Back to Seneffe via the Roubaix

We were back on the Canal du Nord and heading for the Royaulcourt Tunnel again but this time going north.  We had hoped to moor for the night above the last lock before the tunnel but it was full of commercials. However, we knew that there was a mooring possibility at an old quay and turning point a few kilometres on.  It was empty except for a rather disgruntled fisherman as we had to moor right next to him, but apart from that, a very good spot.

The next day we went through the tunnel behind one commercial with whom Alex had had a chat while we waited for the green light.  When we reached the passing place in the middle it took Alex some time to realise that there was actually a commercial coming towards us: the lighting is rather confusing in there and he thought at first it was the barge in front of us! Plenty of time thankfully to move over to let him pass through!

We stopped for the day a bit early just above the first ‘downhill’ lock, where we had moored some weeks before in solitary isolation on that occasion.  At 2pm when we arrived we were the only boat again, and we cycled off to nearby Havrincourt for a mosey around.  During the course of the late afternoon, commercials began to moor up with us, one of which very nearly side-swiped a barge passing the other way. By 11pm that night, when the last one arrived, they were two deep all the way along the very long quay!

A couple of days later we were back at the lovely Gare d’Eau mooring south of Lille.  But we were getting a bit low on fuel so next day we stopped at Harbourdan, a suburb of Lille, for lunch and asked at the Mairie if they could help us with a delivery by fuel tanker.  They tried but without success, so we motored on to the Bras de la Citadelle mooring which this time did have another barge moored there, but plenty of room for us.  In chatting to Joseph and Madeleine on WEITSKE we learnt that the Belfry, Lille’s tallest building was open with free entry for that day only, so we shot off on our bikes and enjoyed seeing Lille from a different perspective. 

On the way into Lille we had spotted COSMA and later rode round to ask Stephan if he could possibly help us get enough fuel to get us to the Captain Neptunia fuel barge at Antoing where we were heading on our way back to Seneffe (via, we hoped, the Roubaix and l’Espièrre canals).

So we put 4 x 20 litre containers into his van and drove to the local garage, where, with a slight worry about the police car which pulled in to fill up halfway through our own can filling, we succeeded in getting enough fuel for the next few days.

We rang Camille who asked us to be at the 2^nd lock of the Roubaix at around 9 am on our chosen day.  We should pick up a remote control at the Grand Carré Lock just north of Lille which would operate the first lock on the Roubaix.  So an early start for us at 7.30 (!!!) got us to Camille just about 9.30am.  Camille is a lovely young woman who is the public face of the Roubaix Canal and assists in the passage of boats using it.  She gave us lots of information about the town of Roubaix and the surrounding suburbs and warned us that a one kilometre section of the river before the next lock would be a bit shallow.

All went well till we reached that section.  We started to slow down.  Alex reduced the revs to stop the back end sitting too low in the water and we slowed even more until eventually we were down to 0.5 kms per hour!

The lock was by now very close, but round a 90 degree bend, so there was no other option than to put on lots of power and force a way through the silt and round the corner.  What a stink came from the disturbed mud on the bottom of the river – quite disgusting.

Once into the lock everything was fine for the flight of 5 locks, even though the helpful and friendly lock keepers had no sense of efficiency whatsoever, but who cares, we were in no hurry!  After a stop for lunch and a few more locks, and lift bridges, we arrived at the next obstacle – a roundabout!

Suddenly Camille re-appeared as well as our lock keepers.  Ah, she said when we asked, it requires a team of 4 people to stop the traffic, operate the lights and barriers, while the two lift bridges on either side of the roundabout are raised.  So in the middle of the rush hour, all the traffic trying to enter the roundabout was held up as we cruised sedately through.

Our mooring for the next two nights was just past a gypsy encampment beside the canal which was a bit worrying, but the lock keepers assured us that they had never had any problems.  The advertised electricity supply was eventually located under a man-hole cover in the middle of the lane next to the mooring and had we needed water, it too was under a man-hole cover.  Not exactly user friendly, but they were both free.

The next day we visited Roubaix, in particular the Piscine Museum, transformed from a 1920s art deco swimming pool into a stunning art gallery.  Yes, I know it sounds most odd, but it was very effective, and included every 10 minutes or so, a short recording of the sounds you hear in a swimming pool – children screaming and shouting in a very echo-y environment. Very atmospheric.  We had lunch in a strange little bistro called ‘The Garage’ in a very down-at-heel part of town (interesting) and followed the canal arm up into Tourcoing on our bikes.

Our visit to Roubaix was a mixed bag – the Hotel de Ville, the church, the main square were as lovely as they usually are in France and The Piscine was uniquely great, but the whole area has been down on its knees and looks it, despite the millions that have been and are being spent on it.  But the important thing is that it is a canal that has been re-opened and that is just the start of the regeneration of the whole area.  In years to come the surroundings will hopefully echo the high standards which have been incorporated into the canal and we would strongly recommend that other boaters use the canal to show appreciation for those huge efforts.

The lock keepers were ready for us 9am but we were not ready for them!  Alex asked for a half hour delay as he had a mission before we could start.  He had spotted a flower shop 50m away which was to be his saviour as it was Louise’s birthday the next day!

That night we moored just over the France border into Belgium, again with free water and electricity though this time with a proper bourne for access, and Alex checked that the little Maison du Canal would be open for dinner – Yes!

The place was packed with locals and the choice on the menu board ran to three items: so we shared a ‘planche’ of cheeses and a planche of charcuterie meats, a carafe of rosé and frites.  The ambience created by the simplicity of the fare and the engaging locals made for a brilliant evening, even if we could barely understand a word: and all for under €20.  (So along with a 40^th birthday card which Alex had found in our card store on the boat – a bunch of flowers and this ‘sumptuous’ supper, that was it for Louise’s birthday!)

The Belgian side is a total contrast to Roubaix’s urban environment.  The Canal de l‘Espièrres is a lovely, tranquil rural waterway, and we were sorry to leave it.

A couple of days later after the morning mist had cleared we were able to fuel up at the fuel barge in Antoing, and we were very glad that we had failed to get a fuel delivery near Lille as our draught would have been even worse on the Roubaix shallows with 700 extra litres on board!

So now we were retracing our steps towards our winter mooring at Seneffe.  A night in the lovely basin at the top of the closed Pommeroeul-Condé Canal link, a late start due to fog and another night in the Grand Large at Mons, a lift on the Strepy Ascenseur and we were back at Seneffe – our home for the next 5 or 6 months.

Stats for this year 2013:

1331.3 Kms

99 Locks

21 Lift and swing bridges

2 Inclined planes

4 tunnels

2 Dry docks

1 Rip-off bottom repair!

1 Good value complete bottom overplate and paint!

On the Somme

So now we were truly on the Somme and were feeling quite optimistic about the trip though mooring may not be as easy as elsewhere, or so we thought at first.  When we reached Cappy the next day, Danni and Elspeth (from Switzerland) helped us moor up, which was no easy task given the shallowness of the water, but we were able to move along to the pontoon mooring later and they came for drinks and a really good chat.  They liked RICCALL’s fit-out and we had a look at their boat L’ARC EN CIEL. It’s brand new this season, a 13m x 4m state of the art cruiser: and it’s quite amazing what can be fitted into a relatively small footprint.

