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Wednesday 31st August 2011 Vaudemanges – Condé-sur-Marne. 6.9kms 8 locks

Old shed by lock house at lock 21 Fosse Rode

Sunny but chilly first thing, getting hotter later. Floan left at lock opening time 7.00 a.m. and we never heard a thing. Thanks George! We slumbered on until 8.30 a.m. Three empties came uphill and we heard all of them. Had a set of texts from Helen, they’d seen red squirrels (we didn’t – didn’t get up early enough) and a lost fender for us to collect on our way down, plus she’d left us another British newspaper down at the bottom lock. Set off at 10.15 a.m. reversing to the hanging pole, passing the still slumbering cruiser, activated the lock and set off down the flight. Lock 17 Vaudemanges (2.48m) was very quiet, no one around. 500m to lock 18 Champ Bon Garçon (2.68m). Likewise no one around, very still and peaceful. Another 500m to lock 19 Long Raies (2.69m) Signs of life, a VNF crew of two grasscutters had just finished cutting the grass alongside the lock and were busily packing the mower into the back of their van to carry on to the next bit of grass that needed their attentions. 

Recess in lock wall for ropes 22 Isse

650m through cool wooded countryside winding down the hill on to lock 20 St Martin ( 2.72m) At this lock there was a young lady VNF worker busily cleaning the lock cabin. 650m to lock 21 Fosse Rodé (2.74m) One of only two lived in lock houses left on the flight, there were two VNF vans parked below the lock. Mike lifted the blue bar while I made tea and toast. 700m to the next, lock 22 Isse (2.60m) by the village of the same name. Mike worked the lock again while I finished making tea. We ate our toast on the 1.350kms pound to lock 23 Coupé (2.73m). Mike took a few photos of the empty lock cottage while I fished out an almost new sausage fender that Helen had spotted. 1.750kms to the last lock, through the village of Condé spreading ever further along the bank of the canal with the addition of more new houses. 

Old lock house at 23 Coupe

Mike took the boat into the left hand side of lock 24 Condé (2.62m) to step off and take photos of the old towpath towing engine while I took the rubbish to deposit it in the bin and collect the newspaper Helen had left hanging in a plastic bag from the bracket holding the control rods. I lifted the rod after he’d shoved the boat over so I could get back on board and the lock emptied. It was 12.15 p.m. as we passed the pontoons below the lock. A small cruiser had just tied up on our mooring. Mike asked the guy how long he was staying, he replied until Monday. OK. We’ll have to ring Gérard after lunch. Meanwhile we tied across the end of the new pontoon, which was nearly as long as the boat. Hmm. 

Electric towing engine which used to tow unpowered boats
along the Marne a l'Aisne canal

Rather prefer this to the old pontoon, it fits the boat better. Connected the electricity (reduced now to 6 Amps, so no washing or ironing without resorting to running our engine and Markon generator) and I made some lunch. Phoned Gérard just after 1.30 p.m. He was on holiday at the seaside – up North by the Channel! He said tell them to move! Then he said Gégé would be round later and he’d sort them out. OK we’d see him and Viviane on Saturday. Helped Mike unload the moped off the roof using two tyres to lower it on to, as there was no room for a plank. The cruiser went past that had been moored at Vaudemanges when we left. Mike returned with the car (only a short run back up to Wez – he made sure the dog kept its distance today). We returned the moped to its place on the roof. I tried the Internet, EDGE but 3G was available if we put the antenna on the roof. An empty péniche arrived, moored along the bank by the turn pole and started painting. 

Tuesday 30th August 2011 Sillery – Vaudemanges 22.5kms 4 locks

Lock house at 14 l'Esperance

Sunny with white clouds. Hot later. An uphill loaded péniche went past early. Condensation reformed on the steelwork after I’d dried it off, it was very chilly first thing. We set off at 9.35 a.m. Mike turned the pole, lock 13 Sillery (3.49m) emptied and we went up. The moorings at Sillery were nearly full. On the end was a large tjalk with masts whose English crew came out to ask if we were carrying on uphill. 2.2kms to the next lock 14 l’Esperance (2.63m). We waited while a loaded péniche in front of us cleared the lock, then it emptied for us and we went up. I made tea and toast on the 2.8kms pound. There was a nice overhanging walnut tree below the lock so we paused to gather a few nuts. 

