Pontoise to Beaumont-sur-Oise

20 kms, 1 lock, 3 hours

It was another short trip today so we left late-ish at 9.00.  Plodding upstream we do about 7.5 kms/hr.  Just as we set off three 4-man sculls appeared behind us and were travelling faster than we were!

The chateau at the top of the ramparts that I tried to see yesterday , and one of the sculls, about to overtake us

Yet another island, we must go left, the scull goes right

This is listed as a dangerous bend in the river, almost 90 degrees with a bridge - we took note of the big black rubber rollers at both ends of the bridge supports

 We are pleasantly surprised by the Oise Rive, it cuts a sinuous route between high hills.   The banks are covered with trees and houses, some big, some small, but difficult to see between the trees.

Approaching L'Isle Adam,  it has a good pontoon and like looks a really interesting place to stop

Approaching the lock at Isle Adam

We have seen a awful lot of big logs afloat

What on earth?... After some research I found a snippet: the barge is called Colporteur, it carries a submarine called Ixolotl, and there was barge tied alongside called Hydroplane which carries an enormous hot air balloon.

We passed quite a few small public pontoons, mostly without any services, but good places to stop at small villages.  Many of them do not appear on either PC Navigo, our French Fluviacarte guide (admittedly it is quite old) or in the 2010 edition of David Edwards-May’s excellent “Inland Waterways of France”.  Hopefully we will find more of them as we continue upstream because we really don’t want to stop in big cities.

This afternoon we stopped in Beaumont-sur-Oise, with a floating pontoon (no services)

where there is a Lidl store 700m from the pontoon.  We have not done any grocery shopping for many days and were totally out of essentials like fresh veg, meat and toilet paper.  We did two shopping trips on the bikes and are now all stocked up again, including some ice-cream to alleviate the heat.