Towpath bench
Materials: Stones, mortar
2025
I live in the center of Brussels, and every few days I get the urge to escape the ant’s nest. Luckily, the Charleroi–Brussels canal runs pretty close to my place, and I started following it with my scooter. I’ve ridden from Sint-Jans-Molenbeek to Halle, and it’s so nice to discover new places and get away from the city. I really, really love the canal.
Around Sint-Pieters-Leeuw, there are some heaps of old stones and concrete. One evening I drove past them and got the idea to make a bench out of them. There are no benches in this area, even though people walk their dogs here and things like that, so it seemed like a great spot.
When the bench was finished, we sat down on it. After a moment of silence, Toon said, “I hit a goose with my car last week.” I thought it was really funny that this was the first conversation on the bench.
It made me wonder what other people might talk about while sitting there.
I asked my friend Toon Peters to help me. I picked him up at the train station, and together we drove to Brico to get a bag of mortar, some gloves, and a few other things.
We checked out the spot and started building. I didn’t have a design or anything specific in mind, so it was really nice to just freestyle together.
I brought a bucket and some rope to pull water from the canal to mix the mortar, and we used my scooter to move the bigger pieces. We finished it with a bit of mosaic, made by breaking tiles we had found.
Here is the spot:
