On The Somme

It’s impossible to separate the words “The Somme” from thoughts of mayhem and slaughter, but now the Somme is a (generally) quiet, leisurely river which makes for a very pleasant cruise.

The Somme meanders in, through and round old peat workings, now reedy pools, such that the whole area is one marshland. The canal is now run and maintained by the ‘county council’ and as such it is thoroughly service-oriented. The lockkeepers are unfailingly polite, helpful and often can manage a smattering of English, which with our smattering of French, goes a long way to ensuring effective communication. It is, however, still necessary to ring to arrange passage through locks and bridges and there is no doubt that operation would be easier, and enjoyment enhanced, if the whole system were made automatic. Of course, many redundancies would result and that is NOT the French way!

Anyway enough! Our trip downstream from the main line the Canal du Nord, was without incident. Moorings were reasonably plentiful and by and large empty at this early stage of the season. There were two notable exceptions: at Cappy, where we needed to moor for the lunchtime ‘fermeture’ from 12.30 to 1.30, the only possible space was taken by a fisherman – not at one end or other of the 30m gap, but bang slap in the middle. He showing no inclination to move along, Louise let fly her best (or worst) French! We managed to tie up to an English-owned, Dutch boat of similar dimensions to RICCALL to save the day.

Onward to our first overnight mooring, which we approached as luck would have it, in the teeth of the worst storm we’d had on the Somme to date, and there had been a few. Louise did her best in the downpour to get a rope onto a bollard already tangled up with the washing line small boats tend to use when mooring, but this was a really bad example of mooring, and by a work boat at that. Eventually we managed to attract the attention of the adjacent council gardener, resolutely strimming through thick and thin, or wet and wetter, and got him to attach our rear line, which we had NO hope of doing, being 2m off the shallow bank.

Louise got wetter and wetter herself, with Alex saying “There’s no point in me getting soaked as well!” which may have been true but . . . anyway, laughter ensued and photos were taken to prove Louise’s magnum opus!

The drowned rat!!

Our friends Mike and Sally, moored up some 50kms away on the St Quentin Canal, drove over for a lovely catch up and overnight stay. They’d been hoping to paint the roof on their boat but had been stopped by the stormy weather, so were happy to drive over for a bit of R & R.

And then we were off again.  Stopping briefly at Chippily, we again cycled the 3 kms uphill to visit the 'Belvedere' overlooking the Valley of the Somme, scene of that most horrendous fighting.  But next to the little car park was a meadow in the old style:

On the way to Corbie and our next mooring, hoping to top up our tanks and have a night’s electricity, Louise heard a bang from somewhere below, as of a door slamming shut, but on investigation she discovered water pouring out of our filter cupboard, fortunately straight into the bath and away. One of our filter housings for our sterilised water system had cracked and come apart. Alex shut off water to that part of the system and on we went, space at the quay in Corbie having just become more urgent. But no! Totally packed! : one boat taking advantage of cheap water and electricity for, as they freely admitted and in the face of a 2 day limit, for 2 weeks. ASLAUG, also moored, offered for us to moor alongside but by that time, we were well past her so we moored a little further on and considered our options!

In the end we discovered from Nick on ONDERNEMING (apologies if that’s not quite the right spelling Nick) that there were now more water points along the canal than had been there in 2013. So, it was decided, we’d move on next morning to the next possibility for topping up the tanks.

LES CHARMES – a 39m hotel barge arrived shortly before we left to use the lock and followed us in the next locking. Once we were safely moored up at Lamotte-Brebiere and taking water, LES CHARMES passed us on its way down to Amiens. Lamotte-Brebiere is a lovely mooring with an invisible railway line alongside on the starboard side and a fast- flowing river on the port side. At the lock there is the strangest set-up. The former lockhouse is now a cafe of sorts, but in its grounds are its other ‘attractions’: a night in a tepee at €50, a night in a gypsy caravan €70, in a yuurt €80, hire a pedallo €10 for half an hour, a canoe €8 etc etc. All of the above were in a precarious state of dereliction. Bizarre!

So, we got our fill of water and Alex replaced the broken filter housing with a spare we happened to have putting us back to a normal situation, and then it was on to Amiens. We had intended mooring not on the quay for the ‘port’ but round the corner above Amiens Lock and we spotted that LES CHARMES was moored on the quay, but with its engine running. Were they going back upstream, or following us downstream? In the event they passed us once again, RICCALL now happily moored up above the lock, and proceeded into the lock. The lock operated as normal until they needed to exit. And then there was a problem. At 1.15pm they hit something underwater on exit from the lock and had to abort. So there they stayed all afternoon,

LES CHARMES in the lock - spot the diver!

till a diver from Paris arrived at 4pm or so. We watched for a short time, while the diver retrieved several stone blocks from the bottom of the lock and then we went into town looking for a post box.