Now we were into the thick of the First World War arena of the Somme.  We all tend to think of it as mud and trench foot, of ruined landscapes pockmarked with craters and littered with ruined villages.  And of course, this is just what it was like 90 years ago, but now it is hard to comprehend bearing in mind the total transformation.  The towns and villages have been rebuilt, often to the exact likeness of what had been before, the trees have all re-grown or more likely been re-planted, the trenches have been obliterated by farming and there is hardly a trace of it all, apart from the relentless progression of cemeteries across the landscape, the monuments to the dead in every town and village, and war museums everywhere.  But the memory is being kept alive of an extraordinary waste of life in every corner of this area.

Among many memorials in the area, in Chipilly there is the famous sculpture of a soldier comforting his dying horse – for Alex the most moving memorial we saw.

We cruised down to Long with its wonderful chateau and hydroelectric generation plant and had a bit of trouble mooring up due to the current flowing towards the weir right opposite the mooring, taking RICCALL with it, but with the help of a boater also on the mooring we were able to bring the back end in – eventually!

This village owed its wealth to peat cutting and was one of the first in France to have hydroelectric power.  The power was limited, however, and each house was only allowed one light ‘on’ at a time and only at certain times of the day – but progress nevertheless.

We were due to catch up with our good friends Peter and Nicci on AURIGNY at Pont Remy.  Alex knew there would be quite a strong flow and had wondered how best to cope with it, but in the event we were there, approaching AURIGNY before we realised it!  The mooring turned out to be on the right hand side, whereas for some reason, Alex had imagined it on the left so hasty decisions had to be made.  We couldn’t turn round before reaching AURIGNY because there was a small historic barque moored directly opposite (we wouldn’t have been thanked for smashing it up) so taking a good chunk of tree with the back end we tried to turn opposite AURIGNY – not quite enough width – abort – ‘Sorry’ about the scratch in AURIGNY’s paintwork and we were carried down 1km in the strong flow to the lock.  The gates of the lock were closed of course, so we had to come to a stop on the rail which protects the weir!  We rang the lock keeper who arrived within 15 minutes and quickly understood the problem.  A quick suss of the area below the lock showed that with a bit of care, and using the flow re-entering the cut from the weir, we could turn there in order to retrace our steps.  The lock keeper let us through the lock to carry out a textbook about-turn (making up for the fiasco just minutes earlier) and back we went up the lock to moor in a controlled fashion upstream of AURIGNY.  Phew!  Alex calculated the flow at about 4kms per hour - not easy for mooring while going downstream! And impossible for RICCALL with her dramatic paddle effect to the left in reverse.

Peter and Nicci have had their car with them all this season, so with their encouragement we borrowed it and moved our own car from our Tournai Yacht Club mooring to Seneffe, our winter mooring (a rather longer trip than we had realised). We also drove down with them to St Valery on the Baie de Somme where the Somme enters the Atlantic.  This is a wonderful area of mud flats and shallows, with nature reserves and bird watching hides everywhere.  There is also a narrow gauge steam train which runs round the bay to Le Crotoy where we had lunch in a restaurant – the ubiquitous ‘moules frites’ before the return trip to St Valery and thence back to the boats by car.  The weather unfortunately was dreadful – cold and very wet, but the company more than made up for it.

We decided not to take RICCALL any further than Pont Remy, some 25kms shy of St Valery on the coast, as the current on the Somme was surprisingly strong and this would mean our upstream journey would be slow and somewhat tedious, particularly as the last 15kms of the canal is a straight concrete trough, the Canal Maritime, built in 1835 to improve what had been a difficult part of the Somme to negotiate.  Instead we cycled the 10k to Abbeville beside the river all the way.  We had visited Abbeville on our way south by car some 20 years ago and had spotted a British barge moored up.  We were very impressed by the whole idea of this way of life and I’m sure it was one of the things which encouraged us to make our fledgling dream a reality.  So, once again in Abbeville (not in itself a very charming place!) we tried to find the spot where that barge had been moored: and eventually we think we did find the exact place!

Amiens on our return upstream journey, was wet and windy so after a quick trip to Lidl and an express tour of the cathedral – the largest in France and big enough to hold two of Paris’s Notre Dames! – we sheltered back on RICCALL promising to re-do Amiens if and when the weather improved.

Corbie was all that we could hope for mooring-wise and the ‘Simply’ supermarket provided all we needed (including fresh milk for Alex).  We had been given an invaluable tip by Roz and Graham of OPABRADOR that the end bourne on the pontoon at Corbie gave out over 10 hours of leccy (and water) for your €2, instead of only 4 hours, so we immediately bagged it when we arrived!  They also suggested having a good supply of €2 coins for the Somme, as all the bournes will only take €2 coins, so it became a task for everyone who went shopping to try to get €2 coins in their change!  Not as easy as it sounds.

Our friends Mike and Jean arrived for a few days while we were there and we had a great time catching up with news of their recent house move and family stuff, and also an enlightening time visiting the Albert War Museum, which is housed in a 250m long underground tunnel and which was excellent, another narrow gauge railway - the Petit Train d’Haut Somme - which had been built to provide provisioning for the Allies at the front in 1916.  The 1916 front line runs very close here and the little railway line was used after the war until the 1960s to transport sugar beet from the depot on the plateau down to the canal.  We drove into Amiens (a bad move really – the train would have been better) and while Alex and Mike climbed the tower of the cathedral, Louise and Jean enjoyed a little time out with a glass or two of wine in the bistro next door.  It was a great couple of days and we were lucky with the weather which was largely fine and dry if cooling off for autumn.

The day after Mike and Jean left however was hot and sunny, so we felt the pull of Amiens again.  We caught the train this time and visited the two things we had so hoped to visit and which had escaped us the day before – firstly the area of Amiens called St Leu, sometimes called the Venice of the North - which is the old port district with its unusual buildings and many water courses running through it.  The present day canal bypasses this area so you don’t see it when passing through Amiens, so that was a worthwhile diversion. 

Secondly to the eastern side of Amiens is the area known as Les Hortillonnages.  The ancient marshland had been worked for peat many centuries ago, and these little allotment plots were gradually reclaimed from the marshes, banked up and used as market gardens.  The area covers 300 hectares and there are 65 kms of small canals criss-crossing it.  Nowadays few of the gardens are used for commercial production of fruit and vegetables as in the past, but it is possible to venture in amongst them by traditional boat.  We just happened to arrive at the booking office with 15 minutes to go before the small flotilla of boats was due to set off.  Success!  It was a great trip, even better for having cloudless skies and warm sunshine to enjoy the gardens and wildlife.

We cruised on to Chipilly where we breasted up on AURIGNY and had another great evening of dinner, drinks and jaw! 

