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| Empty quay at PUM |
It was chilly, but sunny all day, after -2° C
overnight due to a cloudless sky. There was a light layer of ice on
the cut as we set off again at 9.05 a.m. The one boat moored on the
PUM mooring was called Lucette. We passed a loaded boat called
Gastalle, then two empties running uphill, A Dutchman called
Sonnepaerd followed by Kama from Béthune. The first one didn’t see
Bill and got a hoot from Bill’s horn which caused him to move over.
Four locks followed close together, 9 Coucy, 8 Noue-Gouzaine, 7
Fontaines and 6 Loivre, where our smiling lady keeper came out from
her cabin to lift the bar for us.
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| Lock house at top lock Coucy Lk 9 |
She’d got onions and garlic for
sale, pity we’d recently stocked up. Bill paused briefly at the
quay below for Fanny to get off for a quick pee-pee and we pottered
on down to Gaudart no 5. I ‘phoned Gérard and told him we would be
at Berry by two, he said he’d be over just after four o’clock.
The radar at lock 5 didn’t “see” us, but luckily there was a
VNF man working in the lockside garden who set the lock for us and
then went back to digging. I wished him good afternoon and thanked
him for resetting the lock.
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| Loivre lock house |
Lock 4, Alger, now had a swimming pool
alongside the lock house, but no shaggy Korthals dog came to greet us
this time. Ate our lunch on the long pound down to Sapigneul no 3.
The radar on that one worked OK. A loaded boat was coming up in the
lock. It was our friends with the péniche
Sinaï - Paul came out of his wheelhouse to shout hello and ask where
we were going. Daughter Clothilde was in the wheelhouse with him,
Paul shouted to us that she was six now.
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| Lock cabin |
The loaded Dutch boat,
Equinoxe from Lekerkerk, was waiting below. We’d last seen the boat
at Langres when they chased us through the tunnel only to stop
mid-afternoon on the quay – mariniers! Today the couple on board
waved pleasantly as we passed. An empty pusher pair, called Rolibert
1 and Rolibert 2, were moored by the silo quay waiting to load. We
were surprised to find a keeper in lock 1 Berry, the last lock before
the junction. Mike told the keeper we would be mooring in the corner.
Ste Rita was moored on the corner nearest the fuel depot,
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| Moulin de Sapigneul lock house |
but the
rest of the “large” (wide section of canal) was completely empty.
Even the wreck called Le Camargue that had been there for years had
gone. We moored in the corner, bows to bows with Rosy once we’d
bounced off the silt and had another try at getting close to the
bank. Bill asked Mike if he could fix his Nokia ‘phone. He’d
dropped it on its antenna and broken it. Mike took it all apart,
there were bits spread across the table, he re-bent the wire which
connected the antenna to the circuit board inside and rebuilt it. It
worked OK.
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| Lock house by the bottom lock Berry-au-Bac |
Bill was very pleased. Son Peter sent an SMS to ask if
Mike wanted to play HF radio (we're all radio amateurs) just as
Gérard arrived at 4.15 p.m. I sent one back to him to say sorry his
Dad was moving the car and would play later. We gave Gérard a
birthday card (luckily I’d got a spare in the cupboard, albeit a
rather rude one) and wished him many happy returns for Saturday, when
he will be sixty. He had a coffee and a chat before he ferried Mike
back to Condé. Mike said they talked non-stop all the way back. He
came back via the breakers yard at Bisseuil for a radiator cap, then
to Castorama (DIY) for some pipe, etc.
(Note: due to lack of photos from 2004 I've added ones of the same trip done in 2011, sorry if you've seen some of them before.)
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