This endeavour failed, but at least we had a nice wine and beer with Amiens Cathedral in full view. 

A cool day but still a  nice apero!

Returning to RICCALL, we discovered LES CHARMES moored on us, above the lock of course! 

39 metres moored on 19, but it worked!

They’d been raised in the lock and had exited it backwards so that the diver could fully investigate the depths and retrieve whatever he could find. The rocks so retrieved had been thrown in no doubt by some malcontents, but it must surely have served as a warning to the lockkeepers that storing blocks of stone just 5 metres from a lock in the centre of a city, was asking for trouble! Eventually at around 7pm all was declared clear and the hotel barge moved cautiously back into the lock and downstream, their intended cruise all the way to St Valery – 60kms west – curtailed. Concerned though we were at their wasted and fraught day, we were glad it had all been sorted before we used the lock. And that was the mission for next day.

Well, the lock was safely negotiated the next morning, and after a further foray for supplies, we set off downstream for Pont Remy, 40kms and 6 locks.

We (sensibly) decided to grab a mooring some distance upstream of the lock at Ailly, as we had doubts as to the likelihood of adequate mooring closer to it, and were glad we’d done so. The pathetic little 3m pontoon at the lock would have been no use to us and then what? However, it was early in the day and needing to send a birthday card, we went into the local village. Card duly posted (yes, we know there are other ways to send cards now via the internet!) we investigated the village of Ailly, and there came across without doubt the WORST church in all of France. Photo follows:

Hugh Mc Knight in his book ‘Cruising the Waterways of France’, says

“Ailly’s church is an unusual modernistic structure, its roof looking like a ship’s sail.” 

That is NOT what it looked like to us: now redundant, it has had but a short life. 

Compared with the thousands of amazing religious buildings in France from earlier centuries, it is an aberration, but has now clearly outlived its usefulness. Thank goodness!

And then at 12am it started! The worst storm either of us has ever seen. We had constant lightning, thunder and then RAIN you wouldn’t believe! All very exciting, yes, but, the downside was evident the following morning.

Once again, uncertain of the moorings available at the next lock, we moored at a former silo quay; still working, but no longer using the canal. This trade ceased long ago. The silo receives grain from local farms and stores it for onward distribution which of course, is effected by lorry.

The rain had made some difference to the current but it was after Breilloire Lock that we were onto a fast flowing stream and once the River Nièvre had joined the Somme, we were in the thrust of a really swollen river. The Nièvre cascaded out from under what would normally be an inconspicuous opening in the bank, but on this occasion a terracotta-brown eruption joined the Somme! Conscious that the écluse at Long was the next obstacle, as it is round a very left hand bend, we were a little concerned but in the event made it safely enough. We’d have liked to moor up at Long, but there was simply no possibility, with the river running as fast as it was.

Long flashes by - no chance to moor up

Apparently, the lock had been originally destined for another site on the river, but the local mayor and chateau owner had it moved to its present position so that he could watch the boats from his chateau! How 39m fully laden barges ever made the turn into the lock with a downstream current drawing them sideways onto the weir beggars belief.

Having been swept along for the next 2 kms, we decided that enough was probably enough, certainly for that day. We moored up with a little difficulty at Cocquerel and heaved sighs of relief. What had been a swift descent would on our return be a slog. With Alex’s family due to arrive in a day or two, we needed to find ourselves a good spot to meet them.

A 4km ride down to Pont Remy convinced us (well Louise at least) that onward progress was pointless. So the decision was made to turn tail in readiness for an early start upstream the next morning. Alex assessed the width of the river at that point, declared it wide enough (just) and the turn went surprisingly well.

The brown river was flashing by as we went off early to bed, small logs, greenery of all kinds and highly topical – plastic drinks bottles – all on their way out to sea at St Valery - and you get the picture! but our mooring was solid and we passed a comfortable enough night.

We’d hoped the river would have calmed down by morning but no, so we spent a long day, for us, of 19kms and 3 locks (travelling upstream at just 5kph) and reached our destination to meet our visitors. With them we aimed to cruise to Amiens, just 15kms and 2 locks, with hopefully a little less flow against us!

