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| Sculpture - the four sons of Aymon on the horse Bayard (legend of the river Meuse - picture taken on return journey in 2005) |
Sunny after a chilly 3.3° C overnight. With no heating on overnight the cabin it was a bit chilly when we got up. Mike showed Kevin and Barbara the
copy of their 2003 newsletter which had been published in the club magazine. We
said au ‘voir and wished them a good trip back to GB via Charleroi, where they
were planning on filling up with red diesel. Mike had told them there was a one
day stoppage on the Sambre and they said they would assess it when they got
there. Took a couple of photos of Merchant as they set off. We left Namur quay
at 9.30 a.m. heading back downriver to the lock at Grandes Malades, following
Jolles (a loaded boat from Nijmegen) which had just come down the Sambre. We
went into the big lock after an uphill boat, which had come up in the tail end
half chamber, had cleared the lock.
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| Namur (picture taken on return journey in 2005) |
I went straight up to the cabin with our
quittances and asked where I had to show them again - Yvos-Ramet – so not until
the next day. A loaded boat carrying steel coils, called Wilani from Antwerp,
came into the lock behind us and the keeper lifted the top end gate (it lowers
flat into the bed of the river at the lock mouth) and emptied the whole
chamber, slowly. Below the lock, the chantier Meuse et Sambre were building another
big hotel boat, the Botticelli. They are famous for building large luxury
passenger vessels. Shortly afterwards we passed a tug with a pan called Minerva
loading roadstone from tipper lorries. Its capacity was 2,322 tonnes, so we
calculated that it would take one hundred lorry loads to fill it! An empty 80m
boat, Feron, was motoring hard upriver near Beez, making a good few waves with
his wash. We looked back to see how Rosy was weathering it - OK, the bows were
dipping almost to the button fender - and Bill seemed to be having no problems
with it. He’s not mixed in with the big boys like this before.
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| Painted house in Namur (picture taken on return journey in 2005) |
We were just
passing the crags of the Rocher du Roi Albert, where the keen rock-climbing
King of the Belgians fell to his death in 1934. A bunch of youths were climbing
the rocks, having lessons from the instructors at the commando training school.
By contrast to the previous boat, the 51m empty Satanas from Visé went past us
near Namêche with virtually no wash. What a difference a well-shaped hull makes
and theirs was beautiful. A pair of Egyptian geese flew up to roost on top of
the light on a lamp post next to a cliff face just south of Namêche. We were
glad to see there were still boats moored at Spoetnick’s old place (where we
used to buy diesel) but quietly pleased that practically all the boats and all
the buildings had disappeared from where the boatyard was on the other bank
that had sold us short measure when we bought diesel from them. We just managed
to eat lunch before we arrived at the lock at Seilles. Theion a Dutch tanker
from Druten, now loaded - we’d seen him going uphill on the Sambre - had just
overtaken us, so we followed him into the lock. Although we all packed into the
half lock, the keeper emptied the whole chamber.
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| Below Grandes Malades lock (picture taken on return journey in 2005) |
The boat we shared locks with
on the Sambre, Annico (steered by a woman) which had loaded with stone below
Pont de Loup, overtook us as we went under the Ben-Ahin suspension bridge at
Wanze by the sugar works. The yacht club moorings in the old basin had now been
rechristened Port de Statte and was full of large cruisers. Five teenagers in a
rigid hulled inflatable went past several times as they cruised up and down the
river as we went through Huy. A picturesque town with a cable car which takes
tourists to the top of the citadel. Noted the Carrefour supermarket for a
possible shopping expedition as we continued down to the old quay above the
lock at Ampsin. We found a slot between the retired péniches and a little Luxe.
It wasn’t quite long enough for us to moor singly, so Bill brought Rosy
alongside and we tied up at 3.15 p.m. An old chap from the first boat in the
line, called Roco, came to have a chat. I helped Mike unload the moped off the
roof. Although the quay was lower than all the quays we’d tied to in Belgium so
far, it was still above our gunwale height, so he was able to get the bike off
without using the plank. He went back to Namur to collect the car and when he
returned we all went to get some groceries from the Carrefour we’d spotted just
a short distance back upriver at Huy. Two loaded boats came charging down the
river just before ten o’clock - they’d missed the lock - it shuts at 9.30 p.m.
- but we bobbed about like corks for the next hour. Then the wind picked up and
rocked the boat all night.
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