Monday 7th May 2018 Les Maranges to St Julien 18kms 15 locks

We didn't believe our eyes when this came round the bend!
Engine and steering at the front or it's going in reverse.

10.5ºC Very hot, sunny. Temperature in the cabin soared to 29ºC. We left the quay at 9.20am. The towpath cycle piste was very busy. The first VNF van went past on the towpath heading uphill. Lock 23 near St Gilles was almost 3m lift. Mike went up the right hand ladder in the gate recess with our centre rope – the blue rope to pull was at the top end on the left. Hotel boat Hirondelle was coming down in lock 22 so we had a short wait while they cleared. Lock 21 near Dennevy had an old lock house with a plate that said it was lock 28. Lock 20 was full with the top end gates open – it had refilled,

A relocating restaurant?

so we assumed something else was coming down. After ten minutes wait Mike walked up to the lock to see what was going on – nothing moving above so he called on the intercom (which was noisy and the voice sounded like a high pitch squawk, he could hardly make out what was being said). A VNF man in a car arrived and reset the lock from the cabin controls. That had taken nearly 50 minutes to sort out. As the previous lock, lock 20’s house said it was lock 27. Mike took photos of the damage done over the years by péniche bows on the bottom end gates. Wonder when the last péniche passed through here? There were a few DBs

Downhill traffic

moored in St Leger and some very dirty old boats at the end of the built up area that looked like they needed some TLC. Not again! Lock 19 was full with the top end gates open. Mike threw a rope around some Armco by the busy D974 road on our right and walked up to the lock. Couldn’t get close to the bank for the remains of the old sloping stone edges that didn’t get removed when the road edge was piled – he had to jump for it! The intercom was distorted, even worse than the previous one – and no one answered it. Time 12.30pm – lunch break. There

Damaged gates lock 21

was a phone number on the lock cabin, Mike had taken a radio with him and told me the number, I rang it – it bleeped three times and hung up! I tried the number we had for the flight up to Chagny, same thing, three bleeps and hung up. The man in the red vest that reset lock 20 for us said that we could only use the intercoms to report a malfunctioning lock, there were no phones (cut backs?) After 1pm Mike tried the intercom again – someone answered but it was too distorted to make out what they were saying. So in desperation Mike tried “ghost

Damaged gates lock 21

boating” – he put his hands over the entrance sensor at the top end pretending to be a downhill boat – then pulled the rope – the gates closed – we might have cracked it! – and then everything went off including the lock lights! Oh well, that might attract the attention of the VNF. A cruiser arrived, followed by the guy in the red vest. Mike was still at the lock so he had a chat with the Irish skipper who told him that he had just been stuck in a lock over lunchtime and it had taken until 1.20pm for the VNF to come and reset it and let him out. He said he didn’t intend coming via the Bourbonaisse route but his boat was too high for the Marne-au Rhin (couldn't pass some of the bridges) and the Marne-à-la-Saône was shut so he had no choice. The man from the lock house came out to chat with guy in a red vest. The cruiser cleared and I took the boat into lock 19. Mike had taken a boat shaft with him so he hooked our centre line and the VNF man pulled the blue rope. It was well after 2pm when we left the lock, another hour and a half wasted. 1.8 kms of canal to the next so time to calm down and stop calling the VNF names. Lock 18 worked OK as did lock 17 in the quaint little village of St Berain-sur-Dheune (we’re following the river valley of the Dheune). Locks 16 and 15 were very

Boats moored at St Leger-sur-Dheune

close together. As the afternoon wore on the road alongside the canal became much busier with lots of motorbikes, sometimes upwards of twenty riding together – the winding road must be a popular weekend run for them. The last two locks had had new gates. Took a photo of the old well next to the dead house at lock 15. On the way to lock 14 we saw the most amazing thing afloat since we left Germany – a floating wooden cabin – a restaurant from Montceau-les-Mines by all accounts – called Que-C-Bon, powered by an engine in a housing at the front end, which was very slow running and noisy. Slowly it chugged past and we took photos. There was an extensive garden centre below 14 and a beautiful house alongside the lock. Lock 13 had no house and I heard the

New gates at lock 16

first crickets of the year – Mike still can’t hear them – he couldn’t when we were in the Midi and they positively shriek. At lock 12 there was a VNF man on the lockside and he yanked the rope for us, while chatting to a young lady in short shorts, with a big grin on his face. For the first time we got flushed off the lock wall by gate paddles being drawn – previously all paddles had been fairly gentle ground paddles. No real problem, just let the rope out and the boat

Plaque at lock 15
showing that it was originally lock 22

eventually came back to the right hand wall. Lock 11 was the first named lock, Villeneuve and again the gate paddles flushed the boat over on to the left hand wall. Lock 10 Chez-le-Roi was a double depth at 5.13m. The blue rope was as usual up by the top end gates so I went on the bow to tug it. Before Mike could reverse all the way back to the floater the water started coming in and shoved us over to the left hand wall where we had to rise ropeless with an audience on the tail end footbridge. Lock 9 Moulin St Julien was also 5.13m deep and it too shoved the boat across to the left. We moored at 5.30pm in the layby at St Julien with one cruiser, one man and his dog sitting out in the shadow cast by his boat. It was stinking hot, over 35ºC outside, at least there was a bit of a cooling breeze.