From molly_mockford@my-dejanews.com Sat Sep 25 17:17:52 1999
Date: Fri, 04 Sep 1998 09:47:53 GMT
From: molly_mockford@my-dejanews.com
Reply-To: canals@blacksheep.org
To: canals@blacksheep.org
Subject: Molly's Holi's - All About Locks

Before I spend the weekend typing up the Captain's Log, I thought
that some of you might be interested in details of the various locks
we encountered on our French canals.

By and large, the locks are oval-shaped.  This is a little alarming at
first, but in fact it gives you plenty of space to keep away from
other hireboats who swing out at you and try to punch holes in
your sides with a boathook.  (I was always taught to use a broom
for fending people off, as less likely to damage them.)  All the locks
are electrically operated, and most are manned.  On the part of
the Midi we did, unlike the Rhone a Sete, none of the lock-keepers
seemed to expect any of the crew to go up top, just to throw their
ropes.

All the locks, and many of the bridges, operate red and green lights,
which are often almost impossible to see, even with binoculars, until
you get close.  One lock-keeper switched his light from green to red
and shut his gates just as we and another boat were about to enter!

The "round" lock at Agde has been extended and is now bulbous
rather than round.  It has three entrances - two for the canal, and
one for the river to the sea.  On the map, it is shown as going down
as you head from Beziers to Sete, but in fact seems to operate in
the opposite way, possibly because of the effect of the river.  No
ladders at all, and one has to lasso a bollard from the boat.  As it is
a huge basin, all one needed to use was the stern rope.  One could
probably have hovered, unmoored, without causing any problems.

There was an unmanned, automatic lock which one entered a little
gatehouse to operate.  It only had two buttons, upstream and down-
stream, labelled in French, English and German.  However, it also had
a large number of coloured lights the exact size and shape of the
buttons, so everyone inevitably tried pressing several of these before
hitting the right button.  After that everything was fully automatic.
Wonderful for lazy holidaymakers!  We were required to enter in a
log the details of our boat and our direction, as well as the date and
time.  I have a feeling that the lock-keepers are also required to collect
this information.

Apparently there are also some automatic locks of the kind where you
have to catch hold of an overhead pole in midstream and twiddle its
end.  Unfortunately, we didn't encounter any of these.

On the Midi, some of the locks were very deep indeed - the deepest
was 6.19 metres.  It was then that we understood why our boat's
ropes were so long!  These had shiny vertical metal poles set into the
walls of the lock on either side, and you could loop your ropes round
them and "walk" them up or down as the lock operated.  We didn't
realise at first that this was how it was done (I had thought that they
were part of the hydraulics) and Paul went up a slimy  ladder, clutching
a rope, looking as though he had a cutlass in his teeth, only to be told
by the lockkeeper at the summit that he needn't have bothered!  In
areas of the locks which are out of reach of these poles (only one on
each side, and slighly hairly when you have both bown and stern
ropes attached to the same pole!) the lock-keeper throws down lines
to while people attach their ropes to have them hauled up.  Going down
is, of course, a lot easier.  Oddly enough, these very deep locks tended
to be straight-sided - a bit alarming when we had already got used to the
space offered by the oval ones.

The flight of "seven locks" at Fonserannes, near Beziers, is now reduced
to six, because the new aquaduct which takes the canal over the
river Orb bypasses the lowest of the locks.  These locks are oval, and
longer boats can go up the flight two locks at a time.  (Certain other
locks were like this - could be operated singly or together.)  The whole
flight has an alternative of an inclined plane, where a wedge-shaped
puddle of water and any boats floating in it are pushed up, or allowed
down, by a hydraulic system.  Unfortunately we didn't see this in
operation.

All the locks seemed to be in very good condition, and filled and
emptied extremely fast, without causing too much in the way of water
disturbance in the lock.  I remember one on the K&A where the gates
were so leaky that it filled (unintentionally) almost as fast as it emptied!

The locks are all closed from 12:30 to 1:30 for the lock-keeper's lunch,
but one can have problems sometimes locating the lock-keeper after
2:30.  They operate a private phone system, alerting each other as to
which boats to expect when, and if they don't know you are coming
(e.g. if you moored out of sight for lunch) they may not bother to come
out of their houses!

There were some interesting bridges, too.  One, for pedestrians only,
floated on the canal, and was operated by outboard motor by a wee
man in a little box at the moving end.  One just hooted and he opened
it.

There was another which opened by lifting vertically, only two or
three times a day.  A side-effect of this was the chaos caused by the
fact that some of the crews of the large numbers of boats waiting to
go through seemed to have spent their time drinking.  More details
in the log.  This is probably long enough for now!

--
Molly

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