Pont l'Eveque to Pinon

41 kms,7 locks, 6 hours

The skies were grey and leaden this morning, with occasional spits of rain, and a little chilly at 9C.  I bought a loaf of warm bread at the Boulangerie and we left the lovely little port at about 9.00. 

The locks on the Canal Lateral de l’Oise are double locks, side by side, Freycinet gauge 39m x 5m, which means we won’t be seeing any big barges today.

We shared the lock with a Swiss pleasure barge and in the lock alongside going in the opposite direction was a British pleasure barge.  We have not seen many pleasure craft yet so it was quite a surprise to have 3 together.

Parallel double locks

A cute little canalside cottage

The Canal Lateral a l'Oise - stately, peaceful and really just rather nice

Mistletoe in the trees

The Canal Lateral de l’Oise seemed calm and quiet after the Canal du Nord, but that may be because today was Easter Monday.  We passed only 1 commercial barge. 

After 15km we turned off onto the Canal de l’Oise a l’Aisne.  It is a charming narrow windy canal.

A telecommande alongside the map books - we picked it up at the Saint Hubert Lock

The entrance to the Canal de L'Oise a l'Aisne

After pressing the button on the telecommande,waiting for the lock gates to open

Getting to the top - and a very narrow bit ahead

Aha, it is an aqueduct over the Oise River

An old bridge that has seen better days

There are some lovely farms along the canal

Another aqueduct, over the Aillet River

We passed 3 commercial barges.  Surprising, and urm - challenging.

A barge emerged right at a corner so we had to backtrack to give it room 

And it was an old friend "Surfboard" which we have seen in a few times before

At least we heard this one on Ch 10, still had to squeeze into the bushes though

Lovely, isn't it?

It would have been a lock keepers cottage in days gone by, now it is a really quaint home

Once you are in the lock, you need to activate it pushing up the blue pole

Beautiful

We stopped just before the lock at Pinon where there is a small quay with bollards and rings, a grassy sward, picnic tables, rubbish bins (why mention this? Because in Belgium there aren’t any – it is very difficult to get rid of rubbish!) and a Carrefour supermarket right next to the canal.  

Pinon Halte Nautique.  Also please note the new boxes on the stern

Not only a supermarket but a petrol station too!  Happy days.  We hauled out our two 20 litre jerrycans and ambled up to the pumps.  It took us a couple of minutes to work out how to use the automatic pumps by credit card, but hey presto, fuel flowed into the jerrycans.  Then we loaded them into a supermarket trolley and wheeled them back to the boat.  

Yes, we did return the trolley! 

It took an hour and a half to fill the tanks with 120 litres of fuel, and most of that time was siphoning the fuel from the jerry cans into the tank!