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 2nd 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!!
