Canal de l’Aisne à la Marne, Canal latéral à la Marne, Canal entre Champagne et Bourgogne:
Ropy run to Reims, Lynn and Kim for lunch, close but no champagne at Billy-le-Grande, super-chaud in Chaussée, stranded in Orconte
Berry-au-Bac to Sillery port (10km from Reims)
For today’s 14 locks, we’d be experiencing a different automatic lock system – one that’s activated by twisting a perche, or rod, that’s suspended from a gallows-like contraption over the river.
Wind and rain on the Canal de Lens, Arnaud and Arnaud at Arleux, less-than-loquacious lock-keepers, biking in Hermies, tripartite tunnel at Ruyancourt, montant vs avalant, Péronne market and double-mooring Dutchmen in the port de plaisance
Béthune to Courriéres (Canal de Lens)
We woke up to rain, strong wind and the threat of worse to come. Pessimist that I am, I feared that Karanja would be blown all over the place, but my Ancient Mariner is made of sterner stuff and insisted we set off. In fact, it he found it no problem to navigate in winds gusting at up to 45 km/h.
Just one lock today – Cuinchy – again different from the three we came through yesterday. Plus, this was the first lock we’d had to share: we’d come in behind an enormous commercial double-barge. I climbed my first green and slimy lock ladder to get the aft rope around the bollard indicated by M. Éclusier.
Then, just as the lock finished filling, Mother Nature sent a nasty rain-squall to dash my pride and bring me back to a more accurate understanding of my place in the universe.
Overnight at an halte nautique at Courriéres, on the Canal de Lens. An halte nautique, by the way, can be no more than a floating pontoon, sometimes just big enough for one or two boats like us. And we are the exception – almost all the vessels we’re seeing are huge commercial barges; often, they’re double, the rear one pushing the one in front.
Most of them have a car on the back; some are adorned with potted flowering plants. Their drivers are extremely polite, too, at least in this part of the country; often, they’ll slow down as they pass a tiddler like us, so as to minimise their wake, and they’ll always wave.
Courriéres (Canal de Lens) to Arleux
Three locks today – Douais, Courchelettes and Goeulzin – and a few new experiences.
Once again without internet, we trudged into Arleux in search of a telecomms shop. Nothing like it in this little village, but there was a great little bar where the two charming Arnauds called us a cab to the nearest Bouygues, at Sin-le-Noble.
It cost over €60 for cabbie Eric’s aller-retour; Roy was gloomy to say the least. We’ve supposedly used 2G of data in one day, though just on email, basic internet searches and un petit peu de Facebook. Impossible, right? Putain!
Arleux to Hermies
Up early and braced to go through seven locks – Arleux, Palleul, Marqion, two at Sains-lés Marquion, Moeuvres, and two at Graincourt-lès-Havrincourt. Try saying that last one over the VHF radio as you approach the lock.
That’s my job, by the way – much as I detested doing the RYA VHF radio course at Bysham Abbey last summer on the Thames. As we approach each lock, I’ve got to say, for example:
“Écluse (lock) Arleux, Écluse Arleux, c’est Karanja, bateau Karanja, plaisanciér (pleasure boat), montant (or avalant, depending whether we’re heading upstream or downstream), je suis à 5 (or whatever) kilometres distance. Over.”
They may or may not answer. If they do, I may or may not understand them. No matter – they know we’re coming, and everything seems to happen as it should.
Hermies to Péronne
A big day, indeed! – starting with Ruyancourt Tunnel, over 4km kilometres long and divided into three sections. The first is one-way, the second two-way and the third one-way. If the light is green at the end of the first section, you of course go. If it’s red – and for us it was – you pull up to the side, attach a rope to a bollard and wait.
As two monster barges approached and passed us, it took our combined strength to keep Karanja’s bow against the side.
Montant vs Avalant #101
After that came four locks in quick succession – but now, for the first time, we were going downstream (avalant) – rather than upstream (montant) and had to learn new tricks.
For the uninitiated:
* When you’re montant in locks like these, you enter at the bottom of an empty lock chamber; you attach your rope to a bollard set low into the wall and use it to hold the boat to the side of the lock wall; as the lock progressively fills, your rope slips off the bollard and you attach it to the bollard above it, and so on until the lock has filled.
* When you’re avalant, you enter a full lock chamber and attach your rope to a big bollard at ground level. As the lock empties, you attempt to release your bollard in time and attach it to the one below it.
