Moving on through Charleroi
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After Strepy the scenery was quite mixed with long stretches of wide open yet bland spaces. As we passed through Charleroi, the old industrial heartland, there was a never ending supply of recycling plants with large numbers of commercial vessels moored alongside. Fortunately for us we had ended up travelling this section on a Sunday and therefore there were no commercial vessels operating. This made the passage a lot simpler.
Travelling through Charleroi itself was quite sanitary. Solid high concrete walls either side and you could see that it would give a very clean passage for commercial ships. Signs also directed us to travel on the port side of the river/canal, and despite there being no other traffic, this was our first chance to deploy our Blue Board, which confirms to oncoming vessels that this is what we were doing. It was a bit of a wasted gesture but made me feel that the extra investment had not gone to waste.
We passed through several more locks and in one of them we used the opportunity to top up our water tank. We were going down in the lock so access to the hose was easy but as we dropped 5 meters, more and more hose had to be pulled down. Fortunately we got to the bottom at just about the same time as the tank was full. I say fortunately but there was no chance that I could turn off the tap from that distance and so I had to scramble up the ladder, turn off the supply, pull in the hose, get down again, all very quickly as there was another ship waiting to enter the lock by then.
