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| Karen and her prize bollard |
It looked like another day of rain on Friday, so it was on with the wet weather gear to have a look around Péronne which is a town on a small rise surrounded by lakes formed by the Somme. Some of the lakes had hortillonnages or floating market gardens, but not to the extent that we saw in Amiens. Péronne was another town that was badly damaged during WWI including many of the historic monuments like the castle and the city walls.
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| The restored castle (château de Péronne) |
The castle in its current form dates from the 13th century although there were fortifications in the same spot for many centuries before. After the damage suffered in WWI it has been faithfully restored and now houses a WWI museum. The moat has been converted to public gardens as a place of peace and were designed by two landscapers, one from the Republic of Ireland and the other from Northern Ireland. As they are in the old moat, they are hidden from street level and public view giving a sense of solitude as we wandered around. We were the only ones there in the rain, but they must be a lovely place to visit on a sunny day.
We saw plenty of other examples of the city walls and in
places the moat was still in water.
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| Not a moat but one of the many arms of the Somme running around town |
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| Entrance to the remains of a fort |
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| Porte de Bretagne built in the 17th century |
The gates like the Porte de Bretagne used to have drawbridges across the moat. Inside the gatehouse we could see part of the drawbridge operating gear and took a while to understand how it worked.
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| Wheels on the axle that used to draw the bridge |
Walking through town we came across an old Michelin road sign showing distances to WWI cemeteries. Apart from restaurant guides the Michelin tyre company became famous for their road guides and road signs from the beginning of the 20th century when cars first appeared. They also produced guides to the WWI battlefields and cemeteries hence the old sign near the high street.
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| The sign would have been erected soon after the end of the war |
It was still raining when we got home so had an early lunch before setting off for the afternoon. You may wonder why we were cruising in the rain, but it was all part of the plan. We’d decided to cover as much of the Canal du Nord as we could over a weekend as we’d assumed there would be fewer commercials around so using the locks would be less fraught. While I got the boat ready to leave, Karen walked down to the end of the quay which was on a bend so she could check if any boats were coming our way down the long straight. All was clear so off we went.
The first lock was only a mile away so after a few minutes
we radioed ahead on the channel for the lock to let them know who we were,
where we were and that we wanted to go up.
Just like when we came down the northern section of the canal, there was
no response. Of course, this puts us
immediately on edge. Have they heard or
not? Will it hassle them if we call them
again? Is the radio working? We arrived in sight of the lock and could see a
single red light; if the lock was being set for us there would be a single
green light as well as the red. We
hovered a good distance away and waited awhile. We were about to give in and use the radio again
when we saw a boat was entering the lock from above. so we relaxed and waited
until it came down.
We were expecting just a single green light to indicate we
could enter when the boat was clear, but all the lights went out instead. I guessed this meant a boat was behind us and
sure enough one had caught up so, as they have priority, I let him pass and a
single green light came as soon as he was alongside us to allow him in. As he was an 88 metre boat there wasn’t room
for us in the lock with him.
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| One leaving the lock and the other going in |
The guy on the boat acknowledged us for waiting and called us on channel 10 (a boat to boat channel) to explain what was happening. Well, he explained but we didn’t quite understand. We understood that another boat was coming down after he’d gone up, but we would be clear to go up afterwards or he may have meant that there was another boat coming. After a lot of embarrassment, as there was clearly one important word he was using that we didn’t understand, we said our goodbyes.
After watching two more lock operations we got ready to go
in again and the same thing happened as another commercial came into view. Luckily, he was only 39 metres long so there
was room for us to go in with him. We
had a brief radio conversation and he was more than happy for us to go with
him, either behind or in front. I opted
for behind him and as he came alongside, found it really difficult to get out
of his way because the swell from the boat that had just left the lock was
pushing us away from the bank. That was just the sort of situation why some people have bow thrusters fitted.
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| He got past without us hitting him |
The lock was only four metres deep which was half the depth we’d got used when we were on the northern section of the canal so it meant Karen should be able to get her line over a bollard at the top rather than using the stepped bollards that are in the side of the deeper locks. As we were sharing a lock, we both hoped nothing went wrong and I was really proud of Karen as she just managed to loop her line over the bollard after precariously standing on tiptoes on the roof.
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| Tied up securely and rising |
Of course, the guy in the commercial had just lent out of his cabin and with a casual flick had thrown his line up and over his bollard. Mind you he was higher up than us so not quite in Karen’s league!
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| Not so easy to get our loop over large bollards when we're at the bottom of the lock |
The péniche was empty and too fast for us so soon left us behind which meant there was no way we were going to share the next lock as it was five miles or so away. As with Thursday there seemed to be a constant stream of boats coming towards us and we kidded ourselves that they were getting out of our way so we could have an easy weekend.
The second lock went a lot smoother and we only had to wait
for a boat to come down. The whole
operation was almost flawless other than when the boat left, we were facing a
red and green light and not a single green that meant we would be allowed
in. We waited for nearly ten minutes
with an empty lock in front of us and were just about to radio again when the
red light was extinguished, and we were free to go. This rather brought home how the locking
operation relies on CCTV as one control room will cover several locks remotely
and no doubt little boats like us can get easily overlooked.
