On a roasting afternoon in late summer, the bridges and banks at the heart of long, narrow Dinant are bursting with people, all turned out to watch a bizarre flotilla making its way untidily down the river Meuse.
Leading the way is what looks like a helicopter, but the underbelly is a team of reasonably coordinated oarsmen. Not far behind, two cyclists have set up a tandem on a raft, which is propelled by their pedal-power. Number 39 is an inventive ostrich farm's boat, with water pouring through the beak of the ostrich figurehead that adorns the craft. But boat 13, you fear, has reaped the ill-luck of its number. In the form of a big Bon Anniversaire cake strapped hopefully to two rubber pipes, it is alarmingly low-slung in the water, its two rowers provoking general amusement by being more in the river than out. Yet even this contraption is still making progress upstream.
La Regate des Baignoires, the International Regatta of Bathtubs, was, as the local tourist board brazenly and cheerfully admits, a stunt dreamed up to bring visitors to what is, after all, a place well-deserving of a visit. An hour or so's drive out of Brussels, Dinant's setting in a wide river gorge endows the small town with more than the usual provincial charm. It is low-key: some of its array of attractions occasionally verge on the underwhelming, but, taken as a whole, could keep all but the most jaundiced of families entertained.
Standing high on the rockface above the town, a cable car ride from the centre, is La Citadelle, a stronghold complete with reconstructions of olden times and other family attractions. In the area, you can take a tour of the extraordinary stalactites in the Grottes du Pont d'Arcole, or visit the 850-year-old Abbaye de Leffe, whose medieval brewery gave its name to the famous Belgian beer. Dinant is also famous as a gastronomic centre and, judging by our lunch at Les Amourettes (place saint-Nicolas 11, tel: +32 82 225 736), the locals certainly eat well. You can also hop on cruises of the Meuse river from here.
All well and good, but effectively Dinant is just the sort of place that could benefit from some legendary Belgian barminess, and the bathtub regatta, now in its 20th year, is barmy as a mussel. The visionaries who brought this event into surreal existence stipulated the fundamental rule: each craft must have at least one bathtub at the core of its being (even if now, for many of the elaborate boats, the tub is hard to spot for the casual observer). Motors are strictly forbidden, as is the deliberate sinking of a fellow competitor.
Prizes are awarded in categories that, like Jorge Luis Borges' cited Chinese encyclopedia, might bewilder the outsider. While there are prizes for such classic attributes as speed and technical endeavour, you can equally be a winner for such abstruse concepts as beauty, actualité, and representativity of the town.
Once you've got the breadth of possibilities in mind you can look at all the boats with a keener eye. Boucher-Leclerc's five meat-cleaving gents on a raft might appear disappointingly slow and minimalist, paddling in leisurely circles, the more muscular members of the crew occasionally throwing buckets of water over the others - but does it capture the spirit of the town? Or does Mecasoft's pirate raft - with sail, a Jolly Roger and Belgian men in eyepatches and dresses - do it better?
Certainly the speed prize seems beyond most of the bathtubs, which have little in the way of acceleration, leaving the spectators, film crews and anyone else in a more seaworthy boat having to perform regular U-turns to keep anywhere near them. It's generally good news for the sedentary onlookers drinking at the extra bankside tables laid on by the local taverns and creperies - until, that is, some of the bathtubs' occupants decide that it's time everyone else got wet.
Suddenly, in a monsoon of hoses and buckets, there is water everywhere. First-timers assume this is an outrage, but Benoit Gillard, a pensioner from a nearby village, remains tranquil as local hoodlums, in a boat sponsored by Jupiler (purveyors of beer, no less), soak him. "No point in getting angry - c'est la fête," he shrugs. "Or you should just stay at home." As regular visitors, he and his wife aren't perturbed even when a bucket of water catches them full in the face. "Well, now my blouse is really wet now," Mme Gillard comments gamely, as further soakings come their way. Everyone at the neighbouring tables has already stormed off.
For the record, the prix de la vitesse was won by the tandem de Compiegene, which stayed afloat and outstripped the helicopter. Three Egyptian boats vied for the beauty prize - I cannot be sure whether it was the ancients I had seen, nor why Belgians should find Egypt in particular so aesthetically pleasing. Originality went to Les Evadés, the escapees. And the prize for actualité went to the sinking birthday cake. Well, you can't get much more topical than that.
· Gwyn Topham travelled to Brussels from London with Eurostar. Dinant is approximately 90 minutes' south by car (you can hire cars from a choice of several operators at Brussels Midi station, just at the entrance to the Eurostar terminal).
For more information, contact the Belgian Tourist Office, Brussels & Wallonia on 020 7531 0390 or email info@belgiumtheplaceto.be
