Even though we were kept awake most of Saturday night at Pogny we were still up and about by seven on Sunday morning but felt in no hurry to rush off.
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| Moored at Pogny |
There was a free water point at the mooring, so we took advantage of it and did some washing and had good long showers. There are only a few bollards on the quay and as they are spaced too far apart for us we had to tie our back end to a lamppost when we arrived the previous afternoon. The water point is right next to the boat behind us in the picture above so I pulled the boat back to a point where the hose would reach. There were no bollards to secure to, but fortunately it was only a temporary arrangement so I tied to a wastepaper bin and another lamppost. What I'd forgotten was that Karen was doing some exercises in the shade outside the boat and by moving it she was left rather exposed 😊
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| Karen-sized bit of shade |
Karen popped to the local shop while I finished taking on
water and then pulled the boat back to our original mooring spot. A rather tame pigeon was sitting on the gunwales watching
me and by the time I moored back up again it was hopping around in the cratch. In fact, unbeknownst to us, it stayed with us
for quite a while as we found out later.
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| Our tame pigeon |
When we completed our tasks. we drove to La Chaussée sur
Marne, where we were going to moor for Sunday night. As we left Pogny we heard a strange
scrabbling noise on the roof of the car and when we stopped to check what it
was, the friendly pigeon slipped down the windscreen and flew off. It had obviously taken a fancy to our car as
well as the boat 😉
The drive didn’t take long as it was under four kilometres
away and consequently the walk back to get the boat didn’t take long
either. We did take a couple of detours
on the way though. Firstly, to look at a
field of sunflowers…
…and secondly to pop down to the Marne so Buddy could cool
off and have a drink. The sides of the canal we are currently on are sheer so
there are very few places he can get water.
I know we provide him fresh water in his bowl, but he generally shuns
that for water from the cut or a river.
He had a good long drink and a paddle as there were only a
few people around. No doubt the river
will have been packed by the afternoon because there is a good stretch of beach
as you can see in the picture, and the water isn’t fast flowing.
On our walk back we saw a good selection of butterflies
including some freshly emerged brimstones.
These butterflies hatch in July and survive the winter in hibernation
and are often one of the first butterflies seen in the spring; the bright
yellow of the male is very distinctive.
Once out of hibernation the adults pair to produce the next generation
to emerge in July. Some years we have
seen two generations on the wing at the same time meaning they can live as
adult butterflies for up to a year – amazing!
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| The bright yellow male on the left and the paler, lemony female on the right |
We also noticed many second brood holly blues that have also recently emerged. The first brood usually hatch in April and the second around now. Interestingly, the caterpillars of the two broods have different food plants; the summer brood tend to lay their eggs on ivy and the spring brood lay them on holly.
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| Male holly blue (females have broader black borders to their upper forewings) |
By the time we got back to the boat the washing had dried, so we were able to take down the clothesline and set off as soon as we had had lunch. As I said earlier, we didn’t have far to travel and we did have a laugh because on Friday we moved 8.5km, then 5.5km on Saturday and with 3.5km today will we ever get anywhere?
For those of you who are not regular readers, we are still
on the Canal latéral à la Marne and have another 15km before we reach Vitry le
François where we will be branching off onto the Canal entre Champagne et
Bourgogne (aka ‘the entre’). Last year
we went 30km up the entre as far as St Dizier but had to turn around and get
off the canal because of low water levels following last summer’s drought. We will be travelling the complete 224km length of the
‘entre’ this year down to its junction with the River Saône. Following a few days on the Saône we will
head onto the Canal du Rhône au Rhin and hopefully get to Mulhouse on the Rhine
at the Swiss/German border.
The locks on this canal are automatic and are triggered by
twisting a pole hanging over the cut a couple of hundred metres before the
lock. At permanently manned locks, which are on most rivers and a few canals, we have to use the VHF radio to call the éclusier to ask them to set the lock. On a few canals we have had to use differrent types of remote control units to operate the locks and on the Canal de l'Ourcq running into Paris, we had to collect a key and get out and operate the locks ourselves.
