Heading South (slowly)


The Meuse flows over 272 km to the Belgian border and needs 59 locks to get there.  Climbing from Belgium, we start in the Ardennes National Park.  Steep rocky hills create extravagant meanders in the river and the railway seems to cross back and forth regularly.  It's beautiful cruising without much to trouble us but a lock every 4-5km.

The locks are not difficult but care is needed. About 300m before the lock is a receiver on a pole.  We point our remote control at that and press the button.  It starts flashing and the red light on the lock turns to red/green whilst the lock is prepared.  The gates open and the light turns green.  Then we cruise slowly in and identify bollards we can use to hold the bow and stern.  Sometimes this is awkward because the lock is deep and Julie's throwing skills are much in demand.  Sometimes it's hard because the bollards are located unhelpfully.  This can be a problem when sharing a lock with another boat (the locks are around 47m long so there's usually room for 2 or more end to end).  Once we're settled in, we lift a blue rod located in the lock wall.  That sets off the process of closing gates, filling and opening gates.  The water flow is automated and pretty fierce so we soon learned to get the ropes carefully located to manage the strong pull forward effect that could really bash our 28 tonnes around.  But it's safe enough if we follow 2 important rules: do it slowly, and work as a team.  The helmsman is completely reliant on the bowman to get the boat in the right place and under control.

We're not rushing.  There's plenty of nice moorings and we're making sure we stop everywhere at least 2 nights so we can take a good look round.  And I get to play with my new drone (see picture).  The towns are all a bit run down.  This is the poorer eastern part of France and it's easy to see that people are leaving country towns for the cities.  That's really changing the face and (I suspect) the social structure of France.

Comments

  1. Alan and Rosie12 June 2019 at 13:15

    First of all I must compliment you on the quality of the pictures you load on. These are always a pleasure to study with lovely views. The lock procedures sound quite tricky even without the fag of manually operating the gates and paddles. Well done, both of you. Continue to enjoy your trip and keep blogging.

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