Stopped at a couple more halt nautiques, (got stuck at one lock and had wait for it to be fixed - improvised a way of getting urgent tea supplies to Carole who’d jumped off and climbed up to see what was happening).
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| Tea- I need tea! |
Then on to the manual section of the canal - here the VNF send a college student to operate the locks with you, winding the gates shut and opening the sluices - Carole got to be a dab hand at climbing up the lock ladders and helping with the sluice paddles.
One section was really shallow, the water level had dropped 30cm, the VNF were fixing the problem but that led to a couple of kilometres with very, very little water under the keel.
Never thought I’d get to the stage where I thought 20cm of water below the keel was a lot!
Heard from the VNF that a group of 10 commercial peniches are due to come through the canal - apparently this is rare but they should at least clear out some of the weed and silt - hopefully! It seems that these canals are too small for most modern commercial traffic and so don’t get a lot of attention from the VNF - a pity as it’s extremely pretty.
Stopped today at the end of the manual lock section at a place called Langres - apparently one off the top 50 prettiest towns in France - situated on top of an escarpment - completely surrounded by defensive walls from the 16c to the 18c. Great place, well worth visiting. Decent hill walk up from the canal at the valley bottom though.
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| We cycled to the lake |
Some of the building are from the 16c, fantastic interiors and architecture.
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| Acrobat showing a bit of backside. Good to see humour never changes. |
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| A commercial barge - don't see many of these on this canal. |
Tomorrow we head off to the 4.8km long Balesmes tunnel - the middle section is called the Vault, apparently after that there are about 4 days of nothingness! - few halts, no shops.Stocking up with pate, cheese and wine.
The tunnel is the highest point of our trip - downhill all the way to the Med after this!
Apparently the canal route from the English Channel to the Med is closed at Briare due to the flooding in May and June damaging the canal banks, looks like we were lucky to decide to start in the Netherlands rather than sail down the channel at little way first. The route from the Channel now means heading up to Paris and then going further east to join the route we’ve taken.
Carole's Interesting Facts:
No. 13 A moments inattention on a boat can lead to lots of bruising.
Looks like its going well you 2 we came back early due to being bombarded by low pressure systems, bruises hmmmm Im sure people thought I was using the cane on Annelie her legs are covered in boat bruises, honest gov, catchyer 'back end' M
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