And then we went our separate ways, for some months at least, while AURIGNY motored on in the search for winter moorings, and we ambled along looking at things of interest, one of which was an excursion by bike to the small town of Bray which does still have a canal branch leading into the town from the Somme, but which looked a bit uninviting when we passed by boat.  We eventually discovered the so-called Halte Fluvial  - a 20 metre wooden quay with a few small cleats, but to get to it, we would have had to negotiate 3 kms through a narrow canal and a wide open lake area.  The town once must have been vibrant with commercial boats coming and going: a Hotel du Port and a café du port at the terminus had catered for the batelliers, but now all was closed down with only a small Carrefour supermarket and a bar left as far as we could see!

So now we have left the beautiful and tranquil Somme for the Canal du Nord.  We had thought it would be good to visit Peronne on the way, but the moorings proved to be difficult.  On one side of the basin the bollards were far too far apart to moor safely and on the other side it appeared to be impossible to leave the mooring through a locked gate.  The Port de Plaisance was too expensive for a boat of our size, so having moored up on the expensive pontoon, we stayed for lunch for free and set off once again onto the very commercial Canal du Nord, promising that we would explore the ‘Historial’ Museum of Peronne and the town another time.

Milling about near Lille

So . . . after our failure to get onto the Canal de l’Espierre and Canal de Roubaix, we headed off south to get to Lille to meet Robert, the long way round, via the Escaut, Dunkirk-Escaut Waterway and the Deule!  (We had spent so long in the two boatyards this spring that our original intention of doing the Paris-Marne-Strasbourg-Toul circuit had been postponed till next year, so this year was a good opportunity to tackle some northern waterways.) 

We decided to overnight in the Bassin Rond at the junction of the Dunkirk-Escaut waterway and the Escaut as we had done 4 years ago.  We had loved the mooring then and did now, but 4 years ago it was virtually empty of moored boats but now there were many more, including several ex-commercial peniches.  We moored up with the help of the owner of COSMA, a historic 1960s working barge still virtually ‘as built’. 

The Bassin Rond is a lovely spot, nearly as nice as the Tournai Yacht club mooring but not as big.  Having met Stephan we decided to stay for 2 nights and invited him and his wife Florence for drinks and returned to COSMA for coffee the next day.  We had lengthy conversations with them both on the subject of commercial traffic and how it is regulated in France and began to understand his frustrations at the system, which has seen many of the smaller owner-operated commercial craft give up the struggle.

After another night en route we got to Lille where we found the Bras de la Citadelle mooring completely empty!!  Great! a good spot to rendezvous with Robert who was arriving on Eurostar for a long weekend. 

We sussed the buses to Lille Europe station and caught one the following morning to meet him.  We had a bit of a hiccup on the bus on the way there because the tickets wouldn’t ‘compost’ (stamp) in the machine on board.  Other travellers tried to help but it was the machine which was at fault, and eventually the driver got out of his seat, re-set the machine several times until finally it worked.  We had a good laugh with the driver over that, and amazingly when we returned with Robert, it was the self-same driver who this time had to explain to us in his non-existent English and our poor understanding of French, that he couldn’t drop us at the same spot where we had got on – roadworks had caused a diversion apparently!  Still, it all made for a fun ride.

We had lunch at the restaurant adjacent to our mooring (sadly in the pouring rain) and thus acquired its wifi password, so Robert was happy as he could continue ‘life as he knows it’ with his I-pad.

We decided on a short cruise north to the River Lys and Armentières where we spent a pleasant night with warm sunshine for evening drinks on deck.   Armentières was almost completely destroyed during the war and this was our first experience of being ‘in the battle zone’.                  

                          

The return to Lille went without incident apart from an inexplicably long wait at one of the locks.  This can often happen on the canals and can make planning a voyage tricky, but in this case we just couldn’t understand the lock-keeper’s rapid-fire French, so we just waited . . . and waited.

Having dropped Robert off in Lille after his weekend, we continued our cruise south towards the Somme. 

Out first stop was near to the junction with the now-closed Canal de Seclin, which we investigated on our bikes.  It was a lovely ride of about 5 kms to the terminus and the town, which like many small towns in France has the most beautiful 13^th century buildings, in this case the ‘Hôpital’. 

On the canals we’ve noticed several widenings in the canal called ‘Gare d’Eau’ on our maps.  The one south of Lille – 300m long and offline, behind an islan,d is marked with a ‘P’ sign.  It was entirely empty of boats, so we entered rather gingerly, and found to our surprise that the depth was pretty good on the whole though along the edges some parts were a bit shallow for RICCALL.  Bollards were installed at regular intervals and after some probing with the long barge pole, we found a couple with adequate depth.  A short cycle ride into the village took us to a small supermarket with most essentials we might require.  How come such a good off-line mooring has been effectively abandoned?

We woke up to heavy mist the next morning and delayed our departure but it soon cleared and we headed towards the Canal du Nord. 

At Douai we found a good mooring and went off exploring on our bikes.  We rode along the Scarpe Inferieure which has been closed for about 10 years due to a road bridge at Raches near the Douai end.  After about 6kms we found it, all renewed and with its hydraulics intact, seemingly operational but not yet opened!  This one bridge prevents use of a perfect short cut.  What a waste of a lovely canal!

We also found near Douai an amazing water and adventure park, which was clearly very popular with the local children.  Of course this was during the school summer holidays, but it was great to see everyone enjoying the various pretty new facilities – including a fantastic climbing and tree-top area where children and parents alike wear hard hats and clipped-on safety harnesses and negotiate the high level obstacle course and zipwires.  (A cornet in glorious sunshine provided the ice-creaming on the cake.)

Close to this we also found a brilliant town mooring, in the centre of Douai, with water and electricity, on the line of the old through-town canal now closed, with just one cruiser mooring up on it as we rode up, but we were dissuaded from moving onto it by a very low-looking bridge which would have meant a hasty roof removal.  Not this time, but perhaps . . .

So after these explorations we continued onto the Nord and up to the summit level – 7 up-hill locks to negotiate first, behind a commercial, whose captain we got to know quite well during all that effort. 

However, after the last lock he continued to the tunnel while we (chickens!) moored up 6kms before it for a quiet night.  We had an unexpectedly easy passage through the tunnel the next day which happened to be a Sunday.  The tunnel is 4kms long and in the middle is a 1km long lay-by!!  Boats start at each end at the same time and then in the middle they pass in the lay-by.  Traffic lights indicate who does what and when.

So the tunnel behind us, we continued down the 5 locks to the junction with the Somme, which winds its way through a delightful area of lakes and etangs on which are many little boats and fishing shacks.  Louise had acquired a book ‘Spring on the Somme’ by Arthur R Taylor to read while travelling the Somme, and she would thoroughly recommend it to anyone, particularly anyone making the same trip.  It was fascinating, amusing and very informative.  (It’s always great to have a book about the area through which you are travelling.)

