Guny (watching the professionals)

Rather dwarfed behind our neighbour on Tuesday morning

We’ve got used to seeing the odd airplane vapour trail since the easing of travel restrictions, but thankfully they are still low in number (depending on your point of view).  When cruising on Tuesday we saw several in the sky at once for the first time.  I’ve long known that the proper term is contrail, but I learnt today that contrail is short for condensation trail, sort of obvious really.

First multiple contrails since lockdown

Before I talk about Tuesday, which had started drizzly, I must respond to a comment made about the inclusion of church and mairie pictures in the blog.  As there wasn’t much to photograph over the last couple of days, I included pictures of the mairies and churches from the places we visited. As I didn’t want readers to think, ‘oh no, not only are we being subjected to lavoirs, they’re now doing mairies and churches’, I wrote a comment to that effect.  Trouble was, I only mentioned that I wouldn’t be including lots of pictures of churches even though in my mind I had written churches and mairies.

The comment made by my friend Peter was along the lines of church pictures are OK as they are an important part of human history as are lavoirs.  I totally agree with this which is one reason why we visit them in order to learn more.  Peter and I have opposing views on religion but naturally that doesn’t stop me being interested in churches and their history, so I apologise for any misunderstanding 😊

The drizzle stopped whilst we were having breakfast, so we were able to open the doors and hatches. We heard the unmistakeable sound of a commercial coming and after a while it was alongside us.  He was very close as if he was mooring up and as the bows went past a guy with a mooring line at the ready greeted us.  We often take a while to moor up, especially when people are watching, so it was refreshing to see the boat was moored in what seemed like the blink of an eye.  We saw the guy make two or three hand signals to his wife who was at the other end driving, and they were tight to the bank with about a metre spare between us.

That's us behind our neighbour

While she was securing her end of the boat, he was off through the hedge at the back of the mooring where there’s a very handy Carrefour supermarket.  By the time she’d locked up and grabbed a handbag he was back with a supermarket trolley (chariot) and loading two empty gas bottles into it.  She went into the supermarket and he went to the fuel station attached.  It wasn’t long before they were both back, he with two full gas bottles in his trolley and she with a couple of bags of shopping and an armful (Karen thought it was at least nine) baguettes.  How do the French eat so much bread and generally not get fat?

As he was putting his bottles away, a second commercial arrived and moored alongside them.  The whole operation was repeated by the second couple and, after a brief conversation, they were all off again.  Karen was pleased to watch the etiquette as the outer boat reversed back (amazingly close to us but without touching) whilst the one who was first to arrive moved off ahead.

Melinda & Feeling showed us how to moor and shop efficiently

Interestingly (to us anyway) we often recognise the names of commercials and these two were no exception.  It continued to be a day of learning new things as, when I researched the size of the commercials we saw when we were on the Seine last year, I found that the largest (180 metres long) carried the equivalent of 220 HGVs – no wonder so much is still carried by inland waterways.  To put them into context the largest boats on the Seine are nearly five times longer than the babies that moored next to us during breakfast.  

Off they go

The skies started clearing when we set off and by the time we reached our first lock the sun was starting to make itself felt.  Having said that towpaths suddenly appeared when we moored up yesterday, they soon disappeared, and once again none were seen for the rest of the day.  The scenery changed though and there were plenty of clear vistas as we started to leave the heavily forested area we have been going through for the last few days.

The lock cottages changed to a less attractive style and sadly, some were boarded up as we had seen with the previous style on this canal.

Different style of lock cottage (right hand one with bricked up windows and doors)

We’ve noticed that nearly every lock on this canal has a water tap outside the éclusier’s control room, but we haven’t found any that work yet. Some of them have a manhole next to them and when we've lifted the heavy covers we've found a stopcock below but haven't been bothered to get down to turn it on.  The others, we’ve assumed, have a stopcock in the control room.   We stopped at a rare lock landing for lunch but wandered down to the lock first to check the water tap situation.

Moored for lunch at Leuilly lock landing

This water tap was actually working so we put some washing on over lunch as we knew we could top up when we moved off again.

Taking on water at the well-tended écluse de Leuilly

As you can see, we were on a straight stretch of the cut which is a great advantage when stopped in a lock.  Commercials can be seen approaching in the far distance giving us plenty of time to pack things away, work through the lock and get out of their way as they have priority over pleasure boats.

As expected, no boats came along and we were soon on our way again.  We stopped for the day at a place called Guny that had some handy mooring bollards.  We have been reading Ian & Lisette’s blog to help find places to stop – so thank you both.

Moored at Guny on Tuesday evening

It was a very quiet location until later in the evening when the silence was broken by squeals and screams of delight as children were jumping into and swimming in the water.  Knowing what goes into canals over here, we only ever swim in the rivers.

