Monday 25th June 2018 Charly to Courcelles 35.9kms 3 locks

Boats moored in Chateau Thierry

10.2ºC Sunny but still with a sharp cold wind. Set off at 9.10am, washing machine on on the 10.5kms reach. Mike had put the sunshade up but the wind was giving it a good rattling, the front left edge kept dipping, making it difficult to see to steer, so he wedged it with a mop against the handrail. The river wound round big sweeping bends and above the trees there were more and more vineyards on the sloping hillsides. Up lock 6 Azy 2.10m with a VNF man in a van watching from the road. 13.7kms and we motored on up the valley

Statue in Chateau Thierry

into Chateau Thierry, passing the site of the Crown Blueline hire base – still painted on their former premises on the riverside. A fisherman had got his BBQ going as the church bells pealed midday. Hotel péniche Panache was moored on a quay next to a fun fair with a dead ex-hire boat behind him, a newish 50m pontoon with all facilities just upstream was completely empty. A small cruiser set off in front of us. Next to the road bridge there were two DBs and a big steel cruiser, all of which looked as if they’d been there a long time. Mike took pictures of the statues by the bridge, looking up and downriver. On upriver past some silos and back into the countryside. We soon caught up with the cruiser, an old Eau Claire former hireboat, and overtook it (astounded, that is so rare for us to overtake another boat). How the three men on board live with such a noisy engine beats me. It seemed to be running hard, but not smoking. Strange. Just half an hour to the next lock. As we got nearer to the lock there were three swans together swimming upriver sedately and on the other side of the river there was one on its own paddling upstream like mad, which it did for the next kilometre or more, heaven knows what it did that for, it kept going under overhanging trees but didn’t stop. We zapped the lock (5, Mont St Père) once the cruiser was closer and then went into the chamber to wait for it. Two VNF men 

Above lock 5 Mont St Père

came to work on the needle weir alongside the lock, using an electrically powered winch on the lockside one ran a wire cable with a hook on it on to the weir to move some of the new metal “needles” (the old ones were made of wood and the weir keepers then used to flip and roll them in and out of position by hand, quite a skilled job) The little cruiser took a time to get into the lock and the force of the water from the weir shoved it hard over towards the bank. Mike lifted the rod and I put a side rope from the bows around a vertical tube and we rose 1.8m. Another hotel boat had been moored above the lock but it moved off upriver when we emptied the

Chateau above lock 5 Mont St Père

lock. We set off first, the guys on the cruiser told Mike they were only going up three more locks. 12kms to the next. Still lots of long meandering bends. At Jaulgonne someone had got a good graffiti artist to compose a real work of art around the name of their little town under the road bridge. By the time we’d seen it the view was obscured by trees, shame, no photo was possible. A bit further upriver we spotted another Eau Claire which was moored, this one had the hire base name as Navig’ France – there must be a hire

Below lock 4 Courcelles

base on this river somewhere. The railway track alongside the river had been quiet all day then suddenly a very long goods train carrying hundreds of new cars when whizzing past. Mike calculated that if the cars were worth on average 10k€ each, then the trainload would cost two million euros! There were two old red and white marker posts to keep boats to the left, away from shallows. On top of the upstream one there was a pair of terns who sat and watched us go by and didn’t fly away when Mike pointed the camera at them. Under the Passy to Sauvigny roadbridge,

Terns on a post near Courcelles

then we were 1.5kms from the lock (4 Courcelles). No signs of the cruiser, so we didn’t wait for them. We zapped, the lock emptied and we went up 2.30m. A lady from the lock house came to ask if we wanted to buy some cherries. Nice of her to offer but no thanks. We moored at the upstream end of the waiting quay above the lock. It was 4pm. Around half an hour later the cruiser came up the lock and moored behind us and they

Moored above lock 5 Courcelles

immediately started fishing! Later they did a BBQ. Mike decided it was too late to do a car move, he’d do it in the morning.