The Journey So Far

Hello!!  Hopefully tomorrow we will get a chance to do a bit more with our blog but in the mean time we thought it would good to recap on the journey so far:

• 25/06/2018 @02:10 – we left Bradwell Marina with a good sized moon behind us so it lit up the pathway out of the marina. By the time we reached the Wallet and Swin Spitway marker bouys the moon had disappeared to make way for a beautiful sunrise.  We reached Calais at 16:00 (17:00 local time) having crossed in larger seas than we would have hoped but there were no major incidents, so all good!
• At 22:00 (all times from now on are French time) we were able to move into the canal system and we moored in the public port for the night.
• 26/06/2018 – Happy Birthday Frank!! We leave Calais at 10:30 and start moving into the canal system proper.  We arrived in Watten at 16:30 and as the Haute Fluvial was full we headed for an empty pontoon in the main canal.  It turned out to be a lovely stop and we got a great meal in a small Café in the town.
• 27/06/2018 @ 10:10 – left Watten and tried a couple of places to stop en-route but they were full so we ended up in a small place called Aire sur la Lys at 16:30.
• 28/06/2018 @ 07:00 – Leave Aire sur la Lys and move on to La Basse, arriving at 11:15. This is a great place to stop (off the main canal and a good sized pontoon) with a fantastic Vietnamese restaurant that we’d visited 4 years ago when we did our Somme trip with MudSlide.  Happy to report the food was every bit as good!
• 29/06/2018 @ 07:30 leave La Basse and with no locks at all between us and Courcelles les Lens it was really easy cruising but a very industrial area. Arrived in the Haute Fluvial in Courcelle at 10:30.  What a stop!!  A great big inlet off the main canal, so no movement at all from passing commercial traffic.  We have water and electricity and it seems that we might have to pay if the Capitanerie can be bothered to come and get his money! We plan to have a full day off tomorrow.  The boys like it here – they had a lovely swim this afternoon!

That’s all for now folks but hopefully we’ll get some more material up tomorrow.