From David@scars.demon.co.uk Sat Jun 12 11:44:15 1999 Date: Fri, 11 Jun 1999 17:31:17 +0100 From: David Long Reply-To: canals@blacksheep.org To: canals@blacksheep.org Subject: Reims to Douai - Part the second Thursday, June 3rd. We left Soissons at 7.30am on a dull morning. Not what we come to France for at all. Occasional showers, and some warm bright periods stayed all day. After 30kms the Australians, and a Dutch boat, caught up with us at the fourth lock of the morning - they'd left Soissons an hour after us.... We turned northwards up the swollen waters of the Oise just upstream of Compiegne - having passed the Australians trying to find somewhere to moor to visit the Armistice Crossroads - it's very close to the river, but there is no attempt to exploit the situation by providing moorings. We didn't have to battle against the flow too long on the Oise, as the lateral canal is entered just below the first lock. We continued that day as far as Noyon, after doing 18kms to the junction with the Canal du Nord at Pont Eveque, where we moored in the rain above the second lock just before closing time. According to the map, there's a public mooring at the grain silo a mile or so on, but we took a look at its isolated position, far from the garage we needed for diesel, and the boulangerie we needed for bread and breakfast in the morning - and the resident Travellers, with their wild-looking alsatians - and decided to risk the wrath of the peniche masters by mooring in the lock waiting area. Soon after, two sets of peniche, joined up stem to stern - the locks are just over peniche width, but double the length - arrived, but we'd left them room enough not to be bothered by us. The walk to the boulangerie and charcuterie for sausages, delayed our departure until 8am, and we arrived at the first lock just as two craft came out... and two more came up fast behind us and swept into the waiting lock.... Commercial traffic has precedence, and I thought that fair enough... that time. I strolled up to the control room, and had a few words with the keeper, who advised being firm on the next locking by drawing out and into the lock ahead of the oncoming peniches. Ha! At several hundred tons, and a wife with a healthy fear of drowning!!! So, when the situation repeated itself... we sat stuck to the bank... but I was rather livid when the first boat past us turned out to look like a commercial boat, but to be a plaisance like us. I gave him a mouthful about stealing our lock... but too late, and the keeper wasn't interested. So we lost over an hour. We had no trouble the next time, as the next boat up was on its own, so we fitted in with him. We passed through our second tunnel, a mere 1000m, and a few more locks without delay before reaching the Somme, which runs with the Nord for a spell to Perrone... where we caught up with the boat we'd locked with first thing. He, however, had now been joined by a boat which had come off the Somme, so we had to wait... and another pair came along just as the lock was set for us again, so we had to wait again!!! Fortunately, the next boat was on its own, so we fitted in with it, and were on our way once more. This boat was the KAYAC - as we approached the last lock of the day, I managed to photograph her with two kayaks paddling past - their stickers showed they were Welsh, but we didn't have the chance to chat, as we had to catch up with our pilot peniche. So, if anyone knows this couple, they looked fine and healthy last week. We managed just one more lock before mooring below Allaines lock at 7.30pm - to find out whether we had to be on our way at 6.30am on the dot, or whether the lock was set for the downcomers to have an early start, I strolled up to the lock after our meal, with our daughter Jenny. As we got to the top of the slope the heavens opened, and a thunderstorm crashed around us. We got out of the worst of the rain under the lee of the pump-house, but still got very wet! Jenny loved it - never having been out of doors in a real storm before. We managed to be up and ready for the early start, and kept with our pilot until he drew away from us in the 8km approach to the 4354m long Royalcourt Tunnel. After the first lock, we noticed a passing boat veering in towards KAYAC... and then saw as it passed us that it was named KAYAK - that would have been a photo - two kayaks and two KAYA(C)Ks. Whether they were boats which were usually twinned (such similar-naming then takes place), I don't know, although they didn't look a pair. The Nord being a modern cut (finally completed in 1965, after its works were destroyed in WW1), it has many long straights, so KAYAC was occasionally in sight, and we saw it disappear into the tunnel as we rounded the final bend before it. Eventually we could see the light was red, and prepared for a longish wait - but it turned green as we approached, and a loudspeaker announced we could enter, but that we'd have to stop at the lights mid-way, to let approaching boats pass in an area where the tunnel was widened out to about 12 metres for almost a kilometre - quite a system. It was