Mooring up seemed very problematic before the very first lift bridge, as GRAND DUTCHY, a narrowboat we had come across in Toul, and a cruiser were moored on the very inadequate quay.  We hovered around a bit looking perplexed, but quickly MV MALANTA’s captain Fred offered to move off, let us in and moor on us.  So kind!  But that’s how some boaters are.  So of course, aperos on RICCALL followed!  A good omen we felt for our cruise on the Somme.

Tournai yacht club and setting off for Lille

We have been back to the UK and had all the dental work done or at least begun.  The rest can wait till winter.

The Clio is sorted at last and now in Jamie’s hands in reasonable working order (another £500 spent but at least we managed to get our £320 back from the useless John).

On our return we learnt that our friends Bob and Sue on JUNO were not a million miles away at Dinant on their way south to the Midi.  So we jumped in the car and drove down to have a lovely lunch with them before they got too far south.

Since then we have been back on Riccall in our lovely mooring, finishing off the last bits of painting which we failed to complete in the last session, and doing some local sightseeing: to the small aerodrome 2kms away from which microlights and gliders keep appearing over our mooring, and also to the old or former canal.

In fact, we could hardly bear to leave the Grand Large at Péronne.  Every day we have had flotillas of sailing boats, sail boards and canoes with children and teenagers being taught how it’s all done: everything from little 6 year olds learning how to paddle, to young people deliberately capsizing their craft so as to learn how to right them again – a great spectacle and such fun to watch.

Then opposite us was an amazing boatyard (reminiscent of our own at Methley Bridge) which was capable of lifting small boats out of the water using straps, and larger craft on a sideways slip, or even in some cases, forwards on trolleys on rails.  There seemed to be boats going in or out almost every day with the lovely Marjorie, the very capable owner and hands-on operator, getting stuck in driving the tractor, checking straps or supports and yelling instructions all the while!  Alex says “What a woman!”

We were surprised one day when we got back to the boat from a short drive to see a cluster of cruisers gathering in the middle of ‘our’ lake round a péniche called Troubadour.  This was obviously an annual event which they carried out on 15^th August - Assumption Day.  All the boats gathered for an all-day party on Troubadour with eating, drinking, music and dancing: that is, until she dragged her anchor in the wind and they all un-moored and milled about while Troubadour re-anchored herself back in the middle of the lake.  The cruisers then all re-grouped and carried on with the party.

So we had electricity, water, nice neighbours and shops in both France and Belgium not far away (and we still had the car) and interesting things happening almost every day, but we were still in Belgium, and here I must make some observations about the Belgians. 

When we had cousins Mary and Martin to stay with us earlier this year as we travelled north from France into Belgium, we were a bit nonplussed at how vehement Mary was about the Belgian people – not a good word to say about them.  But now we see, to an extent, what she was getting at.  Individuals when you get to know them are perfectly pleasant, if a little reserved, (and we must pay tribute to our Capitaine, Yvon who has been marvellous) but on the roads they never give you any thanks or even an acknowledgement when you have stopped or given way to them: far worse than the French in this respect.  We have had many walking past our moorings, looking at us with evident interest but never a wave or a ‘bonjour’ or even a smile.

In fact after a bit, you think ‘sod ‘em’ and stop doing it yourself, then when you get into France, as we often did to get the internet through our SFR dongle, you are surprised because everybody smiles and says ‘Bonjour’ when you see or pass them.  And in the usual French fashion, when someone comes into the Post Office or shop for example, they say, ‘Messieurdames’ addressing everyone in the queue!  It’s just great and only 200 yards across the border from Belgium!

Yvon never did tell us how the ‘give way to the right’ rule works, but we think we have at last worked it out!  Yellow diamond signs every half kilometre or so mean that you have right of way until you get the sign with a diagonal line through it. Then  if you are expected to give way, there will be a small crossroad sign such as we used to have in the UK before WW2! i.e. an x not a +.  But this does not tell you if this is a genuine crossroads or a road entering from the left or the right.  Even if you are on the main road when you see this crossroad sign, you are expected to give way to any traffic emerging from the right!!  There are even instances where there are signs warning of a DANGEROUS CROSSROAD AHEAD, where visibility is limited, and rather than just making the side road give way they warn of the danger.  Balmy!!!

However, we have at last left the Grand Large on our trip to Lille where we’ll meet Louise’s son Robert who arrives for a 3 day weekend shortly.

We decided it would be fun to go by the recently re-opened (2010) Canal de l’Espièrres and Canal de Roubaix which we have been encouraged by our Barge Association to use, as a lot of money and effort has been spent in re-opening it.  The canal crosses the border between Belgium and France so two authorities are involved in running it, and you need to contact both to make arrangements for moving through the locks.

We tried to ring the French branch before we left the Grand Large but the office was closed for the holiday, we assumed, so we decided to wing it and go that way anyway – just a day’s cruise to get there and find out the situation.  As we left the Grand Large through the lock the lockkeeper asked us our destination, as they all do, and when we said Lille via the Canal de l’Espièrres he appeared to insist that the other, southern route was the one to do.  We tried to explain our intentions but our French not being good enough for him, he gave up on us and vanished into his eyrie.  Our computer program had been quite happy about our intention to do the northern route and it would have come up with a CAUTION if there had been any problem, so when we got to Tournai we stopped for lunch and free wifi and downloaded the latest stoppages list just to be on the safe side.  No problem listed, so we decided to carry on.

The entrance to the Canal de L’Espièrres is unmarked and achieved through a rather uninviting 5m wide flood lock (now obsolete).  We made the usual jokes about The African Queen etc, as you do, and with some trepidation we made our way towards the first lock, some 1.5 kms up the canal.  It was obvious that there was no official mooring so we hurled a grappling hook at the bank and managed to get lines round a couple of trees.  Then we rang the Belgian Waterways who agreed to pass us through the first lock at 8am the next morning.   A bit early for us, but there you go.

By 9.15am the next morning, after several phone calls and contact on the VHF radio, a lockkeeper arrived to pen us through the first lock.

In the meantime, however, we had at last got through to the French section of the canal authority and had learnt that though the canal is normally open, it was however closed for at least the weekend due to lack of water!!  The situation would be reviewed after the weekend to see if the levels had risen at all. 

So we considered the scene for a short time – should we go through two locks and 3 lift bridges to the French border, then sit there for who knows how long in the hope that the water level can be sorted out.  No thanks! 

Well, decision made, but we then had to work out how to turn round in a canal too narrow for the manoeuvre, and as 1.5kms is a very long way to try to get Riccall to go backwards (!) we went into the lock, explained our problem to the waiting lockkeeper, checked the width and depth of the pound above the lock, and then rose in the lock.  We then proceeded to do a very tight about-turn in the pound above.  The eclusier quite understood and said we were the 5^th vessel that month to abandon their attempt and leave the canal.  Most, being smaller and more shallow-drafted than us, had gone a little further than us before admitting defeat.

So Goodbye l’Espièrres: we tried, we failed.

