Lovely little mooring in Ypres at the end of the Kanaal Ijzer-Ieper, within a 10 minute walk of the centre of town. Carole and Barry, on SilkPurse, were already moored there and so we had occasion to socialise on each other’s boats – dinner on Carmen, dinner on SilkPurse and then we even broke out the BBQ on Piedaleau – all very pleasant!
Carole is ‘Chief WOB’! ‘Women on Barges’ is a Facebook group providing a support & interest for (you guessed it) women on barges / boats! Fun group! Poor Carole was harangued by yours truly cos my SPF (self promotion friday) contribution was removed because of ‘political content’ ….. I featured the pink hats I made for our Women’s weekend last year when Trump was elected ….. we wore them in the hot tub! We did all laugh about it but I digress…..
Whilst we were in Ypres the weather turned absolutely fabulous – hot +++ and sunny +++. This, and supposedly the wind direction, caused green algae to surround us – and I mean that quite literally! And it got smelly! It was interesting to view though – fabulous colours of green sweeping around, moving with the water and then eventually breaking off into large floating ‘continents’ and finally disappearing. Freddy, the Harbour-meester, said that this had never happened before and called in the heavy mob to deal with it. They set up some form of pump fountain thing to aerate the water and protect the fish.
Either the wind changed direction or it worked because the green algae had all but gone by the time we left on Friday 11th May. Glad we weren’t moored beside the fountain as it ran all night long!
Back up the little canal to the river Ijzer but heading towards Veurne this time. We stopped at a delightful little free mooring at Fintele lock. Nice restaurant beside the mooring but lovely and peaceful overnight.
Piedaleau 