La Bassée to Douai

 Today was not exactly strenuous.  We left the pontoon at La Bassée at 9.15 and headed up the old canal with its rather attractive architecture

for about 2km till we joined again with the Canal d l’Aire (part of the liaison de grand gabarit  Dunkerque-Escaut). Immediately we started seeing some barges.

The junction with the Canal de la Deule

 Rather pleasing to the eye

This is the entrance to the marina at Courcelles

 On the outskirts of Douai we passed this long quay full of long term moorings, including a lot of live-aboards.

The entry into the off-shoot from the Liaison Dunkerque-Escaut that leads to Douai.

Just around the corner we found this small marina.  No idea if you have to pay to stop there or if there are any facilities.

 The Scarpe Moyenne, downstream of Douai.

The public dock at Douai.

There are electricity/water points but you have to get a key from the Voies Navigables de France to access them.   I’m not sure how this works but on the elec/water box there are various addresses for the VNF.

 The electricity and water point

This is a great mooring.  Just 3 blocks away to the West there is a Lidl and 4 blocks to the NE there is an Aldi.   We went to the Lidl and were delighted to discover that they too have litre bottles of rum from the Caribbean for €10!  This bodes well for the rest of our travels in France.

We are still having problems our internet connection   At home we have an account with NOS Portugal, which is a partner of FON global, and we should be able to connect to their free hotspots in Europe.  We have never been able to connect with our own account info and after I contacted the FON support line I found out that our NOS account is not registered with them.   I have tried phoning the international access line for NOS but with the slow internet service we have on our phone sim card, it kept timing out.  Ian’s sister in South Africa has an account with a FON partner and we managed to connect with her log-in details when in Belgium but since then it has been blocked.  Today we discovered that they can monitor all activity on their account from overseas with time and megabytes used.    Very interesting.  They are working on getting their account unblocked before they arrive at their boat in 3 weeks’ time. 

No one ever said international communication is easy!   Because it’s not.