Seneffe to Tournai Yacht Club

Our first rendezvous on leaving Seneffe was a meeting which we had arranged with our boating friend Julian of narrowboat SANTANNA.  We hadn’t seen him for 4 years but had spotted him, en passant, when we drove to Seneffe to suss it out about 4 weeks previously and in the meantime he had been to the north of Holland and back while we had been in dock or in Seneffe Port de Plaisance!  So we had dinner and lunch and catch up and dinner and lunch . . . etc etc with him for the next 3 or 4 days while we both negotiated the impressive Strépy-Thieu Lift and trundled on to the junction of the Canal Nimy-Blaton-Péronnes and the River Escaut.

The Strépy Lift was only built in about 1982 to replace a series of 4 Freycinet-sized lifts (38m x 5.05m and 350 tonnes) to allow the canal to take the much larger 110m x 12m barges carrying 1350 tonnes: one hell of an investment in the canal network.  They had to demolish and rebuild about 100 homes which lay in the path of the re-aligned canal.  At this present time it is the highest lift in the world, but China is due to beat it any day soon.  Barges enter the caisson and moor up: the gates close behind the barges enclosing them and the water in the caisson.  Then the mechanism whirrs into action, sounding like a jet plane taking off.  The caisson descends or ascends.  The whole thing takes about 15mins start to finish, which has lowered (or raised) the barges some 40m.  Quite something and free to use. The museum was also well worth the visit with an excellent film-show clearly depicting the whole undertaking.  We also had a look at the old lift nearest to our mooring which in itself was pretty impressive though now sadly unused, though our information tells us that with 48 hours notice it is still possible to pass through some if not all of the 4 lifts.

On the way we stopped at Mons in the ‘Grand Large’ basin - a huge inland lake, some of which is given over to moorings for plaisance craft, rode into the city for a touristy look around and investigated the old canal by bike.  Then our next stop was at the entrance to the ‘Pommeroeul-Condé Canal’ now closed, which we rode down for the first 6kms to the border with France – the whole thing a huge relatively recently built white elephant.  The Belgian side is all up and running – 105m x 12m locks with floating bollards  - a wide, deep canal with sloping concrete sides, to the border where it just stops and becomes a puddle, totally silted up and overgrown with shrubs and even trees.  The French refuse to deal with the next 6kms to its junction with the Escaut for some reason.  This short cut would mean a 40km saving in distance if you were travelling in that direction. 

At Antoing, when we arrived there, SANTANNA was moored in a small basin, but a Dutch cruiser, also moored there, hadn’t left enough space either side of it for anyone of our size to moor, nor did they have any inclination to shift along a bit when we came into view!  Typically Dutch.  So we moored further along the canal in the commercial section and by luck found ‘free’ electricity left on one of the bournes by a passing commercial.

At this point, or more precisely at Tournai, 5 kms north, where we had gone just for another sightseeing trip, we finally parted company with Julian who headed north as we headed south.  We crossed the border into France and found a good mooring at Mortagne du Nord – the junction with the now-defunct Scarpe Inférieure (another redundant canal) which we had hoped to negotiate.  Not to be!    Still closed after all these years due to a bridge near Douai.  The bridge has been replaced but the mechanism to raise it has not been connected up yet!!  A lovely canal, all mechanised and ready to go but closed for want of a day’s worth of electricals!!

As there was a ‘hurricane’ blowing we stayed put for a couple of days then Alex suddenly had a moment of enlightenment re the Clio, which was still in the garage in Newcastle being repaired.  It was suddenly blindingly obvious to him that the guy doing the job was telling a load of porkies and was never going to repair it at all, had probably never touched it.  We had to take decisive action or never get our car back!  So we rang the nearby yacht clubs on the Grand Large (a wide open lake used mainly for water sports) and one of them replied and agreed to take us for a week, while we returned to England to sort out the car problem.

We managed to find the spot allocated to us on a rather rickety looking quay but when we had moored up in the still very high wind, it was better than it had looked.  In fact, the whole mooring far exceeded our expectations.  Yvan, the capitaine, made contact with us that evening after we had collected the car from Seneffe (getting totally lost on our way to the railway station 6kms away on our bikes and only just catching the train!) and the next day we drove from Belgium to Newcastle to confront John the garage proprietor.

Another bag of lies followed and the next day, having been on-line and discussed our problem with other garages we collected said Clio and deposited it elsewhere.  Hopefully, this time we will have better luck.

By the end of a busy UK week we were on our way back to Belgium, but now we were both only a couple of weeks away from dental appointments back in England again so we needed another safe mooring.

In the event, Alex agreed with Yvan that we could stay here in this beautiful spot at the end of the large lake.  The yacht club itself has had to close: the whole area is about to be made over to a Center Parcs operation and all the boats must go by the year end.  But we are OK for another 6 weeks.  Yvan even took Alex for a sail around to the other arm of the lake in his sailing boat.

We will spend the first two weeks painting and doing general maintenance work before we return to England for 3 or 4 weeks.

We have the car here, and before we arranged this with Yvan we drove to Cappy and Cambrai one Sunday to see if we might leave the boat at one of those ports de plaisance.  

As we left Belgium, on the minor roads, we entered a small village just into France.  Lintilla, our Sat Nav, told us to take the 2^nd exit at the roundabout, whereafter we were immediately stopped by the gendarmerie.  Alex’s first thought was that he had been doing 57kph in a 50kph zone, but no, after quite some confusion it transpired that the ENTRY to the roundabout had a STOP sign on it.  Visibility to the left had been excellent, there was absolutely no need for a STOP sign but we think it was a trap by which the French can make money from the unsuspecting motorist.

We failed to find our insurance documents (they were in the car we discovered later!).  Yes we had a driving licence, but no proof of ownership and we had forgotten our passports.   The gendarmes conferred, had we got €90 for the fine?  Yes, just.  What an expensive Sunday jaunt.

Some more conferring, then, “Welcome to France.  In future obey the road signs.” And a big grin and a wink to Louise as he waved us out and on our way.  And no fine!  Amazing!

Lesson learnt – we now have all car documentation and our passports with us at all times.

While in Cambrai we spotted a DBA barge, KISMET, and got into conversation with its owners, Brett and Ann.  We had a great hour, as only barge owners can, chatting of routes taken, experiences, suggestions etc and have suggested another meeting.

Back in Belgium we are struggling with our Belgian dongle which, it seems, they are happy to sell you but it is almost impossible for you to top it up, either on the internet or even in person in the Belgacom shop itself!  So far we have been to five different Proximus shops, only one of which, a month ago, was able to help us.  So on our way to a big shopping centre to confront Proximus again, we were surprised a couple of times by cars reluctant to stop for us from side roads.  Then the penny dropped – ‘Priorité a droit’.  Well most of our driving has been in France and the ‘give way to the right’ practice has almost entirely ceased to exist there, but it seems that here in the small country lanes and villages of Belgium it is alive and well and ready to cost the unwary an arm and a leg or at the very least the wing of a car.  We have yet to ascertain how you know in advance who has right of way at an upcoming junction.  Yvan has promised to show us but couldn’t remember off the top of his head!