Two nights in Péronne
I’d phoned ahead, and thank goodness they had a mooring for us in the port de plaisance at Péronne. After six nights on the trot, it was nice to plug into shore-power, do the laundry, and fill up the water-tank at our leisure.
At La Péronnaise a couple of hundred metres up the road from our mooring – brasserie, pizzeria, loto, bar and tabac all in one – we had the three-course menu for €12 a head. Great value!
Next morning, we took the short walk into town to catch the Saturday market. Apart from some pretty good fresh produce (artichokes, asparagus and melons are in season), a sterling fishmonger and a butcher flogging the dreaded andouillette – that stinky pork tripe sausage we heaved over last summer, in Chablis – it included myriad vendors of cheap clothing, shoes, household gadgets and even an upholsterer.
Though we liked the look of Les Archers, we instead had a great lunch at Bistrot d’Antoine on the edge of the market square.
Back at the port de plaisance, a couple of jolly Dutch couples on two boats had merrily double-moored next to us. Roy bristled a bit with testostero-territoriality, but they’d got permission from the port authority, they explained. No doubt there’ll come a day when we’ll be happy and relieved to be able to do the same.
Canal de Calais, River Aa and the Grand Gabarit: Getting a French “tampon”, fantastic hypermarkets and terrible telecoms, mooring at Hennuin, frankly fearful at Fontinettes lock, Aire-sur-la-Lys, wine and whisky with the Greenfields at Béthune
O Frabjous Day, Caloo, Calais!
Arrived late afternoon at the port of Calais after a blissfully calm eight-hour crossing, to find that time and tide wait for no one, and the lock into the marina from the harbour opens only for a couple of hours around high tide.
Now the tricky bit: getting an entry stamp (tampon in French) for my passport, to go opposite the long-sejour visa that I got at the French Embassy in Singapore. Tip for other South Africans: you get this done at the office of the police aux frontières near the ferry terminal – easy once you know, but there’s no information about this on the internet!
After sharing a well-earned bottle of Pol Roger with our cross-Channel pilot, David Piper, we took the ten-minute stroll into the old town for dinner at an unpretentious restaurant – one of many lining the town square. Pastis, escargots etcetera; might as well dive straight in!
Calais to Hennuin
Roy up at 6am again! – this time to pressure-wash all the salt off the boat. We had to exit the marina into the harbour by 9am (or wait until the next high tide), and from there wait for the sea-lock to let us into the Canal de Calais.
Next, a visit to Auchan shopping centre to get a prepaid data card; Orange had run out of them (!), so we tried Bouygues Telecomm and forked out €90 for 4G (!). No luck in setting it up, sadly. (And when we finally did, it inexplicably sucked up the first 2G in one day. Putain!)
As for the enormous hypermarché, we’d never seen anything like it. We marvelled like country hicks at the incredible assortment of goodies from throughout the EU – “Look at the cheese, Roy, look at the cheese!” By comparison, the UK’s Tesco, Waitrose and the like look like corner stores.
Having waved goodbye to David, bravely we headed off on our own down the Canal de Calais, 23km to the small village of Hennuin, its bridge and its lock. No response to my virgin VHF radio call, and it was past 6pm, so we moored up for the night.
Hennuin to Aire-sur-la-Lys
At 8.30am, along came the blond and sunburnt éclusier (lock-keeper) and gardien du pont (bridge-keeper) in one, first to open the bridge for us and then to see us through the lock. It was a comparatively small one for France, and while he went off to do another job, we took the opportunity to joyfully fill up our water tank. (We’ve been advised to top up whenever we can.)
The lock at Flandres was much bigger, with M. Éclusier up there in his control tower behind reflective glass. Going upstream, we’re entering the empty lock chamber, steep walls rising on either side. It’s an initially tricky system, where you attach a rope to a bollard set way down on the wall at your own level. As the water rises and the lock fills, your rope eventually slips off the low bollard and you loop it around the next bollard up, and so on all the way to the top.
After passing the famous old Fontinettes boat lift, we got to grips with our third and last lock of the day: Fontinettes lock, frankly terrifying in its height. Here we used a shifting bollard, set into the wall, that gradually moves upwards, shrieking and groaning as metal grinds upon metal.
Our route today: Canal de Calais, into the widened River Aa for a few kilometres, and then the series of canals now known as the Grand Gabarit.
