Viesville to Auvelais to Beez (7-9 September)
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7th September – After a disturbed night for both Nicki and I, we were up and ready to join the flurry of activity when all the big boys began moving on. We had anticipated a long old wait before the eclusier could let us in to the queue, but as it turned out we were heading into the ecluse by about 8.45 – the eclusier did a great job of getting everybody away. And so our journey began, with everything going pretty smoothly. We woke to a beautiful mist on the water which cleared quickly and left us with a lovely warm, sunny day for traveling, and despite some reservations about traveling through Charleroi on a busy weekday, even that turned out to be a quiet, uneventful journey.
Having passed through Charleroi we travelled on to the end of the Canal Charleroi-Bruxelles, hanging a left onto the Basse Sambre, which was an incredibly industrial, busy area in much of the early stages – much more so it seemed than even Charleroi – alongside some lovely rural areas.
We made a short stop along the way to take advantage of a conveniently situated Carrefour (literally just over the road from our mooring, so we could do a big shop without thinking of the torture of getting it back to the boat). Back on board and setting off again, we decided that instead of our planned mooring at a small concrete quay by the railway bridge in Auvelais, we would aim to settle by the Ecluse Auvelais instead. Not much earlier than intended, but more likely to be available to us – although on inspection later in the day, it proved to be empty. Still, we were quite happy with the location we’d chosen, and the day ended with a sigh of relief that it had gone so much better than I’d imagined.
8th September – Moving on again, today saw us aiming for the Yacht Club de Beez on the Meuse for a night, somewhere that we had visited previously, where we could re-electrify the boat and top water too. The trip along this last stretch of the Sambre was pleasant, still continuing through areas of industrialisation sitting aside expanses of greenery.
Eventually we reached the end of the Sambre at Namur, turning into the Meuse, taking a slight diversion right to see if anyone we knew was moored up there, but there was no one we recognised and so we made a 180 turn toward Beez.
The lock just at the edge of Namur felt quite slow to prepare for us, but we took the opportunity to give Casper a pee break and stretch his legs so the time wasn’t wasted.
From here it was not much further before we reached the yacht club at Beez where there was a vacant Shensi-sized spot near the entrance that was perfect for us. After a seven hour day of traveling we were both glad to settle for the night and, despite the noise from train lines nearby, we had a good night’s sleep in readiness for another long day to reach Leige on 9th.
