Mons, Strepy-Thieu funicular boat lift Belgium

Travelled:64km
Visited:Mons, Strepy-Thieu Funicular Boat Lift
Stay: Thieu-free parking along the canal, no service point. N50.471119 E4.088230

At about 2am in the morning, Mark moved Bluey to the other side of the parking lot as the acorns dropping on to the roof sounded like canon balls and he was worried about the solar panel getting damaged.
After a quieter sleep, we set off after our morning coffee to go and explore Mons. Mark had found a free parking with free bus shuttle into town at Lotos Expo. N50°27.4569' E3°56.3652' 

As we could see the towers of the town looked quite close we opted to ride our bikes over the train overpass straight into town. It was still waking up ie not many shops open and not many people about. We stopped to visit the St.Waltrude's Church. It had many information boards of its 29 chapels, sculptures, stained-glass windows and the Golden Coach. One of the relics contains the body of St.Waltrude and another her head! 

We rode past the baroque 87m Belfry tower that, along with many other museums, is closed on Monday.

 We stopped in the Grand-Place which is surrounded with lovely buildings and cafes/restaurants.  

We walked through the Gothic styled Town Hall walkway to see the Mayor's Garden. On the way out we made sure to rub the little monkey's head for good luck. It is the towns emblem.

 We then had a look in St.Elizabeth's church before heading back to Bluey. 

We did some shopping before driving to Strepy-Thieu to see the amazing funicular boat lift on the Canal du Centre. The canal is an important route to the North Sea, France and Germany and until 2002 had 4 hydraulic boat lifts over 7km to deal with the 68m rise.

  As these lifts could only move up to 300 ton boats there needed to be a more efficient system to deal with 1350 ton canal boats. A new canal was built to and from this 110m structure, with two 8000 ton water filled tanks that take only 6mins to rise 73m. Unfortunately the trip on the boat lift is only on Sundays, but we paid to visit the museum which gave us all the information we needed to know of its construction and how it operates. Its interesting to know that although barges may take longer to deliver goods, a 1350ton barge is the equivalent to 60 trucks or 40 train carriages. They also use much less fuel. It seems Belgium has decided to invest in this form of transport for the future. The Netherland and Germany are also very active with barge transportation...I suppose it helps to have a fairly flat country. The area here is the highest part of the Canal in Belgium at 211m alt! After an enjoyable afternoon we parked up next to the canal and had some pork chops on the BBQ for tea.