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| Our new mooring on Sunday |
Buddy’s favourite stretch of
our river Marne walk is where the path is particularly sandy and soft. He loves to madly dash backwards and forwards
along the entire length as we make our way along. The sand clearly appeals to
him as he also likes to roll around in it especially after having gone into the
river for a drink or to cool down. We
always worry that he’s going to crash into us as he races along but that wasn’t
the issue on Thursday afternoon. While
making one of his sudden sharp turns at one end he started yelping and keeping
his front left paw off the ground. He
wasn’t keen on us checking for thorns or similar and as he was in a lot of pain,
I went back to the port to fetch the car and bring it to the closest point to
where the accident happened. Karen and
Buddy slowly made their way to meet me, and we soon had him back on the boat
and resting. We decided that if he was still
keeping his paw off the ground on Friday then I would take him to the vets, so I
quickly learnt the vocabulary for words like hurt and paw. Although he wouldn’t put his full weight on
it on Friday morning, he wanted to walk but we restricted him to calls of
nature only. As it seemed to be a sprain
rather than anything broken, I didn’t take him to the vets and by Saturday
evening there was no sign of a limp.
There was excitement amongst
the port community later on Thursday as the first pleasure boat we have seen
this year came up the town lock and pulled in.
The town lock is a control point where there’s always an éclusier
present to take details of boats as they go through and their
destinations. This particular boat had
been asked to pull in as their plan on going down the canal entre Champagne et
Bourgogne wouldn’t work as it was closed for maintenance for the next couple of
months. They needed to replan their
journey and let the éclusiers know their chosen new route. They were a youngish Dutch couple with a
couple of children headed down to the south of France for the summer.
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| Our overnight visitor in the port |
When I say excitement in the
port it really means all the men gather to offer to take lines but really it’s to
be nosey about the new arrivals. It was
a lovely old boat and had spud legs which meant it didn’t have to tie to the bank;
they just drop the hydraulic legs onto the bottom of the canal. This meant none of the guys could take a line
for them!Our little chapter of errors
in the last blog update continued for another couple of days and not just the
issue of Buddy’s sprained ankle. Guy
popped by the boat to see if everything was OK as he had seen Karen rummaging
in a rubbish bin in the town. She had gone
to the small supermarket in the centre of town to get a couple of things and on
her way home noticed she didn’t have her phone, so she was retracing her steps
to try and find it. She had put some
rubbish in the bin hence the need to check she hadn’t thrown it in there by
mistake. She couldn’t find it in the bin
so she walked back into the supermarket where a cashier recognised her and called
her over to the till. Karen had used her
phone to pay, put it down to pack away her shopping, and had forgotten to pick
it up. When she got back, we went to the
local garden centre to get some spring flowers and were surprised to find it
was closed. Three months back in the UK
had wiped from our memory that most places are closed for two hours at
lunchtime. This fact coupled with the
curfew is probably why shops are so busy: people cramming their shopping time
into shortened windows.
I won’t go into detail about
the other mishaps just to mention that, 1) we had to buy the second HDMI/VGA converter
in a week, 2) it took me three attempts to buy the right type of electric plug and 3) it took Amazon five attempts to
deliver the QWERTY UK wireless keyboard but at least it arrived.
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| Final goodbye to our passerelle on our last walk before we left on Sunday |
After a day of nothing going
wrong on Saturday, we finally set off late on Sunday morning heading south-east
down the canal latéral à la Marne. This
67-kilometre-long canal, as its name implies, runs parallel to the river
Marne. It was opened in 1846 to bypass
the river that was difficult to navigate upstream of Épernay and ends at a
junction with the canal de la Marne au Rhin at Vitry-le-François. In the late 19th century, the locks were
extended to the Freycinet dimensions which became the standard for all the
smaller canals in France, accommodating boats of 39 metres in length with a
beam of 5.20 metres. There are 15 locks
on the canal that give a total rise of 34 metres. About a quarter of the way down from Épernay the canal connects with the canal de l’Aisne à la Marne which we have been up a few times to Reims and beyond. Châlons-en-Champagne is about halfway along
the canal, so we have about 32 kilometres to travel until we join the next canal.