Only three enormous barges passed us (nothing else), and they were less discombobulating than I’d feared. It’s Sunday, however, and tomorrow is a public holiday. That may may explain it.
From the halte nautique at Aire-sur-la-Lys – a basic floating pontoon, no more, a ten-minute walk takes you into the town. On the attractive main square, with its gorgeous Hôtel de Ville (city hall), I found a friendly bar with wifi – what a relief!
Aire-sur-la-Lys to Béthune
On to the town of Béthune, where we moored at a halte nautique about 1.7km from the town – again, well worth seeing for its architectural beauty alone: it has 33 national monuments, including Église Saint Vaast, and an impressive Grand Place (square) that was hosting a big market today. Not only did I not buy anything, I managed to lose my panama hat. Again.
Our first visitors in France! South Africans Gail and Neil Greenfield, friends we made during our early years in Singapore, are as usual spending the European summer travelling around in their camper van. They took early retirement, and this is the tenth year of their globe-trotting lifestyle.
Naturally, we shared rather a lot of wine before finally getting a taxi back to the Grand Place for an enjoyable and doubtless loudly talkative meal at Le Brussel’s Café. (Yes, that apostrophe worries me, too).
From the €19 two-course formule, I remember roast marrowbone with sel de Guérande, foie gras pâté, charcuterie, tangy beef tongue casserole and more. Unthinkably for France, they’d run out of baguette, which we forgave them (a) because it was after 8pm on a public holiday, and (b) the volume of wine had somewhat blunted our critical faculties.
Brought back to the boat by our cheerful taxi-driver (aller-retour €30), les hommes continued with a couple of snifters of whiskey, while les femmes sensibly hit the Badoit sparkling water.
Here’s where it all becomes serious: our cross-Channel pilot, David Piper (the founder of Piper Boats), met us at Sunbury Lock, three locks downriver from Penton Hook.
He was jumping ship from another Piper boat, Otium, coming upstream from Richmond. Another couple of locks took us to the long layby for Teddington Lock, where the Thames becomes tidal, and we moored for the night.
Only a few days to go before Roy and I say goodbye to the Thames & Kennet Marina and head downriver on our Dutch barge Karanja – all the way downriver to London – before embarking on the Channel crossing to Calais.
We’ve been through Thames locks Sonning, Shiplake, Marsh, Hambleden, Hurley, Temple, Marlow and Cookham. Now we’ll spend a few leisurely days going through Boulters, Bray, Boveny, Romney, Old Windsor, Bell Weir, Penton Hook, Chertsey, Shepperton, Sunbury and Molesey – before picking up our experienced pilot, David Piper, at Teddington. That’s where the non-tidal Thames becomes tidal and a tad less tame.
Reluctant to leave Burgundy without doing at least one wine-tasting, we took a drive to Chablis – an easy 15km from Auxerre, and of course the home of the appellation Chablis. You drive past vineyards and through several wine villages to get there, and it’s all very picturesque.
Staunchly resisting the Garmin’s attempts to keep us on the straight and wide, i.e. the A6, for the hour and three-quarter trip from Chalon-sur-Saône to Auxerre, we instead chose a route slightly less travelled, the D906 via Chagny.
This is the heart of Burgundy, passing through gorgeous little villages, and farmhouses covered in autumnal vines and creepers. But you’ll have to take my word for it – Roy was on a mission to pass lorries, and was in no mood to stop the car, especially if it meant having to pass them again.
In all these riverside towns we’re visiting, taking a boat tour on the river is one of the things to do. Though I sort of feel I’d like to, I know there’s little chance – “What on earth for, when we’re coming back next summer in our own boat?”, my husband would respond to such a suggestion. (Pick your battles, I say.)
Not having time to research your destination in advance can sometimes be a good thing. Yes, you miss out on the smugly virtuous feeling of having done your homework – but instead, you could have the unexpected fun of landing up in the middle of something as delightful as the old city of Dijon.
Once he’s got going, my husband does not like to stop unnecessarily (if at all) en route – but he must perforce stop for fuel. When the aire (layby) he was aiming for turned out to be more about hiking and picnicking than petrol, we clicked on “Places of Interest” and then “Fuel” on the Garmin, which took us on an enjoyable sortie along narrow country lanes to a single-pump affair where a smart lady in lavender suit with matching jewellery pumped gas for us.
