Friday 13th April 2018 Demange-aux-Eaux to Pagny-sur-Meuse 31.6kms 13 locks

Moored at Demange

2.4ºC Overcast and chilly after a cold night. Set off at 9.30am. Lock 1 Tombois was ready for us. I walked up to the lock with a short boat shaft to hook the mooring line, and when the lock was full we topped up our water tank. Several VNF men were buzzing about. One collected the zapper and one said he was our support cyclist (he makes sure we’re OK as he cycles along the towpath in the tunnel with us and checks in at designated intercoms to call base to say we’re all OK – Health and Safety gone a little bit OTT). It took us and our attendant cyclist an

Top lock - 1 Tombois

hour and ten minutes for the passage of Mauvages tunnel 4887m in length on the summit level of the Marne-au-Rhin canal west branch, at a height above sea level of 281m. We were now out of the Seine basin and into the Meuse valley. Started downhill at 11.30am following the valley of the little river Mèholle, down a flight of twelve linked locks (each lock activates the next) each lock drops the boat 2.9m and the pounds between are all under 1km in length. The first five locks, Mauvages, Villeroy, Chalède, Grande Charme and St Esprit, no longer had lock houses. All the rest had lived in houses except for lock 9 Biquiottes which had no house and lock 12 Void whose house was bricked up. We had lunch on the move as we carried on down the flight. All the locks were easy to work, just lift the blue bar and each one worked a treat. Mike spotted lock 10’s control cabin (only used when there are problems) was full of flies, thousands of them and more hovering about outside wanting to get in – had something died in there? At the last lock a

Old engine shed abv Tombois

charming, chatty VNF man in a van came to ask which way we were going, we told him towards Toul – if we’d gone north on the canal de l’Est we’d have had a new zapper, but on the route we’re taking we don’t need one for a while. It was 2.35pm when we finished the flight. The sky was a hazy grey-blue with flat clouds and the light was weak like you get at the start of an eclipse, I took photos as we followed the N4 on an embankment looking down on all the traffic. Under the N4 bridge and out into quieter countryside. Dust came across the canal in great clouds as vehicles moved in a cement

Old tunnel tug now in retirement

works on our right, fortunately not as we were passing. Mike paused on the aqueduct over the river Meuse to take a photo of the weir, which looked like it was about normal water level. At 4pm we turned right at the junction with the canal de l’Est, following the railway which was high up above us following the contours of a hill. Round meandering bends into Pagny-sur-Meuse, where we moored on a pontoon at 5pm behind a ginormous Belgian three-decker cruiser (no one on board must have been left there for the winter). The alternator belt had been