Meanwhile, Alex has been addressing some of the niggles that came to light during the survey and Louise has started the mammoth task of painting virtually the entire topsides of the boat, starting with the roof lift off bar and arms.  That alone has taken nearly two days!  But hey ho, we have a few weeks left here in lovely Péronnes and when all the ‘Alex niggles’ have been dealt with he’ll be in there as well with the paintbrush!!

Boatyard Capers

Well, finally, after 4 weeks (almost exactly) we got out of Boom shipyard.

In the meantime, we were ‘floated’ as other ships left and entered, no fewer than 6 times.  Of those, four were pretty distressing!  The first because the blocks that were placed for our boat were in such a position that it put two dents in the bottom near the back: the second and third because on both occasions we had an ‘exciting’ ingress of water as the extra strain on the bottom had opened up new holes and the new plating had not been finished. 

The fourth occasion was OK because, on learning that another change of ships was due, Alex pleaded with the main man to finish welding the last remaining bits before the tide came in again, and he agreed (even though it was Saturday when usually all is quiet.  He managed to find ‘volunteers’ to complete the work.)  The fifth floating should also have been alright except that the ‘fishing boat’ behind us (more later) was too heavy to raise off its blocks (for its third attempt to leave) and so they used their engine to force their blocks to fall over under the boat and then it could escape out of the dock.  Unfortunately all that disturbance caused our rear blocks to fall over as well, so that when the tide went out again, we were supported on two blocks at the front, two in the middle and nothing at the back.  The back-end was hanging in the balance.  Appalling creaking noises below alerted us, and when Alex looked he couldn’t believe that Riccall hadn’t tipped over backwards.  Foreman Victor quickly put in a support and drove wedges in to take the weight but, of course, not soon enough to have prevented some distortion to the fabric of the boat, meaning that the shower door, the sliding door at the bottom of the stairs, and the bathroom door, don’t now close properly.  It can all be fixed!!???

The sixth time was our own ‘get out of dock card’ moment and actually it was the best of all, obviously because everything was finished, all rivets welded, all plating done including a few extra bits which had become apparent, and all the painting (some of which we did ourselves) and the cooling pipes re-assembled.  And all nearly at the quoted price.  We had to add a bit for extra anodes our surveyor had recommended, and some extra plates which Alex felt would finish the job nicely.

So - to the fishing boat - Perseus!  This strange little ex-trawler arrived when LECHAIM left (the occasion of our first wetting) together with a 50m privately owned Belgian ex-commercial barge ST ANNA 2 which had come in for portholes to be installed and various other works to be done.

But we watched amazed as a team of around 8 guys on PERSEUS loaded a whole heap of stuff from vans on shore, including generators, winches, metres of rope, anchor chain, fridges, freezers, beds, and then finally two enormous yellow buoys.  When we asked where they were off to they said the Cape Verde islands for fishing.  Some fishing trip!   

But by that time we were convinced they were treasure hunters and knew of some wreck that they were going to dive on (PERSEUS after all was a treasure hunter).  They were determined to leave the dry dock after they had loaded everything on board (and had several under water level repairs done by the yard, plus the installation of a fetching figure-head on the prow) but despite being advised that the height of the tide was insufficient, they insisted and failed on the first two attempts.  At this point in the month the tides were approaching springs, so each day there was a bit more depth of water available to flood the dock, so it was on their third attempt that they really forced the issue and toppled their supports (and of course ours).  Their problem was that they had put so much weight on board that they were sitting around 20cms lower in the water than when they had come in!

In the meantime, on the first flooding, ST ANNA 2 had tried to re-position in front of us to allow JEAN BART, an 80m x 8m fuel barge in where she had been.  This was the same position as LECHAIM had had previously.  I hope you are keeping up here, because these barges are all positioning themselves like in a game of musical chairs, except that it’s not when the music stops they all sit down, it’s when the tide goes out!  Of course, when there are no changes to be made a bloody great steel door is raised from the floor of the dock, at the entrance, to close it off from the next high tides. 

Anyway there was not enough room for ST ANNA 2 in front of us, on the supports placed there for her, so they just moved her to the middle of the dock where she eventually settled down on her bottom with no supports at all!  (But that was fine for her, with her flat bottom.)

At some point in the midst of this this, Alex looked up at the quayside and there was a familiar face - Peter Mastenbrook - who had dropped by as he was in the area and knew where we were.  How nice to see him again after nearly 3 years: his support was very welcome, but as we were about to be floated again and needed to check for leaks he had to cut his visit a bit short.

So, to recap, we now had JEAN BART to the right, ST ANNA 2 in the middle, the ‘scrap’ boat (which had come in with LECAHIM and was being dismantled) at the far end and PERSEUS behind us.  When PERSEUS finally squeezed out past the stern of JEAN BART and got out of the dock, ST ANNA 2 managed to squeeze in front of us as the scrap boat had been moved over a bit.  I must say all this kept us amused for some time, which we would have enjoyed more had we not been somewhat on edge about our own works, possible leaks and departure.

Finally, after a frantic penultimate day during which the lads managed to finish the welding of the rivets down the keel and we had primed and first-top-coated the underside of the boat, it was going to be the day of release – high tide at around 4pm.  That left until 1pm to put the second top coat of paint on the underside and refit the keel-cooling pipes (down to Alex and the lads).

After a night of virtually no sleep we got up at 6.30am (unheard of for us normally but the lads start at 7am, and not quietly either) and after a hasty breakfast Alex went out to help/supervise the re-fitting of the cooling pipes and oversee the painting of the final coat.

Miraculously, by 11am all was done as far as RICCALL was concerned, but JEAN BART was still waiting for paint underneath and for some reason, at this late stage, her engine cooling box had been re-opened and was being welded closed again with the tide rising by the minute.  The under painting was called off and as the tide came in she was still having welding carried out at the front end, topsides, as she began to float!

Eventually, at 4.30pm she backed out and we spun round in the dock and followed her (forwards – no way did we want to exit the dock into an incoming tide backwards with no bow thruster!).

After a 15 minute wait the rail bridge opened and we got to the waiting pontoon for Klein Willebroek Lock, which leads off the tidal Rupel and into calm waters on the Brussels-Schelde Zeecanal.  Goodness knows why there was a 45minute delay, but eventually the gates opened and a small replica tug preceded our own rather inauspicious entry.  Well, in our defence, the tide was now running out, a huge commercial was powering downriver towards us and we were new to the vagaries of this particular lock entry.  Needless to say we ricocheted into the lock – watched of course by the lock keeper – much to Alex’s chagrin, and lost a little bit of our new paintwork.

Still, at about 6pm, after an 11 hour day, we moored up on the lock moorings for a bottle of bubbly and, thus far, no leaks!

Then the lock keeper came by with his ‘advice to boaters’ info sheet to inform us that the second lift bridge on our route for the morning was being closed between 8am and 12pm for repairs.  So once again, we set the alarm for 6.30am and another early start – bloody hell! 

