Of Turtles and Trams

 June has been a month of contrasts, Belgium recorded their coldest and hottest ever days within the same month.  As I write we are moored in Hautmont, melting in a Europe wide heat wave.

A very welcome shady bankside mooring in Jeumont  

Having reluctantly turned back from our planned route South via the Dender and Blaton- Ath canals, we revisited Tounai, Peruwelz and Thieu, making our way to the Sambre route into France cruising through Wallonia, the French speaking region of Belgium.

Approaching the Streppy-Thieu lift 

Moored up inside the chamber, and

 about to be lifted 75m less than 15 mins

  The Streppy-Thieu lifts us to the summit level and the coal fields of La Louviere. This waterway has in the past been an essential conduit to carry this fuel North to Brussels and South to heavy industry in Charleroi. Now the mining spoil hills beside the waterway are green and tree covered.

Industry shows its face as we cruise smartly through Charleroi

Abbaye d'Aulne, a church was founded on this site in 657 

Not far up river from industrial Charleroi are the ruins of the Abbaye d'Aulne marking a change to a forested and rural lanscape. The abbey built in 1250 as part of a Cistercian monastry was largely destroyed in 1794 during the French revolution. A brewery now occupies part of the grounds.

We welcome the sight of the smaller locks

The Walloons have a pride in their region of Belgium 

We even spot a turtle by the riverbank

The lush green lanscape of the Sambre river.

   I confess to being a railway nut, so an extra day was called for in the riverside town of Thuin, in Wallonia but close to where the Sambre crosses the border into France. Here a private museum houses trams and they play trains every Sunday through the Summer. We ride several noisy kms into the countryside aboard a diesel powered Tram, one of many built post war powered by re-purposed Sherman tank engines. 

At Thuin, they bring the trams out on Sundays 

This electric tram once graced the streets of Brussels.

This diesel powered tram uses a salvaged Sherman tank engine.

On special occasions they fire up a steam tram. 

Beautifully restored wagons inside the tram museum  

 At Jeumont we cruise across an unmarked border into France, leaving the manned locks of Belgium behind and taking on a remote controller at the first French lock. 

The 'Telecomander' enables us

 to remotely control each lock opperation

While at Hautmont I take the proper train two stops up the line to Le Quesnoy, This town holds a strong affiliation with New Zealand, having been liberated by a New Zealand brigade in Novenber 1918, in a remarkable manner. The 2000 Germans garrisoned there were taken by surprise by just a few Kiwis who had scaled a long ladder around the back of town, and convinced the defenders that they were surrounded. not a single civilian in the town lost their lives. 

These massive high walls and a wide moat 

enclose the town of Le Quesnoy

Vauban fortified this strategic town back in 1668   

Inside this Kiwi museum, is the story of the town

 and its liberation after four years of sometimes brutal occupation. 

Weta workshop (in NZ) created this 4 times lifesize 

replica of a Kiwi rifleman.  

A symbolic ladder reaches up through the museum

The town, twinned with Cambridge (NZ) 

shows respect to their Kiwi liberators 

It was at this point that the Kiwis scaled the wall.

Evening light at Soire sur Sambre, it is 11pm mid summer.

 Once this heat wave passes, we will climb to the Sambre summit level, before heading downhill to Paris.