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Monday night in the middle of nowhere
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We had a long day ahead on Sunday but couldn’t start too
early as the locks on the first part of the journey didn’t open until 9.00am on
Sundays: at least it meant we didn’t have to set an alarm. Before I start
talking about the day, I must apologise for leaving a paragraph out of the last
entry. I’d mentioned that Cambrai didn’t
live up to our expectations, but I’d omitted to say why.
I’d alluded to the fact that the town was far busier and
that it didn’t have peaceful traffic-free squares that we’d expected. What I’d forgotten to mention was that Lauren
and our grandson Ellis were due to be staying with us for a few days, together
with her good friend Emily, while we were in Cambrai. With the current travel restrictions their
trip had to be cancelled and for all these reasons we decided not to stay in
Cambrai more than one night.
To reach the River Somme we first have to negotiate
stretches of two large waterways which would be busy with freight traffic and with
no real moorings for pleasure boats. To
get to the first, the Canal de la Sensée, we had to travel eight miles down the
first navigable section of the River Escaut which starts at Cambrai. This was essentially the same as the Canal de
St-Quentin that finishes at Cambrai in that the locks were only large enough
for Freycinet boats (39m) but it was a canalised river. For that reason, it was quite bendy which was
a welcome change from the long straights we’ve encountered recently on some of
these northern canals.
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On the canalised River Escaut
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Around the village of Eswars we passed over 200 coot in the
water which was an amazing sight. I
doubt we’ve seen more than 10 at once before.
I counted the first 100 and soon realised that wasn’t quite half of the
ones we could see, hence the estimate of over 200.
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Passing the village of Eswars
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We had to hand in our télécommande at the last lock on the River Escaut as the VHF radio has to be used to call up the locks on the larger
waterways.
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Leaving the last lock
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Just after leaving that lock, we passed a commercial which
made us realise we’d not seen a boat on the move for four days; this, of
course, was all about to change. Before
joining the Canal de la Sensée we went through Estron which has a large port
called le Basin Rond. It was full of
pleasure cruisers along one side and larger, mainly residential, boats along
the other.
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Entering Basin Rond
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Leaving Basin Rond
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The Basin Rond was originally part of the Canal de la Sensée
but was bypassed when the canal was deepened and widened in 1968 and is now a
quiet backwater We soon arrived at the current
junction with the Canal de la Sensée which is part of a major link for boats up
to 140m long by 11m wide between Dunkerque and Antwerp on the Scheldt, as
l’Escaut is known in Belgium and Holland.
I know we encountered even larger boats on the Seine last year, but it’s been
a while since we’ve met anything larger than the 39m commercials. That’s why we set out on a Sunday as there should
have been fewer boats on the move.
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About to join the Canal de la Sensée
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We had about nine miles to travel westwards on this canal
before we reached the junction with the Canal du Nord where we would start
heading south. The canal was lovely and
wide, so we had no worries about meeting large boats.
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The wide Canal de la Sensée |
The first boat we met was a Freycinet péniche with an even larger one attached to the front making 86m in total (the lengths have to be clearly visible
on the side). We remembered then that a
great many of the boats we’ve seen on the larger rivers have been made up of
two or three barges strapped together.
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Longer boats than we’ve been used to this year
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The kilometre posts on the Canal de la Sensée were the
largest we’ve come across and there was no danger of missing them. Each half kilometre
was indicated by a large black cross.
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With fishermen to give some scale
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After that first boat, they started passing by at seemingly
regular intervals which was contrary to our expectations as it was a Sunday. With
no locks until we reached the junction where we were turning south it didn’t
take long to cover the eight miles. As we approached the junction with the Canal du Nord to find somewhere to moor for lunch we could see some
real big boys moored on the far side:
The junction is the top end of the Canal du Nord whose locks are
a strange size, 91m x 5.75m, which would be far too small for those two boats in
the picture above so they would be staying on the Canal de la Sensée. The Canal
du Nord is 95km long and provides an important link between the Paris - Seine
basin and the large waterways of northern France and Belgium. It’s a relatively new canal as building wasn’t
started until 1910 but with the intervening world wars it wasn't completed until 1968. It was built to
replace the Canal de St Quentin (the one we’ve just come up) as it wasn’t
coping with the volume of traffic. Because
it wasn’t constructed to today’s high capacity standards, the Canal du Nord
itself is now being replaced by the Seine-Nord Europe canal which is due to
open at the end of this decade.
We turned onto the Canal du Nord and managed to moor at the
end of a long line of moored commercials so we could have lunch. A little car pulled up on the towpath and was
staring at us, so I went out to see if there was an issue with where we were
moored. There wasn’t a problem, the old
couple just wanted to see our boat as they were retired bargees and had seen us
arriving from where they lived on the other side of the canal so drove around to get a better look.
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Moored for lunch
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Just before we’d turned off the Sensée, a police launch
came extremely fast towards us and we thought they were going to board us; unlike many people we know we’ve
managed to avoid the experience so far.
They came to a stop but just waved and put their thumbs up. Even though they’d stopped, their wake was
still large and soon had us rocking all over the place. It reminded us of Paris where the fast RIBs and
launches cause far more issues with their wakes than the big boats.As we set off after lunch and got past the long line of
moored commercials, we could smell a barbecue and realised that the police
launch was moored by the bank and the three gendarmes and their families were tucking into lunch on some picnic tables.
