Menen to Armentieres

I didn’t post the blog last night, no excuses, just too lazy! 

Catch up:

We spent the day in Menen, watching the swans, ducks and geese, the barges going past on the canal, and mostly relaxing.

In the morning Ian took the bike trailer out from under our bunk (it breaks down into a “flat pack” trailer) and we rode to a fuel station close by to buy diesel for the boat.  Diesel is cheaper here than in France so Ian decided to fill up before we cross the border.

The trailer can carry two 20 litre jerry cans and we did 3 runs, putting 80 litres into the tank and carrying 40 litres in the jerry cans.

And that was it.

Today:

Thick mist early this morning and only 5^oC, one of the coldest days we have had so far.  But by 9.00 the mist had cleared and the temperature was already climbing.  I took a brisk stroll to the bakery (Patisserie de Paris) to buy a baguette and 2 Brioche a la crème.

23 kms, 3 locks

By 9.45 we were on our way, in bright sunshine with the temperature at 15 degs and still climbing.  

The first lock is just around the corner and when I called in it was immediately prepared for us, no waiting, and there we were, all 9m of Njord in a 195m by12.5m lock all by ourselves.  But this lock had a set of gates half way along and the lockie closed the half way gates behind us.  As we rose up we could see another barge entering the other half.  Now that’s efficient water usage.

At the next lock, same size and with half way gates, again we were all alone and we stopped well inside the first half of the lock but the lockie closed the gates all the way at the end. Wasting water!

The very impressive cathedral at Wervik

The old and the new

I'd love to know the story behind this statue...

...and this one just below it in the water

The wide Leie River joins up with the wide Canal de la Deule, but the Leie river continues in a sinuous route for another 48 km into France.  We turned into the curvaceous Lys river (as it is known in France). 

It is narrow and quite delightful.

We arrived at the lock at Armentieres shortly before 13.00 and it closes for lunch until 13.30.  No problem, we tied up to wait.  Way before 13.30 we saw a lock worker inspecting the gates and the pile of branches backed up against them.  

He got out a long hook and prodded away until they were free, got a rope around a particularly big branch and hauled it out of harm’s way with the help of another 2 lockies.  The gates opened, in we went, the chief lockie came out for a chat (all in French), gave us a telecommand for the next lock, and list of lock opening times.  Ever so friendly.

10 minutes later we tied up at the free pontoon in Armentieres.  

We had a lot of trouble getting our French sim card to recognise that we were now in France and didn’t need to be on roaming.  In the end Ian took the siim card out of my phone, put it in his phone, het presto all as it should be (with the Free sim card we get unlimited data in France and this weekend is a F1 race weekend – we need lots of data to follow all the practices, qualy and the race).  A few minutes later Ian spoke to Lynn and Shaun on Elle who told him all you need to do is switch the phone off and then switch it back on again – why didn’t we think of that!

While writing the blog we heard a knock on the hull – 3 young teenagers asked us if we could help them retrieve their football which had fallen into the canal and was floating past the boat. It was almost dark and they spoke no English but tried with their phones on translate and were so polite, so Ian said OK, come on board.  We cast off, 2 of them went onto the swim platform, Ian backed up to the ball and in no time at all they scooped it up.  They were thrilled to bits, ever so thankful, shook our hands and all.  Great kids.