After Karen potted up some winter pansies on Saturday morning, we left Long hoping to get to Samara before lunch so there’d be time to visit the archaeological and historical park there during the afternoon. Karen and Buddy started off by walking and, as we were now going upstream, I found it quite a struggle keeping up with them whereas the other day, when we were going downstream, I was struggling to go slow enough for them.
Talking with the éclusier at the first lock we realised we
wouldn’t make it through the second by lunchtime so agreed to stop before the
lock and he would see us through at two o’clock. After passing three péniches that were in
various stages of conversion to liveaboards we had another reminder that we
were now going upstream.
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| Red and green channel markers |
As we are now going upstream the right bank is on our left (port side) and the left bank is on our right (starboard side). Of course, looking at the picture above, the right bank is on the right and the left bank is on the left. The green and red buoys mark the channel to follow so that boats don’t head off down to the weir on the left (or right going upstream). A buoy or row of buoys of a single colour will indicate that there is an obstruction or other reason that boats must keep to the side indicated by the colour depending on whether they are going upstream or downstream. So when we came down we had to keep to the left of red buoys which were on our right as well as on the right bank. Coming back, we keep to the right of the red buoys even though they are on our left but on the right bank.
If you bothered to read that paragraph, then I’m sorry, but
it tickles me. Seriously it does explain
why boats have a port and a starboard side rather than a left and a right so
that confusion is avoided. It reminds me
of one of the few things I learnt at school, if indeed it were true. The majority of humans are right-handed and
before rudders were invented boats were steered by an oar on the right
(starboard) side at the back. Because of this, boats would generally dock at
ports along their left side which is why the left side is called the port side.
We did indeed arrive at the second lock during the
lunchtime shutdown so stopped where the éclusier had said there was a mooring
and had ours as well.
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| Below the lock at Picquigny for lunch |
Both locks were in use at Picquigny making it into a staircase. I haven’t quite worked out why sometimes the bottom locks are used and sometimes they aren’t It must be related to the water level in the river and my reasoning leads me to believe two are used when the levels are low. If only the top lock is in use, then there may be a danger that deep-draughted boats may hit or scrape the cill (the base the bottom gates rest on) as they enter. By using the lower lock, boats are then raised to a safe level before entering the top one. If you, the reader, have a better suggestion or know the definitive answer then I’d be glad to hear it.
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| Rising up the bottom lock of the Picquigny staircase |
It wasn’t long before we were mooring up at Samara. The change in the weather is amazing; we chose to moor here last week so that we could be in the shade. This time, because it was cloudy, the trees would just mean the evening would arrive earlier.
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| Samara on Saturday evening |
I spent much of the afternoon looking around the archaeological park. As well as a large exhibition hall, there were many exhibits outside and also a maze and an extensive arboretum. It was clearly an educational establishment too as there were a few classrooms, two of which had lectures in progress. There were also a couple of groups of schoolchildren touring the park. Both the lectures and the presence of schoolchildren surprised me as it was a Saturday.
The park aims to show how civilisation and construction of houses changed through the different ages of man. Most exhibits were based on archaeological evidence uncovered locally in the Picardy region. Guides were present in the buildings to explain how they were constructed and to also provide more information on the associated time period. As we were in the Somme there was also an interesting section on the development of peat digging and how it shaped the area from the 1700s.
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| Clockwise (not chronologically) from top left: Upper Palaeolithic; Bronze Age; peat cutter; Neolithic; Bronze Age; Iron Age |
Later in the afternoon we had a video call to go through
the snail mail that Jo had recently picked up for us. It’s irritating that in this day and age we
still seem to get physical mail even though we try to insist on electronic
communication. One item was a French
speeding fine and our immediate reaction was that it was from when we last came
back to the UK. Travelling through a
Champagne village early in the morning we thought we’d been flashed by a speed
camera. On the return journey we saw
that it wasn’t a speed camera but a mirror on a pole to aid exit from a private
driveway. We must have caught the rising
sun’s reflection in the mirror and mistaken it for a camera flash so weren’t expecting
to receive a penalty notice.
Looking closer at the details on the penalty notice we realised it related to a different day and in the evening, not the morning. It turned out to be the day Karen had been driving when we’d been to see Paul & Sue on their boat when they were moored at Châlons-en-Champagne. We’d heard that France have tightened up on their speeding margins and we’d been clocked at 92kph in a 90kph limit!
The
rest of the mail was financial services related which is so annoying as that is
one industry that should know how to cut costs.
If they ceased physical communication it would save them a fortune some
of which could also be passed on to customers.
On Saturday we cruised 11 miles up two locks.
It was too windy to cruise on Sunday morning, so we busied ourselves indoors until it subsided which it had by about midday so off we went. The first lock was only a couple of miles away so we knew that for the second day running we would arrive during the lunch break. Karen & Buddy walked to the lock while I took the boat.
After mooring up and having lunch we called for an éclusier
and were told we may have to wait a little longer than the standard maximum of 20
minutes as the local guy was on another task.
As it was, we only had to wait half an hour and we were soon going up the
lock. To our surprise a boat was waiting
to come down – this was the first boat we’d seen on the move for 12 days and we
almost felt a bit put out that there were other people around.
As the wind had died completely down and there didn’t seem
much chance of rain we decided to push on to Amiens for the night and we had
the same éclusier for the other two locks on the trip. He was extremely friendly and chatty but,
unusually for a young guy, had hardly any English which was great as it meant
the conversation had to be in French. He
was so pleasant that it didn’t feel embarrassing to make mistakes or be
corrected.
The second lock was about three miles from Amiens, so Karen
and Buddy got off at the top and walked to the centre of town where we knew
there was somewhere easy to pick them up before the final lock. For some reason the lock took just over 30
minutes to fill and the last lock took a little over 20 minutes so added about 45 minutes to the journey.
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| Coming into Amiens |
The first mooring spot was above the lock in Amiens and there was no room as there were already two boats tied up. The other mooring spot was at the opposite end of town and that was busy too with a restaurant boat, a hotel boat and a sea cruiser already there. We squeezed in at the end but it meant we would have to get on and off at the front of the boat rather than the back.
After we moored up, two guys got off the sea cruiser and came up for a chat. They had brought the boat over from London a couple of months ago and were making their way down to the Med but weren’t sure where to head after that. We recognised the boat but just couldn’t place where we’d seen them before until we all recounted where we had been over the last few weeks. In the end the penny dropped, and it was in the port at Cambrai where we’d seen a bride arrive by boat and come ashore next to their boat.
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| Moored at Amiens for Sunday night |
Looking back at our pictures for the last three weeks we realised how fortunate we’d been to have travelled down the length of the Somme in wall to wall sunshine even if the last three days of the journey back have been either grey, wet or windy.
On Sunday we cruised eight miles up three locks.
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