Torrential rain throughout the night left us with a mammoth mopping up exercise this morning - fooled by the blue skies we had replaced only part of our main canopy. Rain continued throughout the morning but we were keen to move on as we had urgent emails to attend to. Between showers we managed to make the short trip through two locks to the outskirts of Charleroi, just upstream of the confluence with the Brussels to Charleroi Canal. The lock at Landelies is the last of the hand operated ones, and at Monceau lock we were impressed by the size and complexity of the lock basin, obviously the start of commercial traffic.

We tied up at a high quay at Marchienne au Pont, which serves a popular diesel stop, and not surprisingly at the bargain price of only €0,30 per litre. We filled up with 800 litres, hoping this would last us well into Holland.

The town itself does not have much to recommend it, being a fairly run down suburb of Charleroi. However, we managed to find the supplies we needed, which included a De Rouck atlas of Belgium - highly recommended as our Geocart maps have little or no detail of the areas surrounding the waterways.

Cruising Statistics

Distance: 3 nm

Total to date: 1824 nm

Avg Speed: 6 knots

Duration: 0: 30 hours

Diesel: 10 litres (est), €0,30/litre

Mooring: Free

Electricity: N/A

Locks

Landelies

Monceau sur Sambre

Min headroom: 3.7m

Min draught: 2.2m (~1.5m in lock exits)

Charts

Navicarte 23

Geocart 2