Saturday 27th April 2013 Pont-à-Bar to Bogny-sur-Meuse. 34.5 kms 7 locks

Preparing to leave Pont-a-Bar

5.5°C overnight minimum Cold night, grey skies with brief glimpses of sun. Very cold NNE wind blowing in our faces while we were cruising. A péniche went past slowly and quietly before we were up. Got ready to set off at 9.20 a.m. just as a Rive de France hireboat came down lock 6. Untied and followed it into lock 7 Meuse. The young French men on the hireboat said they’d never been boating before so it was all new to them. Ten minutes after we set off we were turning left on the Meuse heading downstream towards Charleville, while the cruiser headed upstream towards Sedan. 

Lock 7 Meuse. C. des Ardennes.
No walkways on the top end gates!

Mike didn’t steer for long without his coat on. 1.5 kms to the first river lock 40 Dom-le-Mesnil. Although the lockhouse had new shutters it looked unlived in. I saw a bird land on one of its chimney pots then hopped inside, must have a nest down in the chimney. 10.5 kms to the next lock. A musk rat was swimming leisurely along the right hand bank against the flow, which Mike had just commented was running at about 2 kph; we had revs on to do 6 kph but were doing 8 kph according to the GPS. On some of the bends the echo sounder recorded depths of over six metres. Mike remarked that the boat was doing sudden sideways jaunts at some of these deep spots and he reckoned they were deep holes in the riverbed caused by many years of floods. 

Lock 41 Romery. R. Meuse

We passed a fisherman in a small dinghy powered by a little electric outboard; he was banging the surface of the river with a thing like an upturned cup with a long handle. We’d seen fishermen doing this before, apparently the sound it makes attracts the fish. The river poured over a weir to our left and we went on into the lock cut leading to lock 41 Romery. Again the lockhouse looked locked up and left, uninhabited, and I can’t say as I would blame them as across the road behind the house there was a large, noisy stone quarry, still hard at work on a Saturday. 

Lock 42 Mezieres with old lockhouse to the left
overshadowed by blocks of city flats

A jogger jogged past as I was taking photos, first signs of terrestrial life. 2.97 kms into Mézières. Under the railway bridge and the river ran over a weir to our left again and we turned sharp right into a short lock cut leading to the deep (3.4m) lock 42 Mézières. Mike zapped but nothing happened, in fact he tried it several times and the lock light remained on single red. We could see a car on the lockside and suspected that there may be a lock keeper on duty, so Mike gave a long hoot to attract his attention as we’d seen no signs with VHF channels to call him on. Nothing. 

Deep river lock at Mezieres

Mike reversed towards the zapper post to have another go when the lights changed to red and green and the gates opened. Hmm, asleep was he? – or just got to a good bit in his book? No sign of him (or her, maybe) up in the lofty cabin way above us. Mike tucked the centre rope through the ladder and I lifted the blue rod (waste of time as the keeper had control) and eventually the gates closed behind us and the lock emptied slowly. Immediately we were out of the lock we did a sharp right again with the river coming in from our left (the canal section leading to the lock chopped off a big meandering loop) then about a kilometre downstream we went under another railway bridge, the river went off on another big meandering loop (with the Port-de-Plaisance and campsite situated about half a kilometre down the loop) and we turned sharp right again into another short lock cut between very high banks, that had recently been underpinned and re-enforced with concrete and tie bars plus a mound of very large rocks at waterlevel. 

Lock cabin with unseen keeper at Mezieres

Zapped and this time lock 43 Montcy worked on automatic. Floods back in about 1998 (I think it was at the time that we were stuck for a month in Fumay) swept great chunks of the bank away to the right of the lock, making a new course for the river, which the VNF later made into a new weir. There was a VNF van on the lockside and the VNF man with a mower had just gone into the (uninhabited) lockhouse for his lunch. Dropped down about 1.75m to rejoin the river again below the lock. There were sounds of shotguns firing in the woods to our right as we left the lock on the 9 kms reach. 

Leaving Mezieres lock,
weir on right not flowing today.

I made some hot sandwiches for lunch, as we were cold, still battling into the wind. Through Nouzonville, keeping left to avoid the submerged island and left past another island and the weir (noted that nesting Canada geese had spread this far now up the river, we’d seen them in Belgium before but not this far south into France) before taking the canal to lock 44 Joigny. A house that was lived in, with decorated lock cabins, old and new, plus a sign showing flood levels in the 90s. Past another island on our right, round a bend and under a bridge, then on the right just downstream of the bridge was a new pontoon (looked like it had water and electricity too) and a hireboat from Pont-à-Bar was moored there, its crew were having lunch and fishing. A winding 6 kms reach with factories at Braux on the left bank lead us to lock 45 Levrézy. I took a photo with the four peaks of rock on the hill beyond the lock, the Rocher des Quatre Fils Aymon. The sign saying “zap here” was missing but the blue box and yellow flashing light were there. Mike was concerned that there were no lights showing at the lock. The bulb must be broken, I said. 

Flood water levels from the 1990s,
 at Joigny lk 44

He zapped, the yellow flasher flashed and the green light came on down by the lock – see, the red bulb wasn’t working! The lock worked OK. Just another kilometre and we arrived at Bogny, winded to moor bows pointing upstream next to a newly refurbished pontoon. It was 3 pm. New electricity posts and water had been installed, we couldn’t use the water as we had no push in connector that would fit it. It’s made by Staubli, and going to be the new standard Mike was told at the marina at Pont a Bar, but no-one has any connectors for them. It’s the type of thing BWB would do, remember the new sized tapers on the paddle spindles than no-one had a windlass to fit? The bank had been completely done over, trees all gone and new concrete steps at the downstream end and a slope connecting to a steep passerelle at the upstream end (where we’d tied). Set the TV up, connected to the electric and unloaded the moped. Mike went to collect the car from Pont-à-Bar.

Rocks called Quatre Fils Aymon with Chateau Regnault town below