A short day paddle near Kasterlee, Belgium

I've been pretty bad at maintaining the blog lately. On the bright side, you haven't missed much. This summer I had big goals about kayaking in each country that Emily and I traveled to, but in the end we just kayaked once in France (stay tuned!) and once in Belgium (this post). 

In August, Emily and I met up with my Belgian-American kayaking friend, Stijn (from San Francisco), ​for a day trip in Kasterlee, Belgium.

There were endless raspberries and blackberries on the river banks!

The rental shop is not far from the border with the Netherlands, and lies about 40 minutes east of Antwerp by car. It sits on the side of a very calm river (creek?) that meanders through agricultural land and some woods. Emily and I took the train to Tielen, where Stijn picked us up and drove us (after a few wrong turns) to Kempen Kayaks. When we first arrived, mobs of children (at least 100) were being loaded into kayaks and shoved into the water, two at a time.

The rental fleet at Kempen Kayaks.

​The shop provides short plastic recreational kayaks - sit-ins and sit-on-tops. The rental associate first pulled out a couple sit-on-top boats, and seemed to think we were insane when we requested the sit-in boats. Apparently most clients prefer the sit-on-tops so they can tan their legs on a sunny day. 

Super-efficient launching ramp/slide/roller system.

Emily, the most daring of us, was the first to launch using the shops one-of-a-kind launching ramp. See the video below. As someone who has launched a group of 100+ children before, this is quite an appealing system. And it was fun! It's not very practical for newbies who might need to enter their kayaks from a regular dock later on, but we certainly enjoyed it.

The paddling trip was not terribly eventful. We dawdled at the beginning of the trip, snacking on the abundant blackberries and raspberries along the banks (see first picture). There wasn't too much interesting nature, but Stijn spotted two kingfishers. Since we are fast paddlers compared to the 100+ children ahead of us, we spent the next 2 hours passing the endless line of screaming teenagers. It was kind of like slalom, except with moving gates. The kids also enjoyed speeding up to make it more difficult for us to pass. But we persevered, and finally passed the front of the group a couple hours later.

The peak of excitement was a traffic jam at a fallen tree. At least 20 kayaks had stacked up, incapable of steering themselves through the only narrow opening. A camp counselor was standing waist deep in the water, shoving each tandem kayak through the opening manually.  

A small weir that we portaged around.

​Most rentals through Kempen Kayaks are one-way, departing from the shop ending at a pre-selected endpoint downstream, where a taxi shuttles you back to your car (Stijn recalls the taxi reeking intensely of perfume). The website neatly describes each of the take-out points. We made it to #4*, Bobbejaanland, which is one of the biggest amusement parks in Belgium. It was built by Bobbejaan Schoepen, a Flemish singer/guitarist, who drained a marsh and built the amusement park in 1960. From our kayaks we could hear kids screaming on the roller coasters. 

​* We probably would have gone farther if I hadn't had a terrible migraine that day :(

The only picture I have of us paddling - Emily and Stijn chilling on the side of the river.

Emily had not tried Belgian fries yet, so we made a slight detour to a frietkot on the drive back to the train station. Stijn ordered a small, and Emily and I each ordered mediums. We soon regretted this decision, and only managed to eat half of our portions. but YUM.

Date: Wednesday, August 19, 2015
Duration: 3 hours?
Distance: 12.5 km (7.8 miles)