All ready for visitors . . .

. . . and the sun out for once

Well the flow was still in evidence, but Amiens soon appeared. The afternoon was spent by Richard in retrieving the car, a little food shopping, an ice cream at the little cafe in Long, a quick peek at Long Chateau (through the railings!) and later a lovely meal prepared by Alice and Richard.

Then it was the morning in Amiens – unfortunately the cathedral tower wasn’t available for climbing until much later in the day, so instead we had a leisurely lunch in one of the many restaurants on the St Leu waterfront. (The St Leu area was once the living area of the working people and is like a mini Venice dissected by many small canals. The small houses are built in terraces, and many are wooden fronted. Looking a little down-trodden now, it is a gem and surely the burghers of Amiens must see its potential!)

It was a pretty cold day so we chose the restaurant which had its terrace heaters on! We generally think that it is madness to heat the great outdoors, but on this occasion . . .!

So off we went after lunch to our final mooring with Alice, Richard and Bea

Bea keeping Grandad right

but were disappointed to find a little boat hogging the middle of 3 mooring platforms and the electricity and water bourne too of course. There are two other quays at this lock, but both were too shallow, so we moved on another 2kms only to find that mooring too was even shallower. Ah well, it was only sand under the boat so it would do: after all, hardly any other boats were around to shuggle us on and off the sand.

Our visitors had to have an early start next day for their ferry, so we waved them off and moved on slowly to Corbie where the éclusier kindly drove up the canal to ensure there was enough space for us on the pontoon and yes! We could have a few hours electricity and fill up with water.

We’ve looked at most of the places of interest on the Somme in the past, so decided just to move on and get out of this still fast flowing river.

But we didn’t expect quite the problem we encountered with weed in the canal though. At several points, our speed was down to 3kph, and our lock keepers had probably been waiting some time for our arrival, but such is the quietness at this time of year – boat-wise- they didn’t seem to mind, mostly.

We’d had unfailingly pleasant, kind and polite éclusiers every day for the previous two weeks and on our penultimate and last days, we got M. Glum! We couldn’t get a smile from him at all and that’s such a shame. We‘d donated a 12 pack of beers and a box of nice biscuits to the éclusiers’ depot in Amiens, but clearly M. Glum hadn’t been invited to the party!

Ah well. All in all it had been another interesting 2 week trip – good and bad in parts!

And so we move eastwards, to our next pick-up of visitors.

We do get gongoozlers - just not usually this many at once!

Perfect unused lock cottage

A sweet little house, but just for fishermen!!

Charleroi to the Somme

So there were, moored upstream of Marchienne Lock, on the outskirts of Charleroi, all ready for a calm, rural cruise up and down the Sambre before setting off towards the Meuse and France.

Considering our options!

And . . . overnight, our batteries, which we were watching carefully, had reduced to a very worrying 50%. We had assumed that by careful monitoring and usage, we might have managed the summer, but Alex decided, no, it was all too close to the edge. We were really only a short day's cruise from Seneffe, a veritable 'port in a storm' as it were, so we'd return, make extensive checks on the batteries, make phone calls, get quotes for replacements etc etc. So that is what we did and eventually removed the dead and dying batteries, loaded them into the car (not without difficulty as each one weighs more than Alex does himself!) returned to England, bought new batteries and did the whole thing in reverse. Seneffe port was brilliant, letting us plug into their permanent electricity supply, to avoid the coin-in-the-slot method (essential when we weren't going to be present) and happy to let us moor on the quay.

Using block and tackle to lower the 63kg batteries

10 days passed until we were back on board, with new batteries instlled and all looking good. ETTIE had arrived the previous night and KOTARE came in at coffee time so – you've guessed it – a long chat over coffee ensued, but we were all keen to get going, so set off around midday: Richard and Julia for the Sambre and ultimately Holland, and ourselves on our new route to the Somme.

However, during our morning chat with them we discovered that the Historic Centre Canal with its four ancient boat lifts was open! Both boats had come through from downstream so could confirm that the route was in use.

We had assumed, clearly incorrectly, that it was still closed, had been for years, but not now! So we called to book passage and spent the night moored above Ascenseur No 1, with a 10 o'clock start arranged for the next day.

All ready and waiting!

All was ready, ages before our 10am timed descent; the porte de garde raised, green lights showing.

