contentedsouls

After posting yesterday that we had our dry dock booked at Seneffe for 12th (5 days into Belgium), June phoned the local official for details so that we could transfer the money into their bank. At this point she was told that we couldn’t go in until the 26th!!!!

At this point Temujin thought they’d continue and G and I decided enough was enough. MR can easily go another year without being done so we made the decision to head on South down the Escaut and the St Quentin. It did, however, occur to us that Christian might have booked us in for the 12th and that this other guy thought we were someone else so thought the dock wasn’t available until the 26th – they seem to rent it out in 2 week slots. In order to try and clarify the situation, Belgian friends (that we made last year) made a phone call for us and were told it was down to a lady who could be contacted today. There has to be a “how many people does it take to rent a dry dock?” joke in here somewhere. The lady says, “yes” today for the 12th but we must sign the paperwork which must be posted to us and posted back and then the money transferred and then it would be booked. Why not turn up, sign the paperwork and hand over the cash I hear you ask? Why not indeed!!!!!!!!!!!!!

If we travel all that way into Belgium (a lovely country but no place for pleasure boats – do it by train) and then……….

So I did what I normally do when wound up and walked Muttley to Horraines with the added benefit that I found a nice little village bar where they supplied Muttley with a bowl of water and me with a nice cold glass of Leffe, giving me chance to exercise a bit of French which tends to hide behind Mike and June’s near fluency.

We’ve had some interesting skies as the fronts go through

Today we drove into Cambrai to pick up our new head bolts from the post office – collected without hassle – so G has replaced the one that sheered and Mike welded for us. Time to look around the town and have lunch as tomorrow we’ll head to Valenciennes and towards Belgium