Ironmongery on the lockside at 15 Beaumont

Mike stood on the roof but got the shock of his life when the branch he was pulling broke, causing him to step backwards catching his foot on the pigeon box and then he fell on his back on the roof. Luckily not hurt much, just a scratch on his ankle and a pain in his leg. We carried on up lock 15 Beaumont (2.76m) A teenage lad was fishing in the canal from the road bridge over the tail end of he lock. He had minders, an older teen-aged lad with him plus a little girl. Mike took photos of the lockside garden ornaments – old agricultural implements. I took photos of the two lock houses and the VNF workshop. 1.15kms to the top lock 16 Wez (2.47m) A young woman arrived in a car and went in the house. Her two little dogs, inside the front garden and restricted by a mesh fence, went mental barking at me as I took a bag of rubbish to the bin by the road bridge. 

More ironmongery at lock 15 Beaumont

We went beyond the trees and tied up with a fantastic view across the fields to La Montagne. It was 11.40 a.m. George and Helen were coming up from above the bottom lock at Berry and would be arriving we calculated about 5.00 p.m. Helen had told Mike they be stopping above the top of the locks. Mike went to collect the car from Berry and move it on to Condé. I got on with reconstituting my laptop, downloading service pack three, Google Chrome browser and Yahoo for emails. The Internet wasn’t fast enough to download AVG security. Mike returned at four with some bread, en route for Condé, except he saw Floan heading for the lock. Helen broke the bad news that we’d got our wires crossed and they were carrying on through the tunnel to the top of the flight down to Condé. 

VNF workshops above lock 15 Beaumont

She told me Mike was going to put the bike back on the boat, leave the car where it was and follow them through the tunnel. Mike asked at the house if he could leave our car there and, as he was talking to the lady of the house, her aggressive little Jack Russell leapt up and levered himself across the top of the mesh fence just enough to nip Mike’s arm! He pushed the moped back to the boat and we loaded it back on the roof. Meanwhile two cruisers came up the lock one after the other. We followed on to the tunnel, setting off at around 5.00 p.m. I made a cuppa. Mum was fast asleep. Fifty minutes later we arrived at the north end of Mont de Billy tunnel. We could see a boat in the tunnel and Mike looked through his binoculars to see a light and deduced that it was coming our way. It wasn’t! 

The lock and two lock houses at 15 Beaumont

At six the lights in the tunnel went out and we could see the boat was just leaving the tunnel – it was Floan. Helen sent a text to say there was nothing in the tunnel, no boats at the other end and we could do what they did and put our headlight on and go against the red light now it was out of hours. We did. Put the headlight on for the first time in years to go through an unlit tunnel. Not far inside there was a leak from the roof, pouring icy cold water all over us. Good grief that was cold. Clouds had gathered when we reached the other end. There were now three houseboats in the old layby at Vaudemanges. Both cruisers had overtaken Floan and the second one, an ex-hireboat cruiser, was now moored by the house. We tied up behind Floan, which was about 2m out from the bank sitting on the bottom just before the first lock, and George and Helen came on board for a natter, sitting out on the front deck until it became chilly and the owls started calling - then we went inside.

Lock house at 16 Wez

Made Mum a sandwich so she could take her tablets but George and Helen said they had dinner on their boat waiting for them and went home around 10.30 p.m. Mike begged a bit of their cargo - a bag of petrol-coke - to experiment with burning it in our Torgem. George said his mate Roger had tried it, but said it wouldn’t burn without a forced draught. Mike said the mixed coal we buy in France contains anthracite and large lumps of petrol-coke without which the anthracite won’t burn at all. Helen took a sack that Mike found for her and went to fill it for him. Mike braved their long narrow plank, wearing his slippers and having had a surfeit of red wine, he managed to navigate the plank carrying a sack of coke while I held our big spotlight so he could see where he was walking (the night was black as a bag but the stars were bright) and Helen cheered as he regained terra firma. We wished them goodnight and a good trip down to Viviers on the Rhône. They said they would most likely have to come back empty but would be coming up the canal du Centre, so we probably wouldn’t see them on their way back to Gent.

