A Secret Passage Through Europe, Part 2
October 21, 2025
by Brandon Ahearn, JD, LLM, CFA
Relocation Consultant at YourPlaceInEurope
YourPlaceInEurope.com
Biography: Brandon Ahearn is a US and Swiss dual citizen and holder of a BA and a Juris Doctor from the USA, a Master in European Laws from Germany plus a CFA Charterholder. His career as a lawyer has been largely in financial services and in technology. He resides in Lugano, Switzerland and speaks six different languages.
“Through the Heart of Europe by Boat? The Secret Passage That Few Even Know ” (continued)
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The second part of this story comes from my keyboard as I relax in the southern French town of Séte – so south that it is nearly in Spain. The trip through the canals from the North Sea to the Med is over, and I have arrived in a different kind of boaters’ paradise, very far from the small Dutch villages of Friesland, where this journey started. This kind of boating paradise is characterized by the smell of the salty sea, palm trees, sidewalk cafés, pain au chocolate, sailboats galore and by the mildly exotic feeling of the French Mediterranean.
The guidebooks and the videos of those who had done the canal journey from north to south before me told me it would take me 30 days to reach the Med from the North Sea. It took me 45 days. I suppose I failed to calculate the limitations of a 14hp motor and the hassle of handling hundreds of locks, many of them while I was alone. I also did not think that I would run aground even once, yet I managed to do so at least five times. It did not cross my mind how careful one must be, even with a draft of only 1.1 m, to very precisely observe the channel markings for the shallows.
This all means that the journey, intended to be a romantic float down the waterways, was much more challenging than I had thought it would be. There was considerably more than a sprinkling of bad things in all of this, and if anyone asks me whether this trip should be replicated, I would tell him or her to enjoy it in bite-sized pieces. That is, if one wants to experience European canal boating, to definitely not do the entire journey but instead to hire a comfortable canal boat for a week, do a slow cruise in a well-served touristic area, and then simply give the boat back and go home.
The reality is that no great voyage is ever going to be completely perfect and sometimes one that is not fraught with at least a little suffering is not much of a trip anyway. Many years ago, I read a quote about some level of foolhardiness being a requirement for a real adventure. I don’t recall the precise quote, but it went something like that and it still seems to make sense.
Amongst the hours of monotonous and remote stretches of river accompanied only by a very small diesel engine droning on and on, the at times overwhelming number of locks, and the desire for the trip to simply be over, there were many beautiful moments to recall now, and to recall long in the future when all i have left are memories.
On the first leg of last summer’s stretch, I will always remember the excitement of setting out on the journey as my cousins from Hamburg and I drank coffee in front of the pastry shop in the narrow stone street of the tiny, 17th century merchant town of Sloten, Friesland, which even today looks exactly like it did back in the days when The Netherlands were one of the world’s great powers.
I will always recall our surprise at the city of Deventer, also in Holland. The only people I have ever met that know Deventer are Dutch people. To everyone else it seems to be a place that nobody has ever heard of. To us it was as well, as we drifted into the city’s boat harbor on the Maas River we had not expectations. The harbourmaster lent us bicycles and we pedaled the short way into town to relax with a beer. What met us was overwhelming. A city kept completely intact for hundreds of years, like stepping back in time, with a vibe that one typically only feels in southern cities – people out everywhere, cafés full, bustling energy and everything beautifully kept and spotlessly clean. We stayed late into the night, playing petanque next to the cathedral under the golden glow of the street lamps.
I will always fondly remember an evening in the north of France, in some small village, the name of which I don’t even recall. We tied up to the quayside and soon met an Australian couple on an old, but comfortably modified holiday boat. Sitting over maps and stories, and wine and beer well into the night – we telling about what they would find in the north and they telling us about what to do in the south – the children played football on the grass and climbed all over the Australian boat, eagerly discovering all the comforts it offered compared to our tiny sailboat. It was one of those moments that could not have been more perfect, and I will remember it forever.
I am glad it is over. I would not repeat it and I would not suggest anyone do it, but it was different and it was special and it is peppered with memories that I would otherwise never have experienced.
