The unexpected discovery of a beautiful kayak site is always a special event and one of the reasons why we get ourselves out there, rain or shine. This time we were on our way for a short kayak in a crossroad of the Albert channel. Not extremely boring, but not extremely adventurous either. Driving your bike to work through ever increasing traffic may be more adventurous on a bad day. But, sometimes you just gotta do the work to keep advancing in style and technique. Hence, a short kayak on a channel. Even writing about it, I am getting a bit bored. What an exciting blog post this is, I hear you thinking. But wait, there is more.
Parking a rear-driven van in the mud is always a tricky matter, there is always the possibility of getting stuck, but we took our chances and parked the van, in the mud, are you sitting on the edge of your seat yet? Probably not, I guess. What we had 'discovered' was the Straalmolen in Balen, a watermill which is still using the power of water to grind various resources. This is one of the oldest mills in Western Europe who is still in production. The first mention of the mill in ancient logs dates from as early as 1374. That is more than a century before the discovery of America. Although it's been destroyed by fire three times, it's still here grinding away.
But as fascinating as it may be, we are not here for the mill. We want to slide our vessels into the brown murky stream that has powered all the grinding for centuries. First, we had to park our car somewhere else, the parking lot is solely for paying customers. Something to remember if you want to start a kayak journey here.
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June 2022
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