But still no water ingress – touch steel!  Well, of course there shouldn’t be any after all of the above.  For those interested, we have had 38 sq m of 6mm plate put on the bottom, a couple of thin areas overplated at the front port side and two at the very front, about 500 rivets welded including 350 or so on the keel and 3 coats of Sigma paint – 1 primer and two top coats.  PHEW! 

And incidentally, all for a price around two-thirds that of Vankerkoven’s quote, which was for far less work.

After a couple of leisurely days and another easy trip on the Ronquières Inclined Plane (we had time to go to the excellent museum this time) we got to our booked moorings at Seneffe.  We collected the car from Boom and spent 2 weeks in the UK for the usual doctor and dentist appointments etc, and collecting all the spare bits we always seem to need, and now we are back on Riccall (still dry thank goodness) and ready for cruising!

Charleroi to Boom

So, Monday morning dawned bright and clear at Vankerkoven, but there was no sign of Sandrine Vankerkoven, nor of her brother Vincent, so nobody who spoke any English to help us understand the Eastern-European French that was being spouted by the Chef du Port, Osman.

However, it appeared we were to be side-slipped onto the dock area after lunch.  Osman wasn’t interested in the fact that we have a small keel running the whole length of the boat, but he did take account of the keel cooling pipes and marked up the side of Riccall for two trolleys – one just behind the keel cooling pipes and the other 12m forward, just aft of the front bulkhead.  So that was OK and we came out with a bit of rocking from side to side, but apart from that, OK.  They then put some supports under us that could be jacked up in a crude way, but were unable to get enough lift to remove the trolleys (into which our small keel had formed a deep groove in the wood).

The following day, Riccall was jetwashed up to the waterline and late that evening at 11pm our surveyor Stefan Fritz arrived.  So after a quick drink and some scratch food, we said goodnight and went to bed worrying about the morning.

At first the survey seemed pretty good: decent thicknesses on the sides, along the waterline and round the turn of the bilge, then after lunch came the underside.  Exclamations of horror and regret

From under the boat followed one another with awful regularity.  It appeared that many of the rivets had ‘pulled through’ and would need welding - 100 in all - and although the general thickness was not too bad, there were several actual holes in the plates!  These holes would have occurred where deep pitting on the inside coincided with deep pitting on the outside.  The safest answer was to double plate the whole bottom!

(At this stage our surveyor said that an ultra high pressure washer was essential in order to take the hull back to rust-free steel to give a good base for the welding and an epoxy based paint job. Vincent was not prepared to consider hiring in such a machine, even at our cost.)

Now we knew we were going to be in trouble, because the yard would know that they had us in a cleft stick and could charge pretty much what they liked to do the job.  However! Riccall had been dragged out after an 80m barge which had to go back into the water within a few days and we were in the way.  So the yard decided that they would have to make us waterproof at least, put us back in the water, re-launch the 80m commercial then pull us out again for the remainder of the work.

So we let them do the minimum amount of work possible to make us watertight then told them that we simply couldn’t afford to have the whole job done at their quote of circa €25k: we would just leave it at that.  We had also in the meantime asked two other yards in Belgium for quotes to do the job and also to use an ultra high pressure jet wash on the hull.  One yard offered all this at about half Vanks’ quote so we planned to set off for them as soon as we were re-floated.

We had taken the opportunity during the weekend when nothing was happening in the yard to visit Namur by car as we had not had time to even stop when we passed it by boat.  It seemed like a clean pleasant place with good quays and a decent range of shops and it was nice to get away from the boatyard scene for a few hours.

On the other hand Charleroi, which Louise visited briefly while Alex returned to Toul for the car, was a dreadful place: dirty, run-down, graffiti everywhere, highly industrialised with filthy, noisy steelworks and recycling plants now that the coat mines have all closed.  Sightseeing tours include trips up some of the slag heaps, as being the best thing on offer!

In the meantime Sandrine and brother Vincent had made out a bill for what they had done so far.  The cost for the plating was not unreasonable (in their terms) but their original quote had included a paint job which we had later said would not be necessary.  They tried to reduce the overall price by just a paltry €250 for not having the paint applied, and at that point Alex drew the line.  So very reluctantly Vincent gave us another €250 off the bill, which still came to around €6,000.  But even at that, going to a different yard was going to be cost-effective.  

Having milked our bank accounts at hole-in-the-wall dispensers over two days, thus accumulating about half the bill in cash, we then did an internet transfer of the remainder from our French bank account, and Sandrine was satisfied that we could leave.

So, a two and a half day journey to Boom on the River Rupel near Antwerp, our next destination.  Regular checks for water ingress satisfied us that we weren’t actually going to sink and we arrived quite comfortably, passing through Brussels (forgettable from the water) on the way.  We used the Ronquières Inclined Plane on this journey, which was quite an experience, and we think because the Belgian commercial ships were on strike and moored up in every little nook and cranny, we had no opposition and no wait for the lift – it can take hours in a busy season.

Dave, the main man at Boom, who speaks perfect English, had understood exactly what we were looking for and had given us a very competitive quote.  This dock is a tidal one, and we had to ferry our way in against a pretty strong flow just before the top of the tide.  Once moored in position we watched Lechaim, a 105m barge which was also coming into the dock, trying to manoeuvre a small workboat into the dock.  This workboat had its ‘legs’ down too far to enable Lechaim to get it over the sill of the dock.  So Lechaim took it back to its mooring out on the river then came back in itself.  We spoke to Reyer, the captain, afterwards and expressed our amazement at how he had handled his 105m barge as a tug for the little workboat and he said that after a lifetime with boats it was just all in a day’s work!  But the tide was still running pretty strongly and even though he had a 180 degree bow thruster you would have thought he was just 20m like us and not a 105m leviathan.

The next day he and Corrie his wife invited us for what we assumed would be aperos at about 6.30-7pm but it actually turned out to be after-supper tea and cakes!  But what the hell, we were given a guided tour of one of these €4m commercial vessels.  The living quarters were immaculate with three double bedrooms, fully fitted bathroom, en suite and a large open plan dining/kitchen/living room.  The wheelhouse was just state of the art: the whole thing lifted about 5 metres on a hydraulic lift system and the top part of the wheel house could be lowered if necessary to get under low bridges with a roof hatch for the captain to stick his head out of pro-tem.  Up at the front was another set of living accommodation for the crew!

The main engine room had three engines in it – the power house, 1700bhp with triple turbos, the generator, 15kva and the hydraulics.  In the forward compartment were another three engines - 300 bhp for the bow thruster and two generators as back up for the rear ones.  At least I think that’s how it was set up: I definitely did see 6 engines in all!  They don’t bother with a big bank of domestic batteries: they just run the gennies all the time until they are hooked up to shore power.  In fact their Victron inverter was only rated at 1200kw.

Anyway, the reason they are in dry dock is for a survey because Reyer, at 70 years old, has decided it is time to retire and he is selling his barge.  The guy who is buying it is a 32 year old Frenchman and he is going to revamp the whole interior of the living accommodation!!

