contentedsouls

After all the excitement of Paris, and particularly being out from under the trees and in the sun, the decision to move on in the morning was unanimous. We hoped to complete the 3 locks and 21 kms and be tied up at a new mooring by 2.00pm.

Yet again, after battling with rigid, frozen, ropes, we moved off and called the Marne lock – the second one off of the Seine … and we called and we waited and we called and we waited. Eventually we pulled onto the waiting pontoon and I hopped off to take this photo. On the noticeboard, the information saying to call on channel 20 (as per the first lock and the Fluviacarte) had been covered over with  Dymo tape and changed to ‘19’. Humph.

So we called on 19 and received an incomprehensible reply from Mr Grumpy. After about half an hour (as long as they are allowed to delay you without explanation), he decided to empty the lock for us. Once we’d pulled into the lock and I had a rope on, I was committed to sitting out there freezing my arse off. Mr Grumpy – who clearly wasn’t getting enough at home (either that or his wife had put him on a diet and/or hidden his wine) – then decided to wander off and do something more interesting rather than close the gates and fill the lock. An hour and three quarters it took us to get through that bloody lock for absolutely no reason and, yes, I was very cold and suffering from a massive sense of humour failure.

Having exited the lock, it was straight into a one way tunnel and, fortunately, he had bothered to turn the lights green – I don’t really think of tunnels as tunnels when you can see the other end and they are big and wide and all lit up; Stanedge this certainly wasn’t.

Along the Marne are a number of ‘link’ canals which cut out wriggly/shallow stretches. Our next lock put us up onto one of these; the Canal de Chelles and we had to wait for a commercial in front of us to go through and the lock be re-set. This canal runs straight and true for a, rather boring, 9kms. The only excitement was when I saw one commercial overtaking another – they were side by side and heading straight at us, filling the entire width of the canal! This, of course, was the moment for my camera battery to die … doh. I managed to get the spare battery in by the time the overtaking container vessel came passed us and it never feels like there is enough room – you know there is …but….

Having reached the other end we, again of course, had to wait for the commercial ahead and the lock to be turned. The navigation continues upstream to the left after this lock, but we were turning right and hugging the right bank in search of a little mooring mentioned in the DBA files.

The problem with this was that it was now so late in the day that the sun was sitting just above the horizon and we couldn’t see a thing other than glare and silhouetted trees and shrubs. So we went down and turned (needed to moor pointing upstream anyway) to put the sun behind us and found our little patch of heaven. Not only have we got all of the boat on the bank, we also have sun on the solar panels, sun (providing free daytime heat) through our big picture windows most of the day and a TV signal for the first time in 2 weeks. I also have a choice of circular walks along the river, canal, two lakes and woodland and there are very few people/joggers/cyclists/dog walkers around. We are moored where the green splodge is on the map. My cup runneth over. If I’d known then what I know now, we would have been much better off being ill here and then going back for the Paris cruise, but hindsight ‘tis a wonderful thing and we had no idea that we would take so long to recover. I love the way the shade from the boat keeps our outline silhouetted in the frost.

We won’t be moving from here in a hurry – especially in these minus temperatures. Pretty much every canal in the NE of France is now closed due to ice. They started off arranging convoys behind ice breakers but lost that battle after 3 or 4 days. Due to the, pretty much, continuous commercial traffic; our little Chelles canal remains navigable.