Monday 5th April 2004 Peronnes to Pommeroeul.

Overcast, windy with heavy showers. We paid Majorie 370 Eu (250 for the docking, 25 for the washer, 5 for electricity (first time she’d charged us for electricity!) and 90 for the pump) André came and shoved the trolley with the forklift. As usual it was reluctant to get moving and when it did move it charged faster than we’d ever done before down the slope - did Majorie forget the brakes? The boat floated off the trolley and stopped moving in the water but the trolley carried on with Rosy on it and pushed us with the posts, fetching off some of our nice new paint. 

I saw this and flicked the rope off to shove us off, completely forgetting that we hadn’t got the engine running because Mike had changed the fuel filters and hadn’t bled the system as he needed water for the Jabsco pump and couldn’t get that until we were afloat again! The wind was blowing the boat towards the end of the lake, so I was able to get the rope back on and hang on to it while Mike started the engine. Bill circled round with Rosy until we were away. I shouted across to Majorie and the gang on the bank that we were OK, that the engine had to be bled and then we’d be away - they waved “au’voir” and went off to get some lunch. Once we were moving, I tidied up - several items had fallen over in the cabin, but no damage had been done. One empty commercial vessel came down Peronne lock one, then we went up. Mike put our squidgy blue fenders out as the paint was still “soft” when Bill came alongside to go up the lock. 

He dropped his roof centre rope round our centre stud, but held the end and we chatted while the lock filled (our rope was round a floater) until the flow caught Rosy’s bows and blew the boat across the chamber. Bill couldn’t hang on to it and raced off to the stern, but the bows still hit the wall harder than he would have liked with new paint! I took the quittances up to the office and told the lone keeper that we would like to pause in the corner while Mike collected the moped from the chantier. No problems. A loaded péniche was coming down to the lock like a rocket, making us bob up and down as we tied up. Mike collected the bike and stowed it on the roof, then we set off again at 1.30 p.m. Bill had already carried on to Pommeroeul. The weather turned wet and windy as I finished making lunch. After lunch I steered while Mike pumped out the loo tank (no pump out stations here!). We passed just one boat, a 60m empty called Timoré near the junction with the Blaton-Ath canal. It was blowing a gale and the rain was horizontal when we tied up in front of Rosy at Pommeroeul at 4.30 p.m.

Pictures are from 2011 

sunny in late May not the howling gales and horizontal rain of April 2004

Thursday 1st April - Sunday 4th April 2004 Dock at Peronnes.

Thursday 1st April 2004 Dock at Peronnes.

Warmer 7.7° C. Grey with light, short showers of rain. It was raining when we got up at dawn. Tidied up and slung all the inflammable stuff out of the gas locker and engine room, plus the petrol generator, stowing them under the little tjalk behind us. M. Lemaire arrived on time at 8.00 a.m. Mike went to find him. A very modest, unassuming kind of a chap. He spoke very good English and told us he’d worked in a Wimpy bar in Blackpool during his teens in the sixties and he’d seen the Beatles perform live there. To assist him, Mike ground off small patches of paint where our expert had put chalk X’s and then he checked the thickness of the boat’s hull, using a little Baugh & Weedon ultrasonic thickness test meter (We used to use equipment made  by them in a former life). He did the same on Rosy, then came on board our boat to write up his notes and I made him a cup of tea while he had a look at our previous surveys. He didn’t want to look at anything else, he went to write up his notes on Rosy sitting in Bill’s back cabin. 

He was quite embarrassed about the article his friend David Blagrove had written about him in the March edition of “Waterways World” He’d asked if we’d contacted him after reading that. We said no, he’d been recommended to us by Helen who owns Floan. He said he would be back on Sunday with our reports, but Mike pointed out that the yard was closed on Sundays (remembering the problems Helen and Geoff had had getting out to get the train back to Gent the previous Sunday) so he said he would be round to see us on Saturday. Mike had just asked him how much he was going to charge us just as his ‘phone rang and he had to dash off. Never mind, he’d promised us a good price for the two after earlier quoting 250 Eu for just us. He was gone by 10.30 a.m. Mike and I went to get a gas bottle refilled at Tahon (33.3c per litre - a full bottle cost 9 Eu) then picked up a pack of briquettes (3 Eu - we’d been paying over 5 Eu at Bricomarché in France) from their other depot down by the canal. On the way back to the boat, Mike said we should have taken the quittances with us and booked our trip for Monday. 

