Amiens to Long

Yesterday evening our friends from Faial, Piet and Jelka, arrived in their camper-van.  

We spent a very joyful evening together, had a sausage and steak barbecue, and copious amounts of wine.  Needless to say we all felt a little fragile this morning.   However, we had hooked up to the electricity box (€2 for 4 hours) at about 6pm to run our small heater – and at 9 this morning it was still running, a very long 4 hours. I had to do a supermarket run before setting off this morning to get some wine for tonight! 

32 km, 5 locks

We phoned the lock keeper to request service, said goodbye to Piet (Jelka had gone to the cathedral) and left the mooring at 9.40. It was really cold, but that did not detract from the beautiful river.

The Engineering faculty of the University in Amiens.

Canoes from bank to bank…

… full of tiny little kids

In the lock, but where are the lock gates?

Oh, there they are!

This stretch of the river all had these rather strange double locks, although the other locks all had lock gates between the two sections.

Definitely a river, running strongly.  We were in idle doing 10 knots at times and we will be coming back against the stream in a few days!

The clouds were gathering

And it hailed when in the lock!

A really quaint village:  un-renovated tenements

Renovated tenements

Our lunch stop in Picquingy.  There was a huge chateau about1 km before the town; unfortunately too many tress to take a photo.

Leaving the lock at Picquingy we encountered this incredible turbulence.

A group of about 8 of these funny bikes passed us.

Our mooring in Long.  We got here at about 16.00.

In the shadow of, from left to right, the Town Hall, a Gothic church, and a chateau

I went for a walk, camera in hand: the chateau, only open from 1st July to 31st August.

The church, locked unfortunatley

A Butcher’s shop, hairdresser, small general grocery store, fabulous Town Hall, but I didn’t see a “boulangerie” (bakery).

And a chunk of brickwork missing with a plaque above it explaining that this is a souvenir from the day the town was liberated on 1st Sept 1944.  A Sherman tank, driver blinded by smoke, missed the turning and crashed into the wall, setting 5 houses on fire.