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| Moored at Malmy |
4.6°C Sunny and much warmer all
day. The previous evening I’d helped Mike get the bike off the roof and stow it
in the car ready for today. First he went to the village of Vendresse for a
loaf, which he brought back to the boat (11 kms round trip) then over to
Pont-á-Bar, parked the car by lock N°6 and returned on the moped. We set off at
11.20 a.m. I walked halfway back to the zapper post before it would work, then
I walked back and got on the boat as the lock was filling. Some farm tractors
were arriving around one every ten minutes, bringing loads of soil or compost
in tipping trailers,
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| Minor surgery on the car |
which they were dumping beyond the quay. A fisherman had
set up his rods right by the lock. Down lock 3 Malmy and on to the 5.9 kms
pound. I made a cuppa and Mike put the sunshade up. On our left, meadows
stretching up the slopes of the low hill to the woods were occupied by cows and
calves, while on our right the canal was bordered with wide arable fields. The
low hill, called Mont Joly curved round to the right and the river Bar wove a
meandering path around it while the canal took the quick route via a tunnel
called St Aignan (197m long). The entrance was around a blind left hand bend
and there was a zapper post and a new set of traffic lights as it and the locks
were one way working.
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| The quay at Malmy |
The lights turned from red to red green after Mike
zapped, which meant that no one was coming through the tunnel and therefore the
two locks, 4 & 5 St Aignan, at the far end of the tunnel were filling.
Green light and we went through the tunnel and straight into the lock. The lock
house on the left had smart blue shutters and a young lady at the house on the
right was grooming a horse in the garden. The pound between the locks is very
short, but wide, to allow big boats to swing out and turn sharp left into the
lower lock.
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| Zapper post and lights at St Aignan |
There was a new picnic table on the far side of the pound and a
family was using it to have their lunch. Into lock 5 and a little boy in the
garden of the lock house waved before he was grabbed by a parent and taken
inside. 5.1 kms to Pont-à-Bar. I made some sandwiches for lunch as we cruised
along. Mike saw a couple of herons having a fight over a disputed length of
bank while I was in the cabin. Heard the first
cuckoo of the year while we were having lunch. The banks were covered in
ladysmock and cowslips, but here and there were bright patches of wood anemones
and celandines. A buzzard landed in the corner of a field and watched us
watching it as we passed by.
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| St Aignan tunnel, note new railings for pedestrian safety |
As we went through the village of
Hannogne-St-Martin I spotted a radio amateur antenna farm with more aerials
than we’d ever seen before at one house. Very impressive. A row of cruisers
were moored on the right by the boatyard of the Chantier Maubacq. Loads of
boats were out on the hard and an old British campervan stood next to a small
Dutch barge called Jenny B, which was undergoing a major refit judging by the
amount of new wood standing outside it. Into the lock as the VNF crew were
leaving the yard after lunch in one large and one small van.
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| Out of the tunnel and into lock 4 St Aignan |
They waved. We
passed the hire base on the left where a long row of pénichettes were waiting
for this seasons hirers to take them out. Into the lock, 6 Pont-à-Bar, which
emptied OK, but the bottom end gates refused to open. Mike shinned up the
ladder and gave the gates a shove from the middle and wobbled the sensor on the
mitre post, THEN the hydraulic power pack started up and gates opened. We
trundled past more moored boats, noted that the restaurant boat had gone and
been replaced by several houseboats. We moored at 2.10 pm beyond the last of a
line of cruisers, on the right next to piling at the foot of a high grassy
bank.
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| Below lock 5 St Aignan |
A DB was coming up in lock 7 and seemed to be taking ages. A woman walked
up the towpath (the opposite bank to where we’d moored) and asked if the next
lock was working. She said the top gates on lock 7 wouldn’t fully open, so they
couldn’t get out of the lock. They’d called the VNF but she said they would
take a long time, maybe two hours. Mike looked through binos and saw that one
gate looked as if it hadn’t fully opened, probably had tree debris behind it.
The power pack had sensed an overload and had shut down. The light triangle
displayed two, vertical red lights, “en panne” out of order.
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| Hireboats waiting for this season's hirers above lock 6 Pont-a-Bar |
We got on with our
routine and set up the TV, etc. Mike moved the car, which he’d left parked on
the road by the lock this morning, and brought it down the path so it was next
to the boat. I gave him a hand to get the empty gas bottle out of the front
locker and he went to get a refill and get some petrol for the genie. Just
before he left at 4 pm the DB Rosa went past heading uphill – it HAD taken the
VNF almost three hours! Nice boat with a lovely
sounding slow-running diesel engine.
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