Back at the yard we dropped off the gas and coal, collected ours and Bill’s quittances and went back to lock two. The chief keeper, a familiar face from the last time we were at the chantier, was chatting to two guys with a van - he said here comes a lady to give me a few sous (pennies). We went up into the lock cabin, where a party of schoolchildren were sitting on the floor having a lecture in Flemish and French about the workings of the lock by the other keeper. The chef shuffled the papers, did a couple of reprints and charged me 50c to extend both our trips from Blaton to Maastricht! Well, he said I was going to pay him a few sous! I said we’d see him again in a couple of years’ time, we were off to Poland. He replied that he had only got five years left to work before he too was retired. Back on the boat I tidied up and gave Mike a hand to put the petrol and the generator back on board - we needn’t have moved them as our expert didn’t do a by-the-British-book check. Mike had found that the reason we could smell gas earlier while the bottle was filling was because the soldered joint on his fitting had split. 

He also noted that a washer was missing and I got the blame as I had carried the pipes back to the boat. (I found it in the boot of the car - I hadn’t lost it at all it had fallen off) Made lunch then went back to painting. It took both of us all afternoon to give the sides another coat of Comastic. We had three quarters of a tin left over - not enough to do a third coat and Mike was in no mood to crawl underneath to give the bottom a second coat. I went in to cook a stirfry for dinner, Thai garlic pork with carrots, onions and noodles. As I was preparing it Mike remarked that the water filter pump, which had been squawking for a couple of days, would soon be packing up. Just as he said it, it stopped. He had to stop what he was doing to move the ‘fridge out and swop over pumps. Bill loaned us his copy of “Waterways World” with the article about our expert written by David Blagrove. It made for interesting reading. Didn’t realise that he owned the trading péniches Medway and Towcester, which work as a pushtow pair, plus Stoke Breune, England and Elvis. Helen had told us that he was responsible for naming those boats as he is a confirmed Anglophile.

Friday 2nd April 2004 Dock at Peronnes.

Even milder, 11.5° C, paid for by a grey and showery day. I went to find the washer I’d been accused of losing and found it in the boot of the car. The liquid gas is very cold and probably loosened the washer during filling, I was told, after I’d threatened to stuff it up his nose for saying it was my fault it was lost, that he hadn’t got another one. Mike went out to paint the fenders with creosote and I put the Mac on to catch up with the log, while he suggested all sorts of other little jobs I should be doing, which included washing the cabin down in the rain. It had started raining heavily, so after he’d finished doing the fenders he came in and warmed himself some soup for lunch then went for a nap. 

The rain had turned to light drizzle. At 3.15 p.m. there was a loud crash and a lot of yelling, which woke Mike from his slumbers, the forklift had run into something as it came to shove a Frenchman’s yacht (which was in the slings from the next trolley on the next set of rails towards the boat hangars). Later I spied a flattened set of aluminium ladders - at least it wasn’t his masts! The Frenchman told us he’d built the yacht himself ten years earlier and had spent a lot of time in the West Indies, where he was due to return, but he wasn’t retired he told us he worked for a French TV company. They shoved the trolley down the tracks and he motored down the lake to moor on the outside of two cruisers by the boatyard’s back gates. Mike read the article in Bill’s WW about Jean-Marie Lemaire, expert fluvial, written by David Blagrove. Next task, I cleaned the roof off (it always gets filthy from the grinding off of old paint), sweeping it with a brush first, then using two bowls of water being careful not to let any drip down the sides. Mike wire brushed the gaps in the paint on the gunwales, I brushed off the dust, then he painted them with Comastic and sanded them. When I went inside it was 6.25 p.m.

