Canal de Calais, River Aa and the Grand Gabarit: Getting a French “tampon”, fantastic hypermarkets and terrible telecoms, mooring at Hennuin, frankly fearful at Fontinettes lock, Aire-sur-la-Lys, wine and whisky with the Greenfields at Béthune

 O Frabjous Day, Caloo, Calais!

Arrived late afternoon at the port of Calais after a blissfully calm eight-hour crossing, to find that time and tide wait for no one, and the lock into the marina from the harbour opens only for a couple of hours around high tide.

Now the tricky bit: getting an entry stamp (tampon in French) for my passport, to go opposite the long-sejour visa that I got at the French Embassy in Singapore. Tip for other South Africans: you get this done at the office of the police aux frontières near the ferry terminal – easy once you know, but there’s no information about this on the internet!

After sharing a well-earned bottle of Pol Roger with our cross-Channel pilot, David Piper, we took the ten-minute stroll into the old town for dinner at an unpretentious restaurant – one of many lining the town square. Pastis, escargots etcetera; might as well dive straight in!

Calais to Hennuin

Roy up at 6am again! – this time to pressure-wash all the salt off the boat. We had to exit the marina into the harbour by 9am (or wait until the next high tide), and from there wait for the sea-lock to let us into the Canal de Calais.

Next, a visit to Auchan shopping centre to get a prepaid data card; Orange had run out of them (!), so we tried Bouygues Telecomm and forked out €90 for 4G (!). No luck in setting it up, sadly. (And when we finally did, it inexplicably sucked up the first 2G in one day. Putain!)

As for the enormous hypermarché, we’d never seen anything like it. We marvelled like country hicks at the incredible assortment of goodies from throughout the EU – “Look at the cheese, Roy, look at the cheese!” By comparison, the UK’s Tesco, Waitrose and the like look like corner stores.

Having waved goodbye to David, bravely we headed off on our own down the Canal de Calais, 23km to the small village of Hennuin, its bridge and its lock. No response to my virgin VHF radio call, and it was past 6pm, so we moored up for the night.

Hennuin to Aire-sur-la-Lys

At 8.30am, along came the blond and sunburnt éclusier (lock-keeper) and gardien du pont (bridge-keeper) in one, first to open the bridge for us and then to see us through the lock. It was a comparatively small one for France, and while he went off to do another job, we took the opportunity to joyfully fill up our water tank. (We’ve been advised to top up whenever we can.)

The lock at Flandres was much bigger, with M. Éclusier up there in his control tower behind reflective glass. Going upstream, we’re entering the empty lock chamber, steep walls rising on either side. It’s an initially tricky system, where you attach a rope to a bollard set way down on the wall at your own level. As the water rises and the lock fills, your rope eventually slips off the low bollard and you loop it around the next bollard up, and so on all the way to the top.

After passing the famous old Fontinettes boat lift, we got to grips with our third and last lock of the day: Fontinettes lock, frankly terrifying in its height. Here we used a shifting bollard, set into the wall, that gradually moves upwards, shrieking and groaning as metal grinds upon metal.

Our route today: Canal de Calais, into the widened River Aa for a few kilometres, and then the series of canals now known as the Grand Gabarit.

Only three enormous barges passed us (nothing else), and they were less discombobulating than I’d feared. It’s Sunday, however, and tomorrow is a public holiday. That may may explain it.

From the halte nautique at Aire-sur-la-Lys – a basic floating pontoon, no more, a ten-minute walk takes you into the town. On the attractive main square, with its gorgeous Hôtel de Ville (city hall), I found a friendly bar with wifi – what a relief!

Aire-sur-la-Lys to Béthune

On to the town of Béthune, where we moored at a halte nautique about 1.7km from the town – again, well worth seeing for its architectural beauty alone: it has 33 national monuments, including Église Saint Vaast, and an impressive Grand Place (square) that was hosting a big market today. Not only did I not buy anything, I managed to lose my panama hat. Again.

Our first visitors in France! South Africans Gail and Neil Greenfield, friends we made during our early years in Singapore, are as usual spending the European summer travelling around in their camper van. They took early retirement, and this is the tenth year of their globe-trotting lifestyle.

Naturally, we shared rather a lot of wine before finally getting a taxi back to the Grand Place for an enjoyable and doubtless loudly talkative meal at Le Brussel’s Café. (Yes, that apostrophe worries me, too).

From the €19 two-course formule, I remember roast marrowbone with sel de Guérande, foie gras pâté,  charcuterie, tangy beef tongue casserole and more. Unthinkably for France, they’d run out of baguette, which we forgave them (a) because it was after 8pm on a public holiday, and (b) the volume of wine had somewhat blunted our critical faculties.

Brought back to the boat by our cheerful taxi-driver (aller-retour €30), les hommes continued with a couple of snifters of whiskey, while les femmes sensibly hit the Badoit sparkling water.