster!

   We felt a bit better later when we took a chance on visiting the cemetery, really with no idea where or even if something would be there, and after walking through rows and rows, found plots for a few family members of which we were familiar. It wasn’t a huge cemetery, maybe a couple acres, but we had split up during our search in order to cover more area and really were down to the last few square yards when we located the headstones.

   We also had another success during a day trip into Luxembourg City – an interesting modern capital with a fortified old town center down in a seven-story deep gorge carved by the Alzette and Pétrusse Rivers. Hanging in our home is a charcoal landscape of Old Town Luxembourg, drawn by a cousin of Sue’s grandmother, and we attempted to find the exact location of the subject. The search seemed like a fairly simple prospect, since there were a couple distinguishing features in the drawing, but we happened to walk right past the spot, continuing a couple miles out of our way down a separate canal and parallel bike/walking trail!

A shot of the old town center from atop the fortress wall

   When we finally circled back across the bridge that had obviously been the location from which the drawing was done, we felt kind of stupid. There were some trees and brush growth, and a bar deck with umbrellas projected out into the river to distract our view a little, but there was no mistaking the artist’s sight-line.

The drawing

The actual scene

   The next day was at a lazy pace, packing up from the campground. We then took a very slow, scenic route back north, which included a couple GPS frustrations due to some new construction and detours. In one instance, we circled the small beltway around the city of Mons twice, as we thought we had missed an exit, only to find the second time around that the traffic patterns had been permanently altered. The other mishap occurred just minutes later when we were routed down a section of badly-cobbled road that was at least two miles long – it was like driving one of the support vehicles in Paris-Roubaix!

   We eventually received a reward for the bumpy ride when a right-hand turn down a small road back to the highway included a shop for another excellent serving of pomme frites to accompany our sandwiches. And right across the road from the shop was a pretty little town park in which to have our dinner.

   

   We’re spending our last day with the car, and will continue the rest of the trip by rail...and bike!