Monday 29th August 2011 Berry-au-Bac – Sillery 32.6kms 12 locks

Clouds at Berry-au-Bac

Sunny with a chilly breeze, warming up later. Mike went for bread before we set off. The guy off a British cruiser, Tynne Toy, who had been moored above the lock, came to ask if we knew if the Sambre was open. We thought it was closed in France as far as the Belgian border and had been so for a couple of years. He’d got a stoppage list that said there was a bridge at Landrecies which would be reopened in October. Mike went with him to ask the lock keeper. A new lady keeper was on duty today. She had the same info he had. He said he would try it and see how far he got. Meanwhile a hotel boat (called Adrienne, a converted péniche - very square with no wheelhouse – the steerer stood out on the back at the top in all weathers) came up the lock and it took priority – a bad move for us. We had to wait while it ponderously turned into Berry Marne lock and it took ages to get in, rope up and activate the lock, then ages more to leave it before the keeper at Berry Aisne could reset it for us. Lock 1 Berry (2.85m) emptied, we went in, I lifted the blue rod and the lock refilled. Sadly, the lock cottage (which used to have a lovely garden and was occupied when we knew it first by an elderly couple who used to run a péniche) was slowly decaying, its roof tiles now starting to slip. Above the lock there were three empty boats waiting to load at the silo quay, pusher pair St Laurent and Ti Laurent and Marie-Lou from Janville. 1.15kms to lock 2 Moulin de Sapigneul (2.67m) The hotel boat was still in the lock when we arrived. I turned the pole and we had to wait for the hotel boat to clear before the lock emptied for us. 1.1kms to the next, which was linked. I made tea and toasted some crumpets as we crawled up the pound slowly to lock 3 Sapigneul (2.67m) which emptied and we went up. 2.36kms to lock 4 Alger (2.67m) past the cement pipe works. We heard the hotel boat in front chatting on channel ten with another hotel boat called Majesty, they said they were stopping at Courcy. They were just leaving as we arrived below lock 4, but then we had to wait while the other hotel boat came down the lock. What a sight! Majesty was called Majesty of the Seas and had been built as a replica of an ocean liner and it had loads of tiny windows. The lockhouse at Alger was still lived in. 1.2kms to the next. The hotel boat in front was just leaving lock 5 Gaudart (2.58m). The house was lived in and had a beautiful garden. They had tomatoes in boxes for sale which I didn’t spot until we were leaving. 3.5kms to the next set of locks. It was 12.50 p.m. The sun came out as we had lunch on the long pound up to lock 6 Loivre (2.62m). An old houseboat called Antony was moored in the layby below the lock. The hotel boat had just left the lock. I turned the pole and it emptied for us. Next to the lock there was a tour bus parked, empty except for the driver who came to speak to us. He’d noticed that we hadn’t put any ropes on and said that some of the locks were a bit lively. We informed him that we’d been locking without ropes for a long, long time and knew what we were doing. (In a 40m x 5.50m lock we can easily stay at the back of the chamber while the lock fills very gently, it would be a different case if we had to share with another boat - THEN we would use ropes, unless it was with another narrowboat) 700m to the next. The hotel boat was still in lock 7 Fontaines (2.81m) so we motored very slowly up the pond. The layby for the silo was encircled with fishermen and graffiti had sprouted all along the walls. Eventually the lock emptied for us and we went up. There were two lock houses next to the lock. The hotel boat’s tour bus went past on the road and a VNF van sped off up the towpath. 1.1kms to the next lock 8 Noue-Gouzaine (2.51m) There was a yellow hammer perched on the topmost twig of a large conifer, singing away loudly from his perch. The old lockhouse with bricked up windows was almost completely hidden by the fir trees. As we came up in lock 8 we could see that the hotel boat still hadn’t completed the 800m pound to the next lock. We had to wait while he went up and cleared then lock 9 Courcy (2.3m) the last one of the flight, emptied for us. A man in a 4x4 stopped to watch us lock through from the bridge over the tail end of the lock. We couldn’t decide if the lock house was lived in or not. It was 2.40 p.m. when we left the top, no more locks until Reims, a long pound of 12.45kms. Adrienne