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| The canal latéral à la Marne |
We left to the sound of many
horns blasting from other boats and even Buddy’s friend Fonz was on the front
of his boat wondering where Buddy was off to.  |
| Buddy & Fonz the Jack Russell had become good friends during their stay at the port |
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| Buddy immediately took up his usual spot on the back deck. |
As we left the port and joined
the main canal we turned left around the far side of the island:
A heron even came over the
heronry to wish us farewell:
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| Goodbye Châlons and the missing passerelle |
This canal has kilometre
stones along its length, and we have found and taken pictures of nearly all of
them, missing just a handful. I realised
that one of the ones we were missing should be on our route, so we kept an eye
out for it. Karen had got off the boat
to give Buddy a walk and also to find the odd fallen branch to put on the roof to
keep our log store stocked up. I think
she was also doing it to make sure I was kept busy sawing while she works
during the week!The kilometre stones seem to
be from three different eras. We have
found some that are so weathered that they are probably original. Many are more recent, and I have read they were
installed during the first half of the 1900s and there are also a few, especially around Châlons-en-Champagne, that are very modern looking.
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| One of the modern looking stones |
We did find the one we were missing,
and it wasn’t surprising we’d missed it before because it was a metal flange in
railings under a bridge.  |
| Karen up close and personal with pk27 with Buddy looking bored |
After a few miles we were approaching
our first and only lock of the day. For the
new or occasional reader who isn’t familiar with the locks on this canal they
are all automatic and I’ll cover their operation over the next couple of
paragraphs. On this particular canal the
boater twists a pole hanging over the cut 100 to 200 metre before the lock. To be on the safe side Karen normally stands
at the front to perform the twist which gives me a chance to also do it from the back if the
twist hasn’t registered.  |
| Pole having been twisted |
Before the pole is twisted a
solitary red light will be shown by the lock (two red lights indicate the lock
is out of action). We know if the twist
has been registered as an orange light starts flashing beside the red light. As soon as the lock is being set then the
orange light goes out and a red and green light are shown. If no green light appears it usually means
the lock is being operated in the opposite direction and a longer wait is
required for the other boat to clear.
Once the lock is set and the gates are opened the red light goes out
leaving just the green one meaning it is safe to enter. Unlike most locks in the UK, boaters don’t
tend to get off their boats at the locks and all operations are carried out
from the boat. Once we are in and secure
then the next step is to set the remainder of the operation in progress. On this canal this is done by one of us pushing
up a blue rod set into the lock side.  |
| Karen closer to the rod so her turn to push it up |
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| The rods |
Making the boat secure is also
different to the method usually employed in the UK as we stay on the boat. When going up the locks Karen stands at the
front and hooks the loop at the end of a line over a bollard by lifting it up
on a boat hook. Fortunately, the lock
was relatively shallow at 2.4 metres so she was able to do this without having
to clamber onto the roof. After hooking
the loop over a bollard she then ties the line off on a couple of bollards on
the boat. I then put the boat in forward
gear with the tiller arm turned to the wall thus keeping the rope taught and the
boat up against the wall. We have zigzag
fenders hanging down towards the rear to avoid damaging the boat as it
ascends. A sharp eye has to be kept out
in case the lock sides are irregular or worn as the zigzag fender could be
caught on a protuberance thus putting the boat in danger of capsizing.  |
| Rear zigzag fender to keep the boat away from the lock sides |
After another mile or so we
moored up outside a small village called Chepy where we knew there were three
bollards that we could use. Again, for
new readers, we have to tie to bollards because the standard metal stakes that
we would normally knock in would be pulled out as soon as a commercial passed.  |
| Buddy happy to be relaxing in the sun at our Chepy mooring |
As Karen said on her call to
her mum later in the evening, ‘no one would know if we broke the curfew here’.We cruised just over five
miles on Sunday up one lock. Oh, and apologies if the formatting is a bit strange as my enter key still isn't working.
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