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| Control rods and buttons. Lk 18 St Barbe |
13.9ºC Grey clouds, showers, then sunny again.
Mike went to the lock and called on the intercom to get a keeper to set the
automatic locks for us. A man in a van arrived and we set off at 9.20am, down
lock 13 Javacière, all six locks were around 4m deep - they replaced the Rogny
7-rise staircase that dated from the time of Henri IV – work started to build
the canal in 1605 but completion didn’t occur until 1642, the staircases were
all replaced by singles in 1893. Our keeper was very chatty and we explained to
him
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| Remains of the Henri IV 7-rise at Rogny |
that there was no Internet on the summit pound so we were off to Chatillon.
Down another 4m at 14 Racault, pressing a green button on the control panel to
set the lock working. Down lock 15 St Joseph – our keeper was dead-heading the
roses at the house. There were a lot of concrete bank repairs around lock 16
Chantpinot. Lock 17 Rogny, our man in a van was tending more roses on the
lockside. Took photos of the remains of the seven-rise on our way past it to
lock 18 St Barbe. The keeper asked if we were stopping at Rogny, no, it’s not
raining we’ll carry on to Chatillon. Five minutes later it poured down. There
was a Nichols
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| Wind vane? Lk 22 Briquemault |
hirebase in the arm at Rogny and Meanderer, a hotel boat, was
moored on the quay plus three DBs. A pleasant 4.7kms pound to a flight of three at
Dammerie. The keeper had just emptied lock 19 Dammerie so
we tied to a short wooden staging above the lock. A 5m wide Dutch cruiser came up
and went past, sucking water out from under the boat with his wash – this
tightened our centre rope taking a patch of new red paint on the handrails off down to
bare steel. The keeper said the last VNF man hadn’t told him we were coming –
must have thought we were going to tie up when it
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Notice at lk 24 Chatillon asking pleasure boaters to behave!
fat chance of that! |
started raining. He said we could go in the chamber and he’d
be back at 1pm and drove off in his own car leaving his VNF van on the
lockside. Back to manually operated locks, Mike closed one gate behind us and
we sat in the cabin in the shade (sun now out again). Our man in a van was back at 1pm and we set off down the three
locks, each one dropping 3.5m. Lock 19 Dammerie was manual as was lock 20
Picardie – a Locaboat came up and then we went down. Lock 21, Moulin-Brûlé, had
been
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| Lock house 24 Chatillon |
partly mechanised, the gates were wound manually, but the paddles were
lifted and closed with a yellow hand-held control box. 2.7kms to the next group
of three locks, passing the Chateau Mivoisin mostly hidden by trees. These were
shallower at 3.30m each. A young lady keeper with a moped worked lock 22
Briquemault – there was an interesting wind vane on the cabin roof. She had to
lift the Llangollen type lift bridge at the tail end of the lock up by a couple
of inches to get our mast under it. A bearded man in a VNF van came to help at
lock 23
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| Moored at Chatillon |
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| Town streets Chatillon-Coligny |
Gazon and they opened both bottom end gates as there was a Dutch
cruiser waiting to come up below 24. The man in a van drove down to 24
Chatillon and worked the manual lock for
us and we told him we’d stay at Chatillon until Tuesday morning as we had some shopping to do on Monday. A short distance into Chatillon, passing a slipway
and a couple of boats on the finger pontoons, we went on beyond the smart
capitainerie (water and electric free) and tied up at the end of the quay behind a large Dutch cruiser. It was 2.55pm.
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