Saturday 3rd April 2004 Dock at Peronnes.

9.4° C overnight. Windy, grey and showery. Mike took Bill with him to get some bread and find a cash machine. Meanwhile I got on with the usual chores and cleaning up some of the debris. They didn’t get back until 1.00 p.m. I was starting to get a little concerned about how long they were away. They’d got the bread easily enough, but Belgian cash machines were proving to be a pain. They’d been into Tournai and tried Fortis, ING (which used to be BBL) and lots of Bancontact Mister Cash machines and none of them would give them any money from their Nationwide cards. A return to France had been the only solution and then they’d gone to the supermarket at Condé-sur-l’Escaut. Made some lunch. Mike moved the welder and put it away, changed the engine oil and filters then he reinstalled the echo sounder in its tube (he didn’t add a bracing strap as he had planned to do as the upheaval to get at the bottom of the boat from the inside would have been too much - like complete and utter chaos). Then he cleaned up the prop and filed the edges (which he forgot to do last time) and replaced the bearings in the rudder. He put the HF wire up expecting to get a call from Peter to play Amateur radio, but he must have been too busy. I’d got a sore throat again! A lot of rude words were said about the amount of sneezing and coughing that goes on in supermarkets!

Sunday 4th April 2004 Dock at Peronnes.

A milder day, but grey and showery. We spent the morning putting the first coat of antifouling around the hull as far as the waterline. Bill ran the hose out and refilled his water tank, then handed it over to refill ours. After lunch,  Mike watched the first Formula One Grand Prix of the year, from Bahrain. M. Lemaire ‘phoned, he was on his way and could we meet him at the gates. I grabbed Mike’s wallet and went to find Bill, encountering the horrible little brown horse on the way - he tried several times to bite me as I dodged round obstacles to keep him at bay! (I asked Majorie about him later - she said she’d won him in a Tombola - she loves and hates him as he is so naughty, she’d got bruises herself where he’d grabbed her midriff with his teeth!) Bill had been out with Fanny around the yard and we both went to see M. Lemaire. The horse galloped past and stood at the gates rearing up to kick out his back legs before having another race around the yard. Through the locked gates, our expert handed over our reports and we handed over 200 Eu each. He was off on holiday he said. When we asked where to, he replied Miami - but only for four weeks, he said shyly! The water tank was full on our return, so Bill turned it off and I coiled up the end of the pipe nearest the boat. Once the motor racing on TV was over we went back to painting the final coat of antifouling. The 2.5 litre tin of Plastimo antifouling (French, but bought in Britain for an exorbitant £50) ran out and we used part of a 3/4 litre tin of Belgian-bought Epiphanes left over from last time (it takes 3 litres to do two coats). Painting finished, we tidied up and put stuff away, stowing the gangplanks back on the roof. Ready for splashdown tomorrow!

Sorry about the repeated photos - 35mm photos were very costly back then so far less were taken, blogs were a thing of the future!

Saturday 27th - Wednesday 31st March 2004 Dock at Peronnes.

Saturday 27th March 2004 Dock at Peronnes.

On the trolley. 2002 photo

After that clear sky overnight, we had a freezing cold night, -1.4° C and a foggy morning. Mike set to work with an electric wire brush and I got my chores done. Bill handed over a pillowcase full of his washing and I went to find a hosepipe to redirect the waste water under the boat towards the lake, rather than have a soggy puddle under the boats. I found a long length of old hose in the grass and enlisted Bill’s aid with his pocketknife to hack off a length where it had rotted through. Then I cleared a channel across the concrete slabs to run the water into the grass by the lake. Once the pipe was sorted I started the machine off on a marathon session (we hadn’t been able to do much washing whilst we were waiting at Pommeroeul as there was no tap to refill the water tank). I got lunch ready and then joined Mike with the second small angle grinder equipped with a wire brush to clean off the loose Comastic layer on the hull. Once we’d finished wirebrushing, we immediately started the first coat of paint. Helen ‘phoned and said she had been chatting to Geoff, the chap who owns the English bookshop in Gent and is also a friend of Bill’s, who said he would like to join her to come and visit but could only come on the day the shop was shut - Sunday - Helen was apologetic about coming while we were in the throes of all the hard work. I said it was OK, we’d got plenty of time and Mike could collect them from the station. Then I went and warned Bill of the impending visit of his old chum. It started to get cold and dusk was falling as we had almost finished the starboard side. It was 7.00 p.m. when we packed up. I threw some chops and sausages in our grilling machine and microwaved some spuds for a late dinner, which we ate while watching TV. Knackered. 