It was then that we encountered our first lock; most of the
locks on this canal are between six and eight metres deep which is clearly
quite an obstacle for low boats like ours.
Most deep locks we’ve been through have either had poles to slide ropes
up as the boat rises or floating bollards that rise with you. We didn’t have such luxury here and Karen had
to negotiate stepped bollards which take a bit of getting used to.
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Stepped bollards in the lock sides |
The operation goes like this. We get into the lock then Karen loops a line over the
lowest bollard. Once the boat has risen enough
that she can reach the next bollard, she loops a second line over that one and
then releases the first line. After the second bollard, Karen has to climb onto the roof to reach the next one. This is repeated
several times and she ends up using four bollards on locks of the depth of
these. All the while, by following Karen's hand signals I alternate between forward, neutral and reverse in order to keep the boat aligned with the next bollard.
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Karen checking out how to use the stepped bollards
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Another unusual thing about these locks is that the rear
gate is a guillotine which disconcertingly started coming down before we managed
to get the boat secure.
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Guillotine on its way down
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A third thing is that they utilise side ponds where water
is collected as the lock empties until the pond and lock water levels are equal,
the remainder of the water in the lock then drains out as normal. The water saved in the pond is then used to start
filling the lock when it needs to be filled again rather than taking a complete
lockful from the pound above.
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Side pond for water saving
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The canal isn’t as wide as the Canal de la Sensée but still
wider than we’ve been used to. With
sloping sides it’s also very difficult to find somewhere to moor.
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The Canal du Nord
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We moored for the night at Marquion where there was a rowing
club pontoon. The rowing club was all
locked up so we felt that we would be fine mooring there overnight.
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On the rowing club pontoon
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Lorry and coach park on the opposite side
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We lost count of the number of commercials we saw during
the day and we don’t think we upset anyone as they all waved at us.On Sunday we cruised 23 miles down five and up one lock. When
I entered up the boat log, I realised that that was our longest day cruising in
France. We’d cruised 23 miles once
before, on the River Saône, but only went through two locks that day.
We heard the first trucks leaving the lorry park at five on
Monday morning and boats started coming through from 6.30. We were going to set
off early anyway as we wanted to get to the summit and through the long tunnel
before we moored up for the day. The
Canal du Nord is somewhat unusual as it has two summits; we won’t be venturing
up the second summit just yet as we’ll be exploring the River Somme for a while. The junction with the Somme is before the canal
starts climbing to the second summit.
Our overnight mooring was great as we could see for nearly
four kilometres behind us which meant we would be sure we could stet off
without getting in the way of any oncoming commercials. Before setting off, Karen went through a new
plan for how she would use the ropes in the locks. It all seemed to make sense and that was the approach
she adopted, without mishap, at all six locks of the day.
As we were moored almost in front of the first lock, I
called up on the VHF radio before untying.
The éclusier gave a positive response immediately, raised the guillotine
and set the light to green. As we
approached each of the other locks, a commercial came out, so the lock was
ready for us straight away. At the top of each lock another commercial would be
waiting to come in and we also saw several on the intervening pounds, so it was
a busy boat day.
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Perfect timing approaching a lock
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As we’ve found before, some éclusiers respond to radio messages
and others don’t. It always worries us when
they don’t as we’re then not sure if we’ve been understood but they obviously
did today as all the locks were quickly set for us. As each lock had exactly the same design even down to the bollards being in the same places, we soon got into a rhythm as we went up each one. Karen alternating her lines whilst I alternated between forward, neural and reverse.Most of the canal runs through the typically flat plains of
this part of France, but there were the occasional cuttings which gave welcome relief
from the sun.
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Narrow section without the traditional sloping sides
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Our aim was to get through the 2¾ mile long Ruyaulcourt
tunnel before we moored up for the day.
The tunnel is one-way for the first mile which is controlled by traffic
lights. There is then a ¾ mile two-way section in the middle where boats can pass each other. The final mile is again one-way and
controlled by lights. As luck would have it, we passed a pusher and its barge in
the middle and neither we, nor they, had to stop to enter our respective final
sections. We were also fortunate in that
we didn’t have to wait before going into the tunnel in the first place.
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Approaching the northern portal |
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Passing in the two-way centre section |
His wake didn’t affect us too much, but we’ve friends whose
bows moved out quite violently from the side after passing a boat in the
tunnel. They were just able to get it
under control and bring it out of the path of another boat coming towards them
just in time.
About 30 minutes after passing through the tunnel we moored
in a winding hole that had bollards along one side. Mooring is not normally allowed in winding
holes, but we felt justified as there were bollards there and we couldn’t
imagine why a large boat would be winding in such a remote spot.
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A quiet mooring for Monday night
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After lunch we went for a circular walk taking in a couple
of miles of the canal towpath and then around the village of Manancourt before
returning along a quiet country road.
Other than saying the village was stretched out there was nothing to
really report other than it had 13 pedestrian crossings, befitting of a long
narrow village I suppose. We spent the rest of the day relaxing and feeling rather
grateful that those couple of days had come and gone without any problems. Commercials continued to pass us during the
evening and the last one was made up of two 85m long barges and would clearly
be too long for the locks on this canal but not the Seine where it probably
came from. They must have decoupled the
barges at the shorter locks in a similar way to the old working boats and their
butties on the UK canals.
On Monday we cruised 16 miles up six locks through one tunnel
and all is now set for going down a few locks and then turning off onto the Somme tomorrow.
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