It was a great little trip: seven kilometres, 4 balance-operated lifts and 5 lift or swing bridges and at least three men at each lift or bridge. It was great! And the lifts themselves, while looking antiquated, as indeed they are having been built originally in 1888, and in full use by 1917, operated quietly and efficiently. They are being maintained properly now and the Belgians are very proud of them, as they should be. The idea came from the Englishman Clark Standfield Clark, who had built the Anderton lift in England to provide a link between the Bridgewater Canal and the River Weaver. The operation is purely by balance between 2 tanks: one goes up while the other goes down by the simple expedient of adding more water into the caisson the boat is in for going down. Gravity does the rest!

We were SO pleased to have been able to do the trip at last and of course took hundreds of photos! Here are a few, to give a flavour.

The view from the old route to the new Strepy-Thieu Ascenseur

A quiet night followed on the Quais de Thuin downstream of the Historic Canal and the modern Strepy lift, adjacent to 13, yes 13, campervans and a fisherman who kindly (and somewhat surprisingly) happily removed his 2 lines till we got moored. His radio was tuned into a music station - thankfully on low volume - but it was clear that a very high percentage of the music was British or American, which we've noticed before, in shops particularly. But at least it wasn't rap or Turkish which is very common here!

It was very, very, hot – our temperature gauge read 37C!! so it was a quiet afternoon chilling – if that's not a contradiction in terms.

And then on, for Mons and the usual search for fresh milk and stocks. Amazingly to us and others when we got to the huge Grand Près retail park, the enormous Carrefour supermarket was closed: no one knew why, and this wasn't even Ascension Day. But IKEA was open, and happily still offering Swedish meatballs and chips with all the trimmings!

Friends Louise and Keith (cruiser SALTIRE, currently moored in Sweden) were diverting from their route to meet up with us shortly. Antoing near Tournai seemed a good spot to suggest. Just a brief overnight visit from them, with plenty of chat regarding their intrepid voyage from Holland to Sweden and we were back on our own again in cold, bleak weather: such a change from only a few days earlier. Needing to top up with fuel though, we decided to stay at Antoing until the Neptunia fuel barge was open again on Monday. Antoing has an interesting, if grim industrial history. The area was heavily quarried for chalk and limestone and many redundant quarries dot the landscape with old lime kilns here and there. The manufacturing plant pictured on a tourist information board was enormous, and stayed in production until the early years of the 20^th century. The present day town 'Stade' with its several football pitches, tennis courts, floodlighting and so on, was created out of the quarry which had been operated in the very heart of the town. It's an excellent resource, but in a very tired and sad looking town. Antoing's heyday is long past but on the plus side, it has the most amazing castle and a nice little port enclave for we pleasure boaters.

Filled with fuel, time came to move on, and into France. Belgium has its high spots and some areas of charm, but on the whole we do prefer France, though not in the present wintry weather.

The slog through the industrialised area of Denain and Valenciennes had little to recommend it or comment on, just a lot of 80m barges whacking to and fro with cargoes of sand or grain: mostly Belgian or French, some Dutch, but one remarkably from the Czech Republic! the first one we've seen. We were aiming for one of our favourite moorings, the tranquil Bassin Rond, just off the junction between the Escaut and the Dunkerque-Escaut Waterway, a major route. Then it would be the Canal du Nord (again!!) and the Somme, to welcome family visitors.

Well, the Bassin Rond was as usual peaceful and as lovely as ever, until the forty 10 year olds erupted out of a coach, coming for several days' sailing instruction, and nothing was the same again all day! Screams of excitement/fear/exhilaration rather wrecked the day's solitude, though it did provide some interest and merriment watching them flail around, and next day we were off again, intentionally before they could all take to the water!

Our trip up and down the Canal du Nord this time was a record of the not-too-good sort! Last time we had done 7 locks in 2 hours with NO opposition. This time, we had every boat in the whole of France, or so it seemed, against us. The same trip took 4.5 hours. We moored at Lock 7 Graincourt, for those of our readers who might recognise the name – on the summit, but before the tunnel, for an unexpectedly quiet night. Next day it was a quick and easy traverse through the tunnel to another favourite mooring. We call it the Bois de Vaux: it's a turning circle for boats up to 96 metres but it does have bollards along one side. Once upon a time it was clearly a loading quay, complete with weighbridge, but those days have gone. Some of the unladen big boats nudge into the turning circle just to turn round, then they travel down the next 2 or 3 kms backwards before loading up at the silo quay downstream, but even if we are moored up, it doesn't seems to inconvenience them.