hadn’t moored where the péniches moor in Courcy, just beyond the lock on the concrete-edged towpath where it’s deep - he had two lines ashore and was wriggling himself sideways into the space under the trees where the village of Courcy had put picnic tables etc for passing small boats. He was very close to a splendid varnished yacht called Maiko (no nationality flag or registration number showing that we could see). There was a Stars and Stripes flag on the bow of the hotel boat and the clients were standing out on the fore deck as the crew moored the boat. Mike shouted hello to them in English and none of them seemed keen to answer, just looked at our boat as we went past. Into the cutting before La Neuvillette a suburb of Reims and at KP14 we passed empty péniche Sebastien, whose smiling skipper slowed down to go past us. That was nice, not many of them do that these days. We had tea and biscuits as we went into the city. Pa-Ma an empty péniche was moored at the beginning of the quay by PUM, the crew busily painting the coamings a lovely shade of cornflower blue. There were new fences all along the back of the quay and a gate into the quayside belonging to PUM steel works. The whole of their quay was empty. Beyond the gate at the far end there was a bunch of empty boats, Minerva, El Paso (more painting), St Joseph, Edison (from Antoing), Dahlia and Canberra. In the arm there was an old converted tug and an empty smart Dutch péniche which had no name on its stern. We passed a Dutch cruiser called Leijo, heading downhill, as we passed the site of the old fuel stationin the outskirts of Reims. On into the city centre. There were three boats in the Port de Plaisance in Reims, a large Dutch cruiser called Jakaranda from Den Bosh, an American yacht and another cruiser, the rest of the moorings were empty but the quay beyond was full of péniches and Dutch barges converted to houseboats all the way to the road bridge and a few beyond. It was 2.45 p.m. when we arrived at the flight of three locks in the city. The weirs on all three were flowing well, right across the entrance to each lock as usual. I pointed out to Mum, who was sitting out in the sunshine, the battered state of the wall where the boats had hit it after being shoved over sideways by the weir. We had no problem being much narrower than the width of the lock. There was a young lady on duty at the bottom lock, her scooter standing on the lockside ready for any false manoeuvres made when locking through any of the three locks in her charge. (We didn’t disturb her) We went up lock 10 Fléchambault (2.87m) then 750m to lock 11 Château d’Eau (2.01m) 650m to lock 12 Huon (2.36m)  without any problems. All along the bank were horse chestnut trees, whose leaves were turning brown, alternating with what looked like walnuts but not quite, we looked them up in my field guide for trees and came to the conclusion that they were American trees called a butter nut. Wonder if you could eat them – there were certainly lots of nuts on them. As we left lock 12, loaded péniche Risque from Thuin was waiting to go down. The British steel boat we’d seen at Maizy, called Ferrous, was moored just above the lock, not a pleasant mooring right next to a busy road, maybe they stopped to go shopping. 7.55kms to Sillery. Past the new VNF offices (they moved out of the city centre a few years ago into a new set of offices and workshops) and into the industrial area stretching along the banks for the next 5kms or so. There were lots of people fishing, walking or cycling the canal towpath and Mum saw her first taggers – a bunch of youths preparing a wall to do graffiti and judging by the rest of the wall they were pretty good at it too. We moored before the turn pole below the lock at Sillery where it’s quiet. It was 6.35 p.m. The journey had taken us about two hours longer than normal after being stuck behind that very slow hotel boat. 

Sunday 28th August 2011 Berry-au-Bac Day off

Got on with more jobs and then more work on the laptop

Saturday 27th August 2011 Berry-au-Bac. Day off shopping

We took Mum shopping with us by car to Carrefour in Tinqueux, Reims.

Friday 26th August 2011 Berry-au-Bac. Rain. Day off.

Rain poured down in the night accompanied by thunder just before dawn (I didn’t hear it but Mike did). The rain poured down all morning and most of the afternoon. Mike finished adding his new bracket to the alternator, then I got on with more washing and ironing, running the engine to power the Markon generator.