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The sign indicates that the pole
should be turned anti-clockwise for ¼ turn |
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| Karen getting ready to twist the pole |
A combination of flashing or solid, green, red and amber lights indicate various actions such as, request to get lock received, lock being prepared, lock out of order, lock ready to be entered etc. Once in the lock and the front line secured (we’re going up at the moment) one of us gets on the roof to push up a blue rod set into the lockside to start the operation.
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| Blue rod to operate, red for emergency |
We have been most impressed with the efficiency of the
automated locks and haven’t had to contact VNF (the French Canal & River
Trust) too many times because something had gone wrong. Unlike UK waterways where the majority of
lock cottages have disappeared, the French ones tend still to be standing. It’s
amazing to think that nearly every lock has or had a lock cottage; most are now
privately owned but some are lived in by éclusiers or used as VNF offices. Unusually, the cottage at the lock we went up
today was unoccupied and looked rather sorry for itself.
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| La Chaussée lock cottage |
We moored up at La Chaussée sur Marne and spent the rest of
the afternoon outside.
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On Sunday we cruised a couple of miles up one lock and saw
one private boat and one commercial on the move.
Having mentioned on the previous blog update that Bastille
Day/Fête Nationale was nigh, it suddenly occurred to us that as it’s a bank
holiday (& probably the most important one in France), that the locks would
be closed on Tuesday. After a quick look
at our weekly plan we decided that we would cruise to Soulanges on Monday and
stay there for a couple of nights. We
drove to Soulanges to find somewhere to leave the car. We went before it got too hot to be walking
in the full sun and found a good place to park under trees right next to the
grandly named Halte Nautique de Soulanges which in reality is a few mooring
bollards with room for one and half narrowboats.
Walking back to the boat we were lucky to spot our first
map butterflies of the year. As well as
being very pretty butterflies they are particularly interesting because, I
believe, they are the only European butterfly that displays seasonal
dimorphism. This means that there are
two broods each year and they look totally different.
Before we got back to the boat, we had our daily visit to
the river so Buddy could have a good drink and a cooldown. We don’t normally pick wildflowers but there
were so many wild sweet peas next to the river that we picked a few for the
boat. We do feel we are rather bereft of
flowers this year; normally the boat’s covered in flowering pots but, as we had
to go back to the UK for a few weeks recently, we knew they would just die with
no-one to water and care for them.
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| Our sweet peas |
We set off for Soulanges after lunch and were soon going up the first lock. Everything started OK: we got in and tied up, the gates closed and the lock filled with water. We were waiting for the gates to open so we could leave but they only opened a couple of inches and then stopped. We gave them a few minutes to get going again but as nothing was stirring we called VNF on the lockside phone.
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Phones or intercoms are available at all the automatic
locks for such occasions and we thought it rather ironic that I had mentioned
as part of this blog update for yesterday that we have had few problems with
the locks.
My call was answered quickly, and the guy said help would
be along in five or ten minutes. He was
true to his word and an éclusier turned up in his van amid a cloud of
dust. A jolly exchange of bonjours
followed and then he started walking across the lock gates to get to the control hut. To his and our complete
surprise, the gates started opening. He
was larger than the average Frenchman so maybe that was a factor. Anyway, if something similar happens in the
future then one or both of us will try walking across the gates before calling
VNF.
It did occur to me later, that when I gave my details to
the VNF man on the phone, that I had said we were going ‘avalant’ (down) rather
than ‘montant’ (up) but on reflection that didn’t matter. It would have mattered if we’d been on the
radio asking for a lock to be set as they would have filled the lock rather
than empty it.
We were soon on our way and went through the next lock
without any issues. Soon after the
second lock we were at the mooring at Soulanges and, with no other boats
around, were able to moor up in peace and quiet.
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| Arriving at the 'Port' of Soulanges |
On Monday we covered three miles up two locks.
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