On Tuesday we cruised nine miles, down four locks, saw two commercials and three French pleasure cruisers.  It’s not surprising that most of the private boats we see are French this year whereas last year they were in the minority.

We were just sitting down for our first morning cuppa on Wednesday when Catherine called from Barcelona.  We knew there must be as issue as one, she called me and two, she never calls that early.  She had moved into a new house share the previous night and one of her flat mates couldn’t get out of his room in the morning.  I’m not known for my DIY proficiency, but after switching to video, I managed to get them to dismantle the handle mechanism on both sides and found that the latch wouldn’t withdraw.  After a bit of poking around with screwdrivers they managed to free it and Bernado could escape!

After breakfast we set off on a walk to visit Coucy-le-Château-Auffrique; a fortified hill town whose walls were built in the first half of the 1200s.  The walls were built with 33 towers and there was also a massive keep.  The information board next to our mooring said it was a 3km walk whereas Google told us is was nearly 4½km.  Assuming Google was correct it meant we could have a good look around and be back for a late lunch.

Looking down at our mooring at Guny as we crossed the canal

We had hoped to see the hill town from a distance but as nearly the whole walk was through forest it wasn’t possible.  It did make us wonder how they knew if any enemy was advancing.

Even by time we got to the town sign we still hadn’t seen it

The Auffrique in the name roughly translates to ‘rebuilt’ and we found out why later.  We were walking past a council yard when some of the fortifications came into view in the distance.

Incredibly, many of the towers and the keep were blown up by the retreating German army in 1917.  It certainly must have made a dramatic sight before it was destroyed.  Here’s a picture of a postcard from a photograph taken in 1916 from practically the same position our picture was taken from.

Obviously, it was a steep climb to the top, but it was worth it for the views and to see from up close how vast the walls were and the area they surrounded.  Goats were roaming free around the outside of the walls, so it meant keeping a tight rein on Buddy.  Mind you they were more interested in the apples a family were feeding them:

As can be seen above, there were piles of stones everywhere which were the rubble following the destruction of the towers in 1917.  Looking in the direction of the canal we could see the dense woodland we had walked through and why the hill had been hidden from view for most of our walk.

We’re moored under the dark hill on the far left

The fortification surrounding the town was certainly vast as can be seen from these two pictures.

The west side, one of the two shorter sides

Only half the length of the southern side can be seen here

Looking down to the lower town from the southern side

The houses in the lower town are all modern as it was almost completely destroyed by the Germans but has since been rebuilt, hence the name of the town  The church in the fortified town, dating back to the 1200s, was also badly damaged but was rebuilt between wars. 

I nearly forgot to get any pictures of the church

There are three gates in the walls, two of which provide access to the town by road. This is the Laon gate as it faces in the direction of Laon and is currently subject to extensive renovation work.

Porte de Laon

The other road gate faces Soissons and the relatively modern look gives away that it had to be rebuilt after the Germans destroyed it in order to block the road as they retreated.

Porte de Soissons

We walked around the town for a while and couldn’t believe how quiet it was.  Apart from the family feeding the goats, the only other tourists we saw were another family inside the town.  Everyone else we saw seemed to be working on renovations.  All the bars and restaurants were closed, presumably still due to covid, as I’ve mentioned before tourists are few and far between this year, so we almost had the place to ourselves.

The mairie was closed but that was because it’s the August holiday period.  In the interest of balance, as there’s a picture of the church above, I’ve included a picture of the mairie too.

The mairie closed for August holidays

On our way home, we took a detour through the forest to find the remains of a large WWI German cannon.  It weighed over 200 tons and it took around five months to build the infrastructure, including a branch line from the main line running through the lower town in order to get it to the site.  After all that it was reportedly only used 90 times in its six months of operation

All that remains now is the base it sat on and the surrounding concrete structure

Some would say it’s poignant as we found a poorly slowworm in the structure:

When we got back, Bill & Jane had moored in front of us with Lazybones.  We hadn’t seen them since they left Châlons-en-Champagne in May when the canals were reopened as part of the déconfinement process.  They were heading to the next water point as they were desperately short of water but waited until we returned so we could all have a catch up.  As they left, Jane gave us a jar of this year’s pickled walnuts and also a couple of dishcloths she had knitted.

Bill & Jane getting ready to leave

Later in the afternoon Guy & Ardon appeared on Vindi and moored up next to us; we hadn’t seen them since Châlons either.  We sat outside drinking too much for too long, but it was good to swap the stories of our travels so far this year.

Vindi moored for the night

On Wednesday we didn’t move but saw two boats on the move: Bill & Jane on Lazybones and Guy & Ardon on Vindi.

Oh, and that walk?  According to our walkmeter apps it was just over 12kms so not the six or nine we were expecting 😉