Fortunately, we only had the two locks and the rest of the
journey was uneventful if rather wet. Nearing
the end of the cruise we went past the junction with the Canal de la Somme.
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| Canal de la Somme goes off to the left |
The original Canal de la Somme stretched 156 kilometres from the Saint-Quentin canal at Saint-Simon in the east down to the sea at Saint-Valéry-sur-Somme. There are four sections to the canal, the first two being the maritime canal up to Abbeville and then the long section to the Canal du Nord at Péronne. We covered both of these in September. The third section is now shared with the Canal du Nord and is that which we cruised today. The fourth, 16-kilometre section, was closed in 2006 and ran from this junction to Saint-Simon as shown by the dotted line on the map below.
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| Our long-winded journey from Saint-Simon |
Leaving Saint-Simon (blue flag) we went north up the Saint-Quentin, then west along the Canal de la Sensée then south down the Canal du Nord before going down and back up the Canal de la Somme to re-join the Canal du Nord and arriving 16 kilometres from where we were on 29th August.
We moored for the day at some bollards near the village of Nesle
and had to put the heating on in order to dry out our wet weather gear
including Buddy’s coat. He still just
won’t go inside the boat when we’re outside however hard it’s raining. We both felt that this section of the Canal du Nord was far more picturesque than the northern section but with rain nearly all day it wasn't possible to get any decent pictures of the surrounding landscape.
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| Moored at Nesle |
Checking our emails later we found that we've had 20% of our French boat licence fee refunded for the three months we were unable to cruise due to confinement. We have to admit we weren't expecting it, especially as it wasn't the fault of VNF. At just over half the cost of a CRT boat licence in the UK we find it incredibly reasonable even before a 20% rebate.
On Friday we cruised 13 miles up two locks.
Fortunately for us Saturday’s forecast rain never arrived so we had a dry cruise which was a welcome relief from Friday. Before we left, we had a good walk along the canal for a few kilometres with the idea of turning it into a circular walk by taking in a village on the way back. When we reached the road that ran into the village it didn’t look particularly inviting as there was quite a bit of traffic and no verge to speak of to walk along. We returned along the towpath which was better for Buddy anyway as he could be off his lead.
We had one lock to go up before we reached the summit. Unusually the Canal du Nord has two summits
this one being the second or southern one.
We were just going to set off but stopped as a commercial came around
the corner heading our way. We gave him
ten minutes or so to get ahead and into the lock before trying again. This time we were lucky and unlike yesterday
we also received responses each time we radioed ahead for locks to be operated
for us which reduced our stress levels somewhat. A commercial was waiting for us to come out
of the first lock. Can you see what’s unusual
about what happened from the picture below?
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| Commercial waiting for us to leave |
If you're a boater you probably noticed I was on the wrong side of the other boat. I’d made the right decision and went the ‘wrong’ side of him so that he could be perfectly lined up to go straight into the lock after we'd emerged. The guy driving was really appreciative, and his wife was holding up their little dog to show us they had one as well as us. A bit different to when I didn’t go the ‘wrong’ side a month ago which made the guy grumpy; mind you his wife had been happy and smiley as if to say he was just being grumpy.
We moored for lunch at a place called Port d’Ércheu but
were surprised it had a name on the map as it was a couple of miles from the nearest
village and would only fit a couple of boats our size.
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| Lunch at Port d'Ércheu |
As you can see, Buddy was immediately flat out on the grass by the far end of the boat, and we also had a pile of mangelwurzels to look at. Soon after setting off again we went through the tunnel on the summit. It was only just over a kilometre long and, as it wasn’t wide enough for two-way traffic, it was controlled by traffic lights. We didn’t have to wait too long while a commercial made its way through and the green light came on for us to proceed.
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| Entering the north portal of the Panneterie tunnel |
Like other French tunnels it was lit but the lighting in this one was so poor that the lights might just as well have been left off. It did give us the feeling of driving through a UK tunnel as we had to have our headlight on. The tunnel originally had a towing path either side, but one has been half taken up and as it was nearly down to the water level it was breaking up in several places where it’d been hit by boats.
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| Dangerous looking towing path |
Most commercials seem to be carrying grain, sand, gravel or coal but we passed one soon after the tunnel with a different cargo:
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| Scrap metal boat |
We moored for the night by some grain silos at a place
called Noyon which, coincidentally, we’d visited two years ago.
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| The silos at Noyon |
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| The view the other way was better |
I said coincidentally because we’d stopped near this spot on the second day of our six-week road trip through France to Tuscany just over two years ago. The French bit of the trip had been exploratory as we were investigating the canals before we brought the boat over in the following Spring. We’d travelled on country roads until we'd reached Italy and had stopped for lunch at Noyon and a walk along the canal. While I was securing the boat after our cruise, Karen had walked Buddy along to the spot where we’d parked by the canal. He certainly looks like he remembered that we’d parked at the bottom of these steps.
We’d deliberately cruised on a Saturday as we’d hoped there wouldn’t be many commercials on the move. Even though it was quieter than Friday it was still quite busy, and we soon lost count. Karen pointed out that the canal is closing in a week for a week for some maintenance works so maybe that was making it busier. In the end it was a stress-free day, all the locks behaved and we didn’t get into any difficulties.
On Saturday we cruised 14 miles up one lock, down two and
through one tunnel.
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