weird, waiting in the semi-darkness. Eventually a set of navigation lights came up behind us... and Jacquie hoped we had been seen..., but he stopped well behind us. Finally the noise of the approaching craft was heard, and our half-hour wait came to an end - but in the confines of the tunnel we were pulled about by the water moved by the laden peniche as it passed us. The tunnel was dimly lit by fluorescents, so the peniches didn't use their headlights, just their nav. lights of red, green and white, with a white behind their wheelhouses. Despite our delay, we caught KAYAC up as she waited at the next lock, and travelled with her again until a peniche which had been moored up whilst its master, travelling alone, stopped to answer the call of nature, pulled out alongside us, overtook us, and went in with KAYAC. He'd been one, LA CALYPSO, which had taken the lock with the converted boat the day before. She hadn't gained much on us.... We had then to await the next locking, and this time I bravely pulled into the lock ahead of the next approaching peniche. Very good, I thought... until the keeper came to tell me to pull up the lock, as the peniche was 65m - so the following peniche couldn't have entered anyway! Progress was slow for the rest of our time on the Nord, so it was with some relief that we came out of the final lock and into the junction with the Escaut Canal de Grand Gabarit at Arleux. There dozens of peniches were tied up - including some who'd claimed precedence over us on the Nord over the past two days! A bit galling - they sat and chatted in the evening sun, and I still had hours of sailing to do before reaching my destination. Of course, we never made it... after 8km, and one enormous lock (thankfully with rising bollards, which makes roping up simple), it was closing time, and we were two locks and about 6km short - we'd have easily done it but for the commercials taking our locks. If the French want more pleasure boats on their canals, they'll have to make sure they resolve this situation. Letting craft through which have deadlines to meet is one thing - giving way to anything and everything is another. The destination of every craft is logged at each control lock (we'd passed about six en route), so it should be possible to regulate the traffic so that no one is unduly delayed - with pleasure boats being so much quicker in and out of locks (and usually, English nbs excepted, faster between them), they shouldn't delay the commercial traffic which really does have tight deadlines too much anyway. Anyway, on the evening of Sunday June 6th, we drew into the Middle Scarpe at Courchelettes, just south of Douai. A pontoon has been placed just above the first, closed lock, but it was full when we arrived. The bank just before it looked good enough for us, so we declined the kind invitation of the Belgian tugboat owner to moor alongside him on the pontoon.... He was very kind - loaned me a bike to ride into town along the Scarpe to ascertain trains for Reims in the morning and, whilst I was on that journey, rescued FALCON when it heeled over on its moorings as a result of the Scarpe being emptied of water when the massive Escaut lock was operated! Bang, crash went our glasses and crocks! The middle Scarpe is to be restored - there was a public meeting near our moorings yesterday (June 10th) about it. The locks, with lovely big white wheels operating the paddles, are more or less intact, but the modern bridges in the town centre will need changing, I assume. The route is very picturesque, with a little lift bridge on one section I cycled past. There is, however, a considerable flow of water through at night, when the Escaut locks stop operating. It is thunderous in parts, and would unnerve most boaters, I'd guess, even if they were tied up when the flow came in the evenings. We found a restaurant in central Douai for a splendid meal on our final evening - La Terrasse in Terrasse St Pierre (http://www.laterrasse.fr email: CONTACT@laterrasse.fr) which we thoroughly recommend! And so to home. Over the weekend Alan Perkins will hopefully move FALCON up to Lille. Whilst waiting for my train, I found a copy of the new French Waterways magazine NAVIGATION INTERIEURE* which had an article on the World Canals Conference, in which much was made of the proposed flotilla of Narrow boats arriving for the occasion... so I decided that FALCON ought to get there if at all possible since there may be no other nbs around. Then I'll be returning on Monday to take her through to the other Conference site at La Louviere. * I was a bit disappointed in this new magazine. Foreign subscriptions are not invited, there is no web access, the pictures are poorly reproduced, and I don't think it sufficiently different from FLUVIAL to corner an additional readership. It is, like FLUVIAL, bi-monthly, so they are not even offering increased topicality. Whether it will go the same way as FLUVIAL's last competitor, FLEUVES & CANAUX, and appear as another sub-title on its cover, I don't know.... -- David Long Sankey Canal Restoration Society http://www.scars.demon.co.uk/scars/