Monday 12th April 2004 Houdeng to Viesville.
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| Canalside cottages. Charleroi-Brussels canal |
All our visitors came on board for the trip to Viesville.
Peter and Mike took both cars to Viesville and came back to Houdeng in ours. Peter
wanted to get his car’s tank topped up with diesel but the pumps were 24hr card
only ones because of the holidays. Fortunately a Belgian guy offered to let him
use his card and Peter gave him the 40 Euros for the diesel in cash. It was
Janet’s 60th birthday, the reason they’d come was so that she could do
something completely different for her birthday and she was looking forward to
a boat trip. Bob took to steering, which he did with Mike and Peter still
talking non-stop from opposite sides of him on the stern deck. Bill’s friend
(the vicar, sorry canon, who owns narrowboat Falcon) David Long, and his
brother-in-law, arrived at Viesville by car at the same time as we did. They
went on board to chat to Bill. We had our roast beef dinner at last, which
turned out reasonably well. When our visitors left for home Mike went with them
and Peter dropped him off to collect our car from Houdeng, while they continued
on the motorway back into France to get the ferry in Calais.
Tuesday 13th April 2004 Viesville to Auvelais.
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| Above Marchiennes-au-pont lock. |
When Mike switched our ‘phone on
first thing he found that Peter had sent us an SMS to say they were back home
safely at 2.30 a.m. They’d caught the 10.45 p.m. ferry (French time). It was
3.5° C overnight. Good weather promised by the métèo didn’t arrive, we had a
chilly wind all day and showers, no sunshine. Mike went by car for a loaf and
spoke to the lock keeper on his return, who said it was OK to leave our car by
the lock. Bill’s friend David (who remembered that we’d met before in
Vaudemanges in ‘93 – it was the first time he’d met Bill, they had only
conversed by E-mail up until then) left to continue on his way to Falcon.
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| The steel works |
We
set off at 9.40 a.m. and dropped down Viesville, lock 3, in the top end half
chamber. The keeper immediately closed the gate and refilled the lock as there
was a big boat behind us. I started the ‘fridge defrosting and made another cup
of tea and some toast en route to lock 2, Gosselies. An empty 60m boat called
Cheops came up, then we went down in the downhill end half chamber, causing the
cleaning team to pause from jet washing the walls. I finished refilling the
‘fridge as we arrived at lock 1, Marchiennes.
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| The steel works |
Just above the lock two boats
were waiting to unload coal and an empty, which had just discharged its load,
left the quay and went down the lock, so we had to wait until the chamber
refilled. The keeper called us right to the end of the chamber into the half
lock. Mike took the papers up to the cabin, then they dropped the whole chamber
off. The commercial had caught us up and was waiting above the lock as we left.
It was only a short distance to the junction with the Sambre, where we turned
left to Marcinelle lock, in the middle of Cockerill-Sambre’s steelworks.
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| Unloading scrap alongside Marcinelle lock |
As
ever, a really mucky spot! Lots of boats were on the quays loading and
unloading. A loaded Dutch boat from Zwolle was coming up in the chamber, so I
took a walk down to the cabin to have our quittances stamped. There was a woman
operating the computer under guidance of the uniformed keeper. She was very,
very slow, using two fingers to type all the details off each quittance. The
Dutch boat left and the keeper told me he wanted the two boats to come in and
go right up the end of the chamber, one on each side. How was I supposed to
tell them that? I was expecting them to pick me up in the chamber.
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| Unloading scrap next to Marcinelle lock |
The empty
80m boat arrived and Mike hung back as, normally, we go in last behind the
commercials - they go bananas if you try going in the lock first. I walked back
to the boats and told him what the keeper had said, so we complied with his
instructions. Annico came in behind us. A woman was steering the boat, with two
lads and a man acting as deck hands. We left the lock and entered the winding, high-sided,
narrow channel through Marchiennes. Annico was catching up, and about to overtake,
when a loaded boat coming uphill was blue boarding (on the “wrong” side of the
river) so we had to move over, Bill having to almost cut across the bows of
Annico as he was fast running out of room to manoeuvre.
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| Below Marcinelle lock |
We ate lunch as we ran
down to Montignies. As soon as she was able Annico overtook us and was into the
lock first, so we piled in behind. The boatyard at Pont-de-Loup was as busy as
usual with lots of commercials on the slip and moored waiting to be repaired,
plus a few Dutch barges. Annico had backed into the arm below the chantier to
moor next to another boat, which was being loaded with stone. We moored above
the lock at Auvelais at 2.40 p.m. Not long after we saw a very strange sight -
a gunship! Number P902 Liberation, heading downhill for the lock.
Bill said
he’d seen it before in Gent - it was the Belgian navy’s strike force! With all
those guns we giggled but we kept our jokes to ourselves! It had to wait while
an empty 80m commercial came up and then it went down the lock. Mike went off
on the moped to collect the car.
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| Rosy navigating the bends in Marchiennes |
Photos taken in Sept 2005
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