Guë (effects of weed, water weed that is)

Early morning at Guë

We didn’t set off until the afternoon on Saturday as we’d taken things so easy that by the time we’d had our morning walk it was lunchtime and a late one at that.  The hot weather is definitely back so we cruised with the parasols up and were glad of the shade offered by the large plane trees as we came into St-Dizier.

Welcome plane trees

An old couple live in the lock house at the first lock in St-Dizier and came out to see us as we went through.  We remembered them being really friendly last year but the main thing we recalled was that they have lots of cats so had to keep Buddy on the boat.  During one of our trips through last year, the guy was fishing and one of their cats was happily sitting next to him.  At least the cats gave us something to talk about this time and the old lady was really pleased we could remember them – she told us they have six! To be fair, it was difficult to tell if she was pleased or grimacing as she had no teeth, but her eyes gave it away 😉 

We moored up in the port where there’s room for plenty of boats on the free moorings.  A French cruiser and Lucie, with the American couple Patrick and Mary-Ann from Geneva, were the only other boats there.  I popped down to the tourist office to fill in a form so I could pick up some jetons (tokens) for the water and electricity should we need either or both.  I found it really difficult to get away as the lovely lady serving me wouldn’t stop explaining about places we could visit.  I was just getting away when she asked if she could practise her English!  Of course, I had to comply and let her explain about a few more items of interest, most of which we saw last year anyway.  As far as I could tell, she didn’t need to practise at all.

The port at St-Dizier

The town itself has some pretty squares and streets but the area around the port is dismal.  It’s like they started redeveloping it a couple of years ago and have now run out of money.  Hopefully work will be restarted soon and it can be finished.  We think it’ll then be really inviting especially as there are a lot of large flower beds (currently dried up grass and weeds) alongside the port.

As we had the jetons for water and electricity we did some washing first thing on Sunday and then filled up with water.  It was such a cracking drying day, with a slight breeze and temperatures forecast to be in the low 30s, that we managed to get all the bed linen washed too.

I was glad of the polarity checker we bought for cruising in Europe as it turned out that the power in the port was reverse polarity and I had to add my ‘polarity converter’ cable to the shore line to change the polarity back to what we needed.  It’s a simple and obvious trick: male and female waterproof sockets connected by a short length of cable with one wired incorrectly.

Improvement works at St-Dizier

With very few places to stop on the canals, Karen researches cruising guides and other boater’s blogs to find places where we can moor for lunch as well as overnight moorings. She had found a place called Guë that was reported as having three steel posts 30m apart, so we decided to head there for lunch.  I visited the weed hatch to clear the propeller of weeds before we set off.  Some pounds had been particularly choked on the previous day and I had had three or four visits to the weed hatch.   For non-narrowboaters amongst you, the weed hatch is under our back deck and when the cover is released I can put my arm in the water up to my armpit to free the prop.

The weed hatch cover

All cleared

Some of the weeds in the port at St-Dizier

From this point onwards we will be cruising through places and on waterways that are new to us thus adding additional excitement to our travels.  We have also decided to stop moving the car every day and pick it up every week or so, thus giving us more freedom.  As we left the port, we passed a tower from a 1920s Miko ice cream factory.  The building has now been converted into a cinema.

After about a mile we were passing through the outskirts of the town and heading into the country which looked to be becoming hillier compared to the plateau we have been cruising through this last week.

Goodbye St-Dizier

Our first obstacle of the day was a road lift bridge where we knew we had to ring a control centre to get an éclusier to come out and operate it.  I had been told this when we picked up our télécommande at the first lock on this canal but hadn’t really taken the instructions in. The trouble was that there were two telephone numbers on the télécommande, one for each of the two control centres on this section of the canal and I had forgotten which number to ring.  I chose the wrong one of course and it took me ages to understand that the girl was telling me to ring the other number.  We got into a right muddle as I thought she was asking me what buttons were on our télécommande!

While we were waiting for our man to turn up, we temporarily moored alongside a disused railway swing bridge; the sort of canal artefact we find fascinating:

The guy had to drive about 35km, but it didn’t feel like we waited too long, and the bridge was soon lifting for us.

Lift bridge at Marnaval

Although there are still the odd straight sections, the very long straights of the previous week have now been replaced by more windy sections reminiscent of UK canals.

A bend!  

We only had two locks to go up before mooring for lunch and we noticed that the date above the front door lintels of the lock cottages was 1866 whereas all those on the first 30km of the canal from Vitry-le-François to St-Dizier had been 1864.

Information plate and date inscription on lock cottage

Soon after the second lock we were at Guë and on the lookout for the three metal stakes, 30m apart.  We found two of them and were just able to tie up to them.  We suspect they were further than 30m apart as we had to use our longest lines at both ends.

Mooring stake and long line

Lunch at Guë with Buddy nicking the shade

After lunch we walked further down the canal to a village called Chamouilley to check out the moorings that Karen had picked out for our stopover later on in the day.  We were pleasantly surprised to see that there were no boats there so looked forward to moving on later in the afternoon.

Empty moorings at Chamouilley

As we were crossing the canal on a bridge in the village, we saw two boats coming out of a lock in the distance.  Having decided to explore the village on Monday, we just had a quick investigation of the mooring before heading back to the boat.  While doing this, both boats pulled up and, as we were leaving, another boat came in the opposite direction and moored up too.  This made us decide to stay at Guë where we knew we would be on our own for the evening, and maybe move on down on Monday.

The River Marne is still running alongside the canal and, now we are further upstream, it’s a lot shallower and, in some places, can be waded across.  Every so often, groups of people were picnicking by the river and children playing in the water.  Because of this we had to be careful where we let Buddy go for his cool downs and gulps of water.  The last thing we wanted was for him to investigate a picnic.

Guë was very small and only seemed to have a dozen houses but they hadn’t spared any effort on the flower baskets 😊

Peaceful Sunday evening at Guë

On Sunday we cruised four miles up two locks