The other day was Bank Holiday in Belgium so we had a quiet day in the yard – quiet from the point of view of boatyard noise, but extremely busy as Alex used the lovely weather to fit the new solar panels to the wheelhouse roof.

Retrieving the car after each stage of the journey from Vankerkovens was interesting, if a perfect nuisance, but we felt it was important to have transport while in dry dock, and so it has turned out, enabling us to drive hither and thither for spare parts, new ropes, everyday shopping and the inevitable bank!

The new bottom is being installed as we write this, but not without a certain degree of angst/excitement and unexpected happenings!  More details to come in due course.

Winter-Spring update

We have all had a bit of a break over the winter from Riccall’s Ramblings – me from writing it and you from having to read it (or hitting the ‘delete’ button as might be your preference!).  But now the new season has started and if I leave it much longer I’ll never get started again (“Leave it longer” I hear you cry!) We have spent the winter driving back and forth from Toul to UK and visiting friends both in France and the UK.  We brought a van load of batteries (Wot, again?) for us and Peter and Nicci of AURIGNY and several other bits and pieces including a freezer and cooker for AURIGNY and three new PV panels for RICCALL.  Alex’s sister Julia kindly lent us her disability vehicle which is an ex-transport ambulance and even with all the stuff in it, it still had masses of room.

We had arranged to spend Xmas with Alex’s brother David and wife Bun in Somerset, then return directly from there to France for the New Year.  So, with the Clio fully laden we set off, visiting Will and Laura (Birmingham) Emily, Ric and Herbie (Bristol) on the way. The car had just been serviced before we set off but that did not prevent the clutch from failing in Bristol.  Amazingly we found a garage which would do the job on Saturday evening and Sunday morning – Xmas Eve!! – to allow us to continue to David and Bun’s.  A flat tyre discovered on Christmas Day was the icing on the cake!

Then, on our way to Dover to catch the ferry to France after Christmas, we had ‘the call’ from the care home to say that Louise’s Mum, Joan, was very poorly. So we turned left just after Stonehenge and arrived at the home five and a half hours later, just 5 minutes too late.  The carers at the home consoled Louise with the fact that nearly all their patients died either just before or just after the family were in attendance!  Joan’s death itself, though sad, was a great release for her (and for Louise herself) as she had become ‘lost’ to all intents and purposes some years ago.

Eventually we got back to RICCALL a couple of weeks later after the funeral etc and returned to the UK 2 weeks after that.  However, the Clio, which has been fantastically economical over the last couple of years, has decided to develop a whole series of electro-mechanical problems.  It got us down to Julia’s for Alex to fit a new utility room and to Mary and Martin’s for a break in Scotland, but thereafter was not going to be up to (or even ready for) our final trip to France.

So we went out and bought a Skoda Fabia 1.7DTi with only 23k on the clock which we hope will be a bit more reliable, if more expensive to run. Its first test from the north of England to Toul, then to the south of France and back to Toul, returned 50mpg overall at cruising speeds of up to 130 kph, so - could be worse.

We spent a few days doing last minute preparation on RICCALL then set off for Charleroi in Belgium where we have booked a dry-dock for insurance survey and blacking of hull etc as we periodically have to do:  the same procedure that we failed to achieve in Toulouse last year.

It is right at the very start of the season (a point made clearly by the weather – bright but with bitterly cold winds) so there are virtually no other boats about and mooring is dead easy: though the water and electricity often haven’t yet been turned on, but then nor have the mooring charges!

The first flight of 14 locks out of Toul are all linked so once started you have to do them all (or contact VNF to explain yourself). We didn’t get to the top until nearly 2pm and then the eclusier insisted we went through the Foug tunnel as well, before we stopped for lunch.  He didn’t want to hang about for us because afterwards he had to switch the tunnel lights off!

At some point we lost one of our ‘glissoire’ fender and despite walking all the way back through the 1km now-dark tunnel, failed to see it floating in the canal.  We knew of a local supplier but despite having given him a great deal of business during two winters, he was not prepared to deliver one 15kms to where we were moored.  Fortunately we caught up with AURIGNY at Commercy the next day and Peter offered to lend us a spare which he was not using himself.  We also had a great evening with them.

We spent the next night at St Mihiel and after that there is a series of 10 locks to Verdun (1 day) and 8 locks to Dun sur Meuse which are all manually operated, and we were accompanied by a roving lock keeper to help us through each one.  By the end of the second day we had got pretty friendly with ‘Lou’ our operator and gave him a bottle of wine when we made our farewells.

During the day, we had received a text from Mike and Sally of CHOUETTE to say that they were at Dun-sur-Meuse, there was room on the mooring for us, and would we like spag bol for supper?  Well, yes, thanks very much.  So another great evening.

The return match came the next evening when we moored alongside them at Alma, our absolute favourite mooring in this area.  And the next morning, as luck would have it, a paraglider took off from the opposite hillside and floated about in the upcurrents for an hour or so till we lost sight of him.  This was the very spot where we saw about half a dozen launching themselves from the same hillside nearly 4 years ago but in high summer that time. Great to see it again!

We had been contacted by Mary and Martin to ask if they could stay for a few days and so we were making plans to meet them at a convenient mooring.  This turned out to be Vireaux Wallerand where there was a good mooring spot and station, and where we were also joined by Chouette again.  Mary and Martin had left Scotland at 4am and arrived with us at four in the afternoon after a journey by car, by bus, by air, by bus again, by train, by bus yet again and finally by train again!!

Our first bit of interest the following day was the Ham tunnel, for which we’d been led to understand we would need to remove the roof.  But the moment we arrived the éclusier said, in a torrent of rapid French which brooked no argument, that he would lower the water level in the tunnel.

Fortunately Mary speaks fluent French, having lived in France as a child, so comprehension was not a problem: nor was the height of the tunnel or the depth beneath us (2m at least).  We stopped for the night in Givet and the following day entered Belgium and moored in Dinant.  The castle was well worth a visit and we had drinks and apéros in a pleasant café overlooking the river with even some sunshine to brighten the early evening.

A couple of days later and we turned off the Meuse and onto the Sambre.  The lady lockkeeper at the first lock gave us dire warnings about a strike ahead by some of the commercial batteliers and deliberate damage to locks, but assured us that the next two locks were OK.  So we were able to get to Aurelais to moor just above the lock and wave goodbye to Mary and Martin as they caught the train for Charleroi from the nearby station. 

It was lovely having them to stay (the longest of any guess so far) and they have even promised to return for another dose.  Great!

Later in the evening we were joined on the mooring by an 80m commercial which ‘parked’ just 2m from our stern.  Then later, another one moored in front of us.  Wow, we are back in commercial barge country now.

The next day the last lock before our destination was working fine and we got to the Vankerkoven boatyard just after they had all gone home for the weekend at 12.30 on Friday!  So we found ourselves a space near the narrowish entrance to the off-line port – a huge expanse of water some 100m x 100m – without blocking it, found a supply of power and settled down to wait till Monday.