Bassin Rond to Cambrai

12.6 kms, 5 locks, 3 hours

Briliant sunshine and warmth at last.  Yesterday the temperature was 10C at 7.00 in the morning.  We have stopped at Bassin Rond twice before and an itinerant bakery van has come by at 8 in the morning.   We were looking forward to a fresh baguette and pastries for breakfast but, unfortunately, it didn’t show up yesterday.  Great disappointment.

We were expecting to see a lot more traffic on this small canal because the large Canal du Nord, which the commercials usually use to get from the Paris area to Belgium and Dunkirk, is closed for a few weeks.  The Saint Quentin Canal is a lot older (opened by Napoleon in 1810)and used to be the main artery until the Canal de Nord was built in the 20^th century.  The locks are the small Freycinet gauge (roughly 39m x 6m) so we will not see any big commercials. 

We left at 10.30 and very soon came up behind a barge.  

On this narrow and windy canal they move a lot slower than we do so we reduced speed and hung back.  As we approached the first lock, Iwuy, he was just going in so we tied to a bollard to wait our turn.  Then another barge came up behind us and commercials take precedence so we had a longish wait.

The locks on this stretch are double locks, one is automatic and the other is manual.  Although Iwuy Lock is normally not manned, it is now and there was another barge coming down in the manual lock. 

A pleasure boat cruised up behind us, stopped a few minutes to think about it, then turned around in a flurry of propeller wash and disappeared back the way it had come!

Once our turn came, the lock keeper gave us a telecommande, a brand new fancy techy thing.  

We no longer have to lift the blue pole to activate the lock, it is now all done on the telecommande.  As long as the batteries don’t  go flat.  He gave strict instructions to switch it off when we stop for the night.

Ian got the speed just right so that as we approached the next 4 locks the commercial was just leaving and we were not really held up at all.

The first duckling we have seen this year

Cambrai

At 13.30 we entered the Porte de Plaisance at Cambrai where we have stayed twice before.  It does not open till 1^st of May so we don’t have to pay but we cannot get water or use the showers either.  However, we have got electricity.  There are a lot of long-stay live-aboard barges here, which take up an awful lot of space and it is difficult for passing pleasure cruisers to fit in, but since we last here 2 years ago some small pontoons have been installed and we are tied up to one of those.

A dragon boat inside the marina

New pontoons and electricity points.