Sunday 28th March 2004 Dock at Peronnes.

On the trolley. Photo from 2002 

Another cold one -3.5° C, sunny all day. Mike went to get some bread from the village by car. I started off some more washing, cleaned up in the cabin and cleared up much of the clutter. Mike went off to collect Helen and Geoff off the Gent-Mons train arriving at the station in Antoing at 11.34 a.m. meanwhile I started cooking some lunch. When they arrived they had a walk round looking at the boats and Geoff went to have a chat with Bill and look at Rosy’s new engine. Helen came on board and we had a chat. She’d brought us a box of teabags and a Belgian Almanac (useful with all sorts of info besides tide tables) she also left us a book she’d been reading (and hadn’t quite finished) about Captain Cook. Called the others over and we had lunch with an Italian flavour, salad for starters with mozzarella cheese, then chicken Marengo (in tomato sauce with basil, onions and mushrooms) with spuds and broccoli followed by peaches and mascarpone, washed down with an Alsace white Gewürztraminer wine. We chatted for a while then Helen went off to have a look at Bill’s new engine and we chatted with Geoff. He said when he got home he would have a look online for several books we’d been searching for recently. When they were ready to go and catch the 5.26 train back to Gent, Mike started up the car and I went to open the gate and found it was padlocked! Calamity! Called at the house, no one in - Helen then had a chance to have a look in the workshop (I’d told her what a large selection of machinery they’d got for doing all types of repairs) whilst searching for someone to open the gate. No luck, no one about. The gate next to the house was unlocked, but there was no way to get to it with the car - no one drives down the path between the chandlery and the workshops and boat hangars. Helen said they would walk as it wasn’t far. Mike gave her directions for a short cut path, it’s 5 kms by car but only about 3 kms on foot. Helen ‘phoned us at 6.10 p.m. to say they’d arrived and Mike’s directions had been spot on. I set to work washing up, while Mike made a start on fabricating a deflector for the end of the exhaust pipe. A small brown horse was wandering around the boatyard (part of the menagerie owned by the family and only let out once the gates are locked) it decided it was going to bite Mike’s arm and wouldn’t leave off. I threw it an apple, which it nibbled at instead of Mike, before getting bored and wandering off round the yard again.

Monday 29 March 2004 Dock at Peronnes.

Painting the name around the stern bands.
Photo from 2002

Another freezing cold night, -1.9° C. There was mist on the lake when we got up but it was sunny and warmer during the day. Mike welded the extra exhaust pipe on the stern while I held it in place. Then he re-aligned and welded the leading edge tab on the rudder. Continued with the painting just before lunchtime. Bill went to the chandlery and got four new anodes. He asked André about a prop as he wanted to swop his 20 x 13 for an 18 x 13. André hadn’t got one and his supplier couldn’t get one to the yard any quicker than ten days. André suggested cutting the 20” down to 18” and balancing it for him. Bill tried calling Norris’s, they hadn’t got one in stock and wouldn’t be casting that size until several days’ time. Midland Chandlers hadn’t got one in stock either. Bill agreed to let André chop his prop. We finished painting the port side, hooray for that! Mike helped get Bill’s prop off and André took it away to machine it. 

Tuesday 30th March 2004 Dock at Peronnes.

