Beverlo Canal in the opposite direction

Not a great deal to say tonight, except it was such a beautiful day I have forgiven the Belgians for their crap internet and I am ready to stay a bit longer - France can wait.

Ian got up early to buy a bicycle lock to secure the gas bottle to the boat. But the shop was still closed and he had to go back an hour later.   Until now he has taken the gas bottle out each time we have used the barbie and then put it back into the gas locker afterwards.  Way too much PT, so now it is standing on the swim platform, locked on, so it cannot be stolen (we hope). 

It was a beautiful day, bright, clear, a few clouds but very sunny, and hardly any wind.

  

We retraced our route from yesterday from the marina at Leopoldsburg back to the waiting area at the Lommel Lock, intending to carry on through the locks and into the Dessel-Turnhout Canal.

Ian continued with the work he started a few days ago.  You cannot do work like grinding and sanding in marinas or moored close to other boats so he has to do it when we are under way on the canal.  He has been grinding out a lot of rust spots on the coach roof, which entailed taking off the grab rails and anything else that was bolted on.  After the grinding he fills the spots with a 2 part epoxy filler, then sands, then paints on a primer. 

We passed this group of happy campers on the canalside.

When we got to the Lommel lock we decided to take on water.  It is 5 days since we last got water at the bunker ship in Maasbracht.  There is a quay just for boats taking water so we stopped there and Lynn and I walked to the lock master's office to get the key for the tap, expecting to have to pay, but the water is free!  Apart from the tank we filled a 20 litre jerry can, seven 2l coke bottles and every bucket and big receptacle that we have, and I put a load of t-shirts in to soak.

However, when Lynn took the key back and told the lock master that we wanted to go through the locks he informed her that the lock has been stukkend/avariado/broken (take your pick) for a couple of hours, it would soon be fixed but there were a number of commercial barges waiting for passage through and they would take preference.  Maybe it would be about 2 hours before we could go through.  No problem, we had lunch while we waited.

Note the big barges in the background.

The lock did reopen at about 2pm but by that time a couple more barges had joined the queue and by 3 pm we decided to give it a miss for today.  The next stretch has 3 locks in quick succession and there is another 8km after them before we could find a place to stop, minimum 2 hours, so we returned to the moorings we were on 2 nights ago and will try again tomorrow morrow morning.

I finished off the laundry at about 4.30 and it was 90% dry by 6.30, even Ian's thick t-shirts.

Ian continued with his project, painting a second coat of paint onto the filler he had sanded and primed earlier today.

A huge barge came past, heading to the industrial place with the cute bridge.

The speed limit on this canal is 5km, which we adhered to, slow as it is, but this barge was doing 10km!

It was a lovely evening. 

We had a veggie barbie tonight: potatoes, onions, tomatoes, garlic, plus pre-steamed carrots and broccoli that went on to the flames for a few minutes just to give them a char-grilled taste.  Tasty, to be sure, but I do miss a bit of meat!  I'm a carnivore through and through.

I have been working on getting maps to show where we are travelling.  I have finally decided to use a route planning programme that Ian uses and in the next couple of days I will up-load all trips we have done so far, day by day.  In the meantime here is today's route.