We did the next 5 locks in the company of two 10 or 12 metre sailing boats, complete with all their sailing detritus – sails, masts, boat hooks, little wire railings and copious fenders all round the boat like a necklace for protection in the locks, (oh yes, and dogs!). And it was actually a very funny descent, watching these two hapless boats trying to tie up in locks or get themselves off quays into locks ready and waiting for them. 

We weren't in any hurry, so it was quite entertaining to watch the cartoon playing out ahead of us, not to mention hearing each captain yelling instructions in German or Swedish to his crew at high volume (in both cases the wife of said captain!). On approach to the last downward lock, and waiting for this shambles to unfold before us, an 80m commercial emerged from the lock. Alex held up his hands as if to say, 'Bloody Hell, what mayhem!' and the commercial captain answered with a knowing wink, a laugh and a shrug! In both cases the sailing yachts were heading to the Med to spend months or even years freely sailing round the islands: being fettered by lock discipline clearly was not part of their remit!!

So in just two kilometres we were out of the cut and thrust of a commercial waterway and onto the tranquil Somme: details of our time on this lovely river will be in the next blog.

A few further pics from our trip:

Refuelling whilst moving - the fuel barge can just be seen

Camels!!!  Yes, camels on the banks of the Escaut river

No boats for days and then . . . 7 at once!

Our lovely remote mooring - and four quad bikes appear to raise hell!

Ah that's better - a quiet spot at last

Diksmuide to Charleroi

Well, here we are, some 4 weeks into this year's cruise.  Leaving Diksmuide behind us we set off east for Bruges and eventually more southerly lands.

We had a very easy traverse of Bruges 

Ready to pass under the 'Rack of Lamb' bridge

encountering only RACHEL (recently moored in the Coupure and travelling north) and no commercials.  That afternoon we stopped at Moerbrugge where we hoped to take on water but went off sightseeing first!

Tank sculpture at Moerbrugge

 As luck would have it, the water bourne was “dienst” and an additional notice, when translated, said “frost damage”.  So undaunted, Alex lifted the huge man hole cover and investigated.  Damage circumvented in a jury-rig fashion, we filled our tanks and had a quiet evening and night.

The Coupure having had to empty for dredging, many boats were likely to be on the move, and we joined CHOUETTE, PEABODY 

and another small barge heading east.  Two of these would peel off, PEABODY to go north to a boatyard in Zelzate, CHOUETTE to go straight down the Leie Diversion Canal to Deinze, our own destination, though by the old Leie River.  Alex had long wanted to cruise the natural course of the river Leie from Ghent to Deinze, so after a night on ducs d'Albe on the outskirts of Ghent, close to Evergem Lock, 

Dwarfed by Perseus At Evergem

we set off with a little apprehension on Louise's part.  We'd heard people say how twisting and narrow the river is, lined with expensive houses and small but equally expensive day boats.  

Just one of the many wonderful mansions on the Leie

But in the event RICCALL behaved impeccably and managed all manoeuvres without fault – not on her own of course – something to do with the captain!  Lunch was at Sint Marten Latem on the mooring reserved for the passenger boats – well, what else as the visitor mooring, all 15m of it, was occupied?

A very pretty spot and a quiet lunch on deck in the spring sunshine, and then . . . from the south appeared LEMMERBOOT IV a 22m Dutch barge renovated by its owner and captain, Wimm, who uses it occasionally as a 'trip' boat for special occasions, this a 50^th wedding anniversary party.  

A good chat ensued between us, while the hiring guests had their celebratory lunch, and we discovered that Wimm and a group of like-minded volunteers operate the bridge ahead of us at Astene, across the open lock, but on Sundays it is closed!  Wimm however, was interested in old RICCALL and said he was happy to open up specially for us once he got his passengers back to his mooring.

All went as planned, and we carried on to Deinze, to meet up with CHOUETTE and have supper on board RICCALL with Mike and Sally.

We expected Deinze to be just an overnight stop, but Alex decided it was a good place to fit the replacement steering ram.  

The new ram - still needed painting

Free mooring and electricity at €5 per day was the draw, and stocking up and a look round Deinze took up some of Louise's time.  By the time we'd been there 4 days, we had discovered Ooidonk Castle, only open on Sundays from 2-5pm and a jewel in the crown of not only the region but of Belgium as a whole.  Only another 3 days would take us to Sunday, and we arranged matters so that we set off from Deinze on Sunday at 12.30pm, to cycle the 3kms along to Astene Lock where the voluntary boating community operate a small museum and basic cafe (and have the role of bridge-keepers).  So we ate our paté and toast with guerkins, silverskin onions and mustard, drank wine and coffee and cycled the next 2 kms to Ooidonk. We happened to arrive just as a tour in English was about to start, and Ooidonk was fabulous!  