A milder night 2.7° C Sunny and warm all day. Started off by refilling the water tank. Mike started cleaning off the bottom - a job he hates but feels he has to do, it’s a waste of time painting the sides if we leave the bottom! Bill said he wasn’t keen on blacking Rosy’s bottom and so he didn’t clean or paint it. Although the bottom is made from 10mm plate, after 20 years of never having been painted it was starting to show signs of some serious corrosion. I painted the coloured bands around the stern. I put some woollies in the machine to wash, then continued painting. Mike welded Bill’s eight anodes where he indicated that he wanted them, two at the front, two at the back and two each side the midway point along the boat sides. When asked if they would get knocked off in locks, he said he would have to start using fenders. (We don't have annodes fitted as Mike believes they do more harm than good) The temperature was very mild so we didn’t light the central heating or the coal fire overnight.

Wednesday 31st March 2004 Dock at Peronnes.

Nearly finished - 2002 photo

A mild 2.1° C overnight. We took Bill with us to do some shopping, calling first at the post office in Antoing to get a new ‘phonecard on the way to Valenciennes. Mike had taken his tin of zylene thinners, Boiro N° 560 - used for rubberised swimming pool and tennis court paints - to see if they’d got any in Castorama (big French DIY hypermarket). They hadn’t and the bloke he spoke to was most unhelpful and couldn’t suggest anywhere else to try. We went in Auchan, next door to Casto, for groceries, etc. Back to the boat at 12.30 p.m. Lunch. Mike went back to painting the bottom. I did the second coat on the stern colours and the black, the wind whipping several tiny streams of paint across the yellow while I wobbled on the plank repainting the name and port and did the bands. I fried some fish (Estonian - or Russian - zander, bought from Auchan, which was very nice) and chips for dinner.

Thursday 25th March- Friday 26th 2004 Pommeroeul to Peronnes and on to the dry dock.

Thursday 25th March 2004 Pommeroeul to Peronnes.

We moored next to the lock to the right of this photo (taken May 2011)

A cold night, 0.5° C. Grey clouds, sunny spells, showers. We took Bill with us and went shopping in Cora at Hornu. Some things were decidedly more expensive than their French equivalent! When we returned to the boat, Mike went to Peronnes with the moped in the car, left the car at the boatyard after having had a chat with Majorie, then came back on the moped. We set off at 2 p.m. waving to the keeper in Pommeroeul top lock as we left - he waved back! It was chilly and we had several short showers of rain, but only just a few drops. An empty German boat, Wartburg from Hamburg, came uphill in Peronnes lock one as we approached it. An hotel Luxemotor called Troubadour had taken up the mooring along the wing wall where we’d been moored before, so we had to tie up across the weir stream against the end dolphins. Luckily the end two were only about 16m apart (the others were 40m+) so we tied to them and Rosy came alongside. It was 5.15 p.m.

  

Friday 26th March 2004 Peronnes to dock.

The chantier from the lake -  photo taken in 2011

Another cold night 0.5° C. Sunny with white fluffy clouds. The moored Luxemotor left first thing, so we moved over on to the wall so that Mike could unload the moped off the roof (it would have been nigh on impossible to get the bike from the roof to the concrete walkway between the dolphins). He rode the bike down to the chantier (boatyard) and walked back. He came back with the good news that the Luxe was off the trolley and it was ours as soon as we liked. Peter sent an SMS to say he was having trouble getting us a spare gearbox oil seal. 

The trolley - photo taken in 2002

I grabbed the quittances and went across to the lock and told the keepers that we would be ready to move off in about ten minutes. I’d noticed a péniche heading uphill from lock two, so I thought we’d be able to just drop down after he’d come up. No such luck! The keeper seated at the table by the window said he’d got a commercial boat to come down. The other one stamped all the documents and gave me all of them back. I walked back to the boat to tell the others there was no rush to get untied yet. The boat that arrived was an 80m x 10m loaded, called Viam, which almost filled the chamber, no room left for us to fit in with it. We sat outside chatting in the sunshine and watching the greenfinches in the trees alongside the mooring. Another loaded boat came along, heading downhill. 

