La Bassee to Douai and two days in Douai

Friday 13 May to Sunday 15 May 2016

32 kilometers, 5 hours, no locks.

The day began, once again, in (for us) sparkling weather so we took a walk into La Bassee to see what there is to see – a lovely little place with all the facilities one could wish for.

An odd combination of old and new.

The pretty town hall or Marie

Interesting apiary work.

 And then it was back on board for the 32 kilometre, lock free stretch of the Canal de Aire,

before turning south into the Deule canal, collecting the Carters, Ian and Sian, somewhere near PK32 where they had found an odd and nearly deserted mooring behind a gate for their evening stop,

Hello again!

The big Deule waterway.

Fast approaching President of Diksmuide Club, Walther

past the well barge-populated port, to the halte fluviale which is not shown on PC-Navigo, only about 1 kilometer from the city center; a really nice mooring

but with only two ‘key’ activated electricity/water points near the end the jetties on each side of the canal – if you are late arriving in season and have to moor furthest from the boxes you had better have a very long extension cord.

Lynn and Sian walked into town and obtained the ‘key’ from the tourist office – E36 for 1k kilowatts of electricity and 1000 litres of water and it is apparently rechargeable over the internet.

The elusive 'key'.

 The Carters do not like warm weather so, in consideration of their comfort, the next day we packed the African skies and warm sun back into our suitcase while France reintroduced more normal spring weather – 6C in the morning rising to a maximum of 14C. Brrrr indeed!

The Cullens cycled into the main square to try and sort out the Orange card (again), waited at the 14^thC belfry for the playing of the 62 bell, 5 octave carillon which turned out to be a big non-event,

Douai belfry.

Looking across the Place Ames

A library of sorts

walked down to a lovely fresh produce market where chicken cuisses, fresh asparagus and some bananas were purchased,

The market.

Quail.

Duck!

and then meandered back to Elle for a leisurely luncheon and an afternoon at leisure. Douai is a strange town – lots of cars parked along the road sides but hardly any people. Maybe they had all gone away for the long weekend?

Sunday morning we walked to the Fine Arts Museum (Musee de la Chartreuse) located in a former Carthusian monastery and browsed the galleries packed with old masters, impressionists and some fabulous sculptures – what a treat!

Theater poster...

Rubens:.

Pissaro

Rodin.

And on the way back we actually saw this fisherman catch a small pike.

The bridge at the end of the navigable canal