La Ferté-sous-Jouarre (running around in circles)

We were doing inside & outside odd jobs on Sunday morning when I heard Karen outside talking to someone in English and from the sound of her voice it was someone she knew. I went to investigate and saw it was Ade & Rose from Sirius.  They were doing a recce in their car to see where to moor next as they were due to leave their current mooring further downstream, at Poincy, and head this way later in the day. 

Like us, they had just arrived back after a holiday in the UK but, unlike us, hadn’t got rid of their car yet.   As we weren’t planning on moving off until Monday at the earliest, we offered to let them breast up with us.  In the end they decided to go the other way and cruise down to Meaux as it is better served by trains for when they drop their car off in Migennes as I did last Friday.  They are heading down south as they are overwintering somewhere on the Canal du Midi.  The first part of their journey is the same as ours, the River Marne, the Canal latéral à la Marne and the Canal entre Champagne et Bourgogne.  This means we will probably bump into each other a few more times over the next few weeks.

After a lunch we got the bikes out and cycled up to the Canal de l’Ourcq.  We hadn’t been on the bikes for a while and had almost forgotten how much fun it is to cycle along practically deserted lanes, through villages and along towpaths.  Buddy seems to enjoy it too as he gets a good run and starts getting excited when I take the boats off the back of the boat.  The part of the canal we cycled along was a section that we hadn’t been allowed to cruise because the water levels were so low, and we must admit that it still looked far too low for us in places. Buddy was delighted though as he hadn’t seen a canal for ages with ‘proper’ water to drink!

We awoke to cloudless skies on Monday and, as there was a chance of rain in the afternoon, set off for our day’s cruising when Karen returned from her run.

Gorgeous & still Monday morning at our mooring at Mary-sur-Marne

The houses along the riverfront at Mary-sur-Marne are quite grand and many have ornate brick and tilework.

One of the houses by our mooring

Karen had planned to run north from our mooring, through Mary-sur-Marne and then Lizy-sur-Ourcq, over the River Ourcq and then along the towpath of the Canal de l’Ourcq.  All this was part of our cycle ride on Sunday.  She returned rather frustrated as, although she had run her requisite distance, she never found the canal.  We had to laugh when we looked at her route on her running app as she had clearly run around in several circles of differing sizes.

This is why the family laugh at Karen’s sense of direction

The green spot is where her run started after a five-minute warm up walk.  The red spot is where she finished running and started her warm down walk.  The canal is right at the top of the photo, so she almost made it, but not quite 😉

Once again it was a very quiet day on the river which of course was enhanced by the lovely weather.

 

By the time we were halfway through our journey it started clouding over which rather meant the forecast of afternoon rain would turn out to be correct. 

At St-Jean-lès-Deux-Jumeaux we went up our one and only lock of the day.  This was the last manned lock we would come across for a while as the following eight locks are all automatic.  They are operated by the boater using a remote control and once we had come up the lock, the éclusier came down from his control tower and handed us a unit.

Sign at the lock telling us that the following locks are operated automatically by remote control

The remote control or télécommande

Doors closing as we left our last manned lock for a while

Just after leaving the lock we passed one of only two boats we saw during our cruise.  The guy was hosing down the boat while his partner was driving.  Every time we see this happening we think we should invest in a deck hose and pump but the trouble is we are running out of storage space.

A little further on we went under one of the first bridges to be built of prestressed concrete; this particular bridge was built in 1946.

Pont St-Jean, one of five of this design across the River Marne

By lunchtime we were coming into La Ferté-sous-Jouarre where we were hoping to find a space to moor.   The first moorings were a series of pontoons at right angles to the bank.  These were far too short for us to fit safely onto, so we carried on into the centre of town.

Heading for the centre of La Ferté-sous-Jouarre

Just after the bridge is an island where moorings are provided by a series of pontoons: one 13 metre and two 50 metres.  The first pontoon was the 13-metre one and as it was free we took it thinking we would then walk up and then see if there were spaces further up.  If we stayed there it meant that Buddy would have to get on and off through the front which is not the norm.

We walked up to the other pontoons and there was a 20 metre stretch free but there was a little plastic boat practically in the middle of it meaning we couldn’t get in.  This situation presents a moral dilemma as to whether you should move someone else’s boat or not.  In the UK (and also dictated by general manners) you wouldn’t move someone else’s boat.  We did wonder what the protocol was in France though.

To move or not to move?

A German woman appeared from her boat saying we should move it and even offered to help, but as we had a mooring of sorts, we left things as they were.  As the boat was very small and the covering tarpaulin was full of water and had therefore been moored there a long time, we probably would have moved it if there had been nowhere else free.  Even though it’s morally wrong our reasoning would have been that it’s not someone’s home, moorings are difficult to come by on the river and it was also so small that there would be no difficulty in moving it along.

Our mooring for the next couple of days at La Ferté-sous-Jouarre

We were just nestled in under the bows of a permanent boat occupied by a friendly French guy called Bruno.

After lunch we went for a walk around town and picked up a few necessities like fruit and pains au chocolat.  It just started raining as we got back home but didn’t last very long and the evening turned out rather nice again like the morning.

Moored over on the left behind the island just before Bruno’s large boat

Ironically, when we returned, we noticed another boat had arrived and had moved the little boat in order to moor.

During Monday we covered 20 kilometres up one lock.