We visited the town of Lier on a Saturday which is market day in the Grote Markt, and whilst Lier is not really a mini Bruges as it was said to be, it is a very pleasant place. We did the rounds of the market stalls, and even bought a couple of things – yes, spent money, amazing!! At 12.00 it all started to pack up and by 1.30 we could see the Grote Markt in all its glory.
We had lunch in a pavement café then went to look round the town. First on the list was Mr Zimmer’s amazing timepieces. In the museum was a huge astronomical clock, which he constructed for the Brussels World Exhibition in 1935. The other multi faced clock was set in a tower which was rebuilt from the original Corneliustoren (part of the 13th century city wall) especially for the purpose of housing it. The tower has been renamed the Zimmertoren in his honour. (We did just wonder, if in old age, he turned his hand to the invention of a walking frame?!)
Louis Zimmer was born in 1888 and trained and excelled as a clock maker, but he also had a passion for astronomy. He married these two skills by manufacturing clocks which not only portrayed the time but also gave information about many aspects of the astronomical universe.
Thus the world exhibition clock had no fewer than 93 dials, only some of which represented the 24-hour clock, time in different parts of the world etc. (even the 10 hour to the day, 100 minutes to the hour suggestion of France – firmly rejected by the people). All the others represented the movements of the planets, the solar system, the moon’s phases etc. In the case of some of the clocks, the hands would turn in a matter of months or years (e.g. 19 years for one of the moon’s phases) and in one case 25,800 years. (We did feel that the clock itself might have disintegrated by that time!) At the bottom are three scenes depicting with automatons how heavy you would be on each of the planets, and how high you could jump on each, with the same weight/force, and the 3rd depicting the four ages of man as they toll the quarters. All this happens every hour for about 5 minutes. However, the town of Lier spawned, housed, supported, revered and buried this man. And we thought he was pretty exceptional too!
We also had a look round the Beginhof (a whole area of town once used to house lay nuns) now used to house ne’er do wells, judging by the look of the people coming in and out of the houses and the area had not been turned into a set piece like the Beginhof in Amsterdam.
We finished with a guided tour of the huge Sint Gummarus Kerk for a mere €1.50 each (great these enthusiastic volunteer guides) and a bike ride in lovely weather round the footpath which follows the line of the old city walls – alongside the encirling river Great Nete.
Sunday morning was dark when we got up. We had to be at the lock at 7 am sharp to catch the ebb at just the right moment to join the Zeescheldte when the incoming tide would take us up to Ghent.
We both woke at about 2 o’clock, and tense and worried about the day ahead didn’t sleep much again until it was time to get up at 6 am. We had breakfast, then as Alex was looking at the calendar to see if the height of the tides was mentioned as well as the times, he suddenly noticed that sunrise and sunset times were included and that sunrise on that very day seemed to be earlier than on the day before. Strange! Then it dawned (sorry) on him – end of summertime and change of clocks! We were up an hour earlier than we needed to have been.
Well thank goodness for that! Another hour for some actual daylight to become apparent. We get up so much later than that normally, that we hadn’t noticed how dark the early mornings had become. There is no way we could have set off onto a completely unknown tidal river in the pitch dark. But at 7 we were off through the lock (primed and waiting with a green light for us) and down the Nete we went. The dreaded 80 m long tunnel under the autobaan and the ‘fast swirling currents’ of which we had been warned, was a pussycat compared to the Ouse at Selby! Rivers always look worse near low tide as this was, but there seemed to be an air of dereliction about the whole river – almost eerie. We both felt quite uncomfortable. We hit flood (the incoming tide) just one kilometre before the confluence with the Zeescheldte so changed up a gear and ploughed it to the meeting point. Thereafter we again had the tide with us, but now rising, and we motored on at 13 kph with the revs down to 1200 rpm. During the course of the next 4 hours we were soon overtaken by a couple of barges and at least 8 or more came in the opposite direction. This is Sunday; we thought we would be the only ones on the river! Anyway, Alex realised that if we kept going at this furious pace we would overtake the flood tide, so we backed off and cruised on up at 10 kph or so.
When at last we reached the Merelbeke Lock, there waiting for us in the lock were the two barges which had overtaken us 2½ hours before! We felt a bit guilty that they had both had to wait for the tortoise to arrive before being locked through, but we didn’t know they would have had to wait. We were just not in any hurry so were conserving fuel.
Louise had hoped to moor topside of the lock for the night (it had been a long day) but it was chock-a-block with moored barges, some two deep, as is the custom, so we just motored on for the extra hour into Ghent itself and our winter moorings, arriving 12 hours after we got up – no stops whatever – pretty whacked.
So a quiet few days here and then back and forth to the UK.