Well worth the 3 day wait.

Alex's tooth had been troubling him and we'd visited a dentist in Ghent for a root filling – this had taken all of one day and now we needed to attempt to make a claim for reimbursement of a %age of the cost.  We'd done this only once before and the system has since changed.  The claim is now done in the country where the cost has been incurred.  Some investigations brought us to a 'mutual' office where the process is set in motion.  We wait to see if this is successful!  But it was worth a try for a €350 dental process!!

This completed, all that remained was a last visit to the ‘kringwinkel’ – a wonderful name for a charity shop!  Here we found 2 excellent recliner garden chairs and cushions at knock down prices.

Friends and regular readers of this blog will know our penchant for a bargain!!

We were gradually becoming aware that the canal was strangely quiet.  Where we had expected laden barges by the dozen, there was very little traffic, and after the side canal to Roeselare, virtually none at all.

Our night's mooring on the main line at the start of the Bossuit Canal was super – quiet, calm waters and a pleasant outlook.  

Sightseeing on the old canal through Kortrijk

And then in the morning it was clear that spring had definitely sprung – green shoots everywhere and much higher temperatures.

Arranging passage through the 3 hand-op locks was easy, by phone, and in the course of the next 2 hours or so, we learned why our overnight stay had been so comfortable!  A lock on the outskirts of Lille was under repair for SIX weeks.  All the normal traffic via Kortrijk to Lille was having to take an alternative route.  Our next 15 kms would be quiet and calm, but then, once we joined the Escaut, all hell would break loose as we would join the 'motorway' barge traffic.

Perfect thatch!

As it turned out, although the canal was pretty busy, we were locked through on the first bassinée at both Herinnes and Kain locks.  We fitted in nicely with 85m boats where other big boys couldn't.  The passage through Tournai was easy too as we just followed an 85m commercial RO-MA.  Back to Antoing for overnight and then on to a well-trodden path, or should we say well-cruised waterway – Peronnes to Seneffe.  Of course an overnight at the delightful basin at the Pommeroeul-Conde Canal entrance was in the plan as was a night below the Strepy Lift and then it was on to Seneffe for the weekend.

We lunched upstream of Seneffe on a favourite quay of ours, and then made our way into the basin, which had been Okayed by harbourmaster Patrick.  What he had failed to tellus however was that this very weekend the Seneffe Club was hosting a Grand Boat Jumble, and various other activities on the water, including first a training day for the local 'dog life-savers' organisation.  There were 15 or so of these HUGE dogs (breed unknown!) with their handlers/owners, hankering to get on with saving the life of a drowning person!  Each dog was released from the quay to swim out and save a person who was splashing around, looking as if he or she were drowning.  That part was fine, but the other 14 dogs also wanted to have a go, so the sound of barking was deafening.  We slipped by, probably unnoticed by the gathered small crowd, who were entranced by the action.

It's a dog's life!

So, back to Seneffe, where regular readers may remember, we have spent two winters, but it has been 3 years since we were last there. We met up again with Arthur and Vivianne of MON PLAISIR which moors permanently in the port, and met for the first time Peter and Susie of LAVANA, who had wintered there.  So as you can imagine, a little bit of socialising went on as usual, and we decided to collect our car from Diksmuide.  Having  looked up train times etc, we discovered that although not terribly far, about 100 kms, it would take 4 trains and 3 hours to get there.  Arthur and Vivianne gave us a lift to the nearest station, and we set off.  Not one of our most difficult journeys, we nevertheless had a 40 minute wait in Brussels because a train had passed a red signal and the whole electricity system in the station had gone into underdrive!  But the rest of the journey was easy and we got back to Seneffe without hassle.

So then it was decision time!  Should we stay another day or get on with this cruise?!  Decision made we set off for an easy day down to the outskirts of Charleroi – 3 locks and 23 kms.  Charleroi is, as we have reported before, a dreadful place, for shoppers/pedestrians and boaters alike.  There's nowhere to moor, it is heavily industrialised and not a terribly pleasant passage, so we like to stop overnight before we get there and then dash like the blazes through and out of  the other side next day!!  As most people do!

Having had the most glorious weekend weather-wise, the temperatures have fallen off again and it is feeling somewhat chilly.  Spring has gone into hibernation!