Cruising with the Carters: Peronne to Pont l'Eveque

48 kms, 7 locks, 1 tunnel

Oh my word, we got hammered in a lock today. And we have the scars to prove it!

It all started so well. At 9.00 when we left, the sun was shining (although it was a pretty nippy 4^o) and not a cloud in the sky as we approached the first lock. The light was green and the gates were open. I called on the VHF twice, no answer, so we entered the lock. This lock, and the next one (numbers 13 and 14) are really nasty for little boats. The sides of the lock are not smooth concrete but corrugated iron sheeting, and the corrugations are wide and deep: they swallow fenders as if they weren’t there at all. We secured to a ladder with our hook, waited a bit, then a barge hove into view behind us. Oh good grief, we were going to share the lock with a commercial and we were at the front. Not a good idea. There were no ladders further forward and the bollard s were too far apart for a fore and aft moorings so we had to use a single line on a bollard and those bollards were few and far between on the way up the 6m lift. No way I could reach them to move the purchase point up as the lock filled so Ian manned the line and I rushed to get Big Black Bertha (a massive fender) rigged horizontally alongside the hull in the bow, and held a large round white fender at the stern. That would have worked just fine in a well behaved lock but this one was extremely turbulent and very fast. As the boat rose quickly Ian could not pull in the slack quickly enough and the bow was pushed out, which forced the stern in and the swim platform jammed into one of the corrugations and scraped its way up. He told me to leave the fender, gun the engine ahead and put the helm over. That pulled the stern out and the bow swung back toward the lock wall, Ian managed to change the rope from one bollard to the next, I have no idea how, but still the boat made contact with the lock wall.

When we exited, we let the commercial get well ahead of us so we had the next lock to ourselves and hooked onto a ladder well to the back of the lock. Again it had corrugated sides and it was turbulent but we avoided the worst of it and had had time to sort out the fenders before we entered.

After that everything went smoothly. We never had to call in to any of the following locks; either they were green as we approached or there was a boat in the lock coming towards us from the opposite direction and we just had to wait till he cleared the lock and it turned green in our favour.

Mud all along the side of the swim platform - evidence of contact with the lock wall. Under the mud there were big gouges in the stainless steel.

A view from the steering wheel

No idea, but it looked interesting

Approaching the 1 km long Panneterie tunnel

The rape is beginning to bloom

A view from the top of a 6m high lock onto the canal below.

The cathedral at Noyon

Ouch, that must have been a big bang!

The entry into the port at Pont l'Eveque

It was a long day, 7 hours 30 minutes, and it was a pleasure to find a new Halte Nautique in Pont l’Eveque with a pontoon mooring, water and electricity available if you want it, which we didn’t.

This is the most delightful little port with a very busy boatyard at the far end. After the shenanigans in the lock, and already with some rusty spots that need treating, we approached the owner of the boatyard, Pascal so his workers told us, and asked if we could buy some metal primer. He stopped work (he was busy grinding on a barge) and took us up to his paint store to look at what he has. Ian found what we hope is the right stuff, filled a jar with about half a litre, and Pascal refused to take any payment. I keep saying it, the French are the nicest people.

Pascal getting back to work

10 minutes after we arrived another pleasure boat came in flying a Norwegian lag. He told us he left Norway a year ago, cruised to the Med via Germany and the Rhone, spent the winter in Barcelona and is now on his way back home via the Meuse and the Netherlands.