On the trolley in 2002 - (new paint, ready to go back in the water)

This one (called Belize) was only 55m long, so we’d have no problems fitting in with him. To our amazement when the lock refilled the loaded boat didn’t move straight away - narrowboat Santana came out of the lock, chugging away in the direction of Mons. We waved and shouted "where are you headed?", Julian waved back, but didn’t hear us so he didn't tell us where he was going! (Julian boats single-handed like Bill, but unlike us, he travels a great many locks and kilometres each year). We’d heard the woman on Belize screaming at someone and thought murder was being done until we followed them into the lock and went alongside. The boat was run by a young couple with a blonde-haired live wire of a toddler. Now we understood why all the yelling - he wouldn’t stay in the wheelhouse. Mum was steering, she smiled and spoke to us. Dad was seeing to ropes and cleaning down with a hosepipe. 

New paint - photo taken in 2002

Dad told Mum that if the child wouldn’t stay in the cabin she’d have to restrain him - she tried that and he was having none of it, he wanted to look at the funny boats too! He hung on the rail at the top of the cabin steps and grinned while we chatted to his Mum, who wanted to know all the usual things, where were we going, how we had got here, etc. It was 12.30 p.m. by the time we left the lock and started off across a windswept lake to the slip at Roelens-Maes. Majorie had told Mike that the bloke off the Luxe had been asked to coil up the ropes when he left the trolley, but he hadn’t done that, they were trailing in the water - she said to watch out for them. At least they were floating and we could see them. Bill took the uphill side of the trolley and we took the lakeside view. He’d got two posts to tie to at the bows, while we’d just got one and had to leave the boat wandering about, tied loosely until we were dragged up the bank. It was lunchtime and so I made a sandwich. Bill was getting tetchy. We later realised he’d never docked his boat before, so all this was a new experience for him. We didn’t like to say too much as he’d earlier made comment that too much information takes away the sense of discovery for him. OK, but it’s difficult to know how much he knows and how much he needs to know! Majorie’s Dad, André, came to see how we were doing and waved for Bill to move forward as Rosy’s bows weren’t quite over the trolley. Water in the lake was sloshing back and forth and the wind was gusting quite strongly, which didn’t make life easy. I helped by taking Bill's side bow rope, then he undid his two bow ropes which were still just looped around the posts and stood on the deck holding them, then he tied the two ends together. I ended up pushing our bows away from the post (we’d only got one post to tie to, so I had to keep us away from it as we came out of the water in order to position the boat on the trolley) and trying to keep Rosy’s bows central too with Bill’s side rope as we rattled up the slope. 

A good map of Belgian waterways - from the lock keeper's cabin in Bosuit
photo from Oct 2005

It’s a jolting, nerve-jangling experience, made worse by the fact that the boats list (not a lot but enough to be slightly disconcerting) as the boats ground on the trolley. Rosy was listing slightly to starboard and Temujin to port, each leaning towards the middle of the trolley. It was 2.45 p.m. when Majorie shouted “Stop” and André threw the switch to stop the winding motor. Let the work commence! Mike was not happy about the fact that the previous occupant had left a large steel wedge on the wooden top of the trolley and pointed out to Majorie if there was one of those under the bottom of the boat it could seriously dent the bottom! She looked very concerned about that - we thought the previous tennant would get a severe telling off. I went off to the village to use the callbox to ‘phone M. Lemaire, our "expert" (surveyor), pausing on the way to connect up the water hose so Mike could start work with the pressure washer and clean the weed off the boat hull. He said later that their “new” Kärcher was not as good as their old one, it didn’t fetch off all the weed growth. I called Lemaire’s office, just down the road from the chantier, in Bléharies, and the young lady (his daughter) who answered took details and said she would ask him to ‘phone me back. When Mike finished, Bill took over with the Kärcher and cleaned the gunge off Rosy. The weather changed around 5.30 p.m. and he had a shower of rain to assist with the pressure washing! Mike started refilling our water tank and when the tank was full I went over to the toilets to turn the water off, disconnected it and recoiled the hosepipe, draping the loops back where I’d had them from, over the bows of an elderly cruiser. Later there was a lovely sunset and a clear cloudless sky.