Monday 9th May 2016 Château Regnault to Vanne-Alcorps. 36.7kms 7 locks

Statue on the rock above Bogny

10.6° C Hazy sunshine, getting hotter. One cruiser went past just before nine heading for Levrézy for opening time. We set off just after nine, winding and heading downstream with the flow, 9kms to the first lock. Five campervans were on the quay at Bogny, no boats on the pontoon. Mike took a photo of the statue on top of the hill at Bogny. The banks along the river were full of buttercups, jack-by-the-hedge, white campion and comfrey flowers. We passed a youth who’d been camping out on the towpath, all his gear spread out on a bench. A forge started up just before Monthermé, hammering

Passing a bucket of concrete across Montherme lock

echoing down the valley. Seventeen campervans on the quay at Monthermé, two Dutch ones - one a Winnebago, the other an old jeep towing a small but modern trailer tent (looked like it was practising for the Daakar Rally. Under the roadbridge and round the bend, then we noticed that the cruiser we’d seen here last time, Aristrid, was now moored next to some sloping steps by the houses and looked locked up and left. I steered while Mike mopped the boat and solar panels to get rid of the t

400m high hills at Anchamps

hick layer of pollen we’d collected. When he finished he made a cuppa. Into the lock cut. A crow circled round over the boat and dropped down on to a tree floating in the canal after a dead fish, but then it was scared off by the boat passing, he’ll be back. A kingfisher flew across the canal as we arrived at lock 46 Monthermé. A Dutch boat called ZK31 from Hunze (a fishing boat?) had just come up the lock so it was full. There was a concrete mixer on the lockside, its driver watched us lock through, a JCB on the far bank had just taken a bucketful off concrete from him and was trundling down to the new

Allotment buildings at Anchamps

overflow weir. Below the lock we passed an uphill Dutch cruiser - with a VNF van on the towpath following it. We did some checks on the boat electrics as the echo sounder was going wild. Mike came come the conclusion that the problem was being caused was a bad connection in the plug on the inverter, the echo sounder’s amplifier is very sensitive to spurious emmisions. A three decked British cruiser went past heading uphill. A short lock cut to lock 47 La Commune. The impressive 400m high forested hills curved round the big bend at Laifour. Into the long lock cut, trying

Rock bolted mesh on the cliff and a catch fence below the road

to identify the tall old pines which had new bright red cones growing at the ends of fronds. Gave up, without seeing them close up and taking samples of the branches and cones it was impossible. Another VNF van went past heading upriver. Down lock 48 Dames de Meuse. Below there were big banks of wild garlic perfuming the air and a large swathe of blue turned out to be forget-me-nots. The river wound around the village of Anchamps with a high hill marked on the map as Mont Malgré Tout at 419m. We thought lock 49 Orzy was playing up when the red/green light stayed on for ages. We let the

Preparing to build a new weir at l'Uf

wind blow the boat against the stone quay by the long needle weir and Mike went to have a look to see what was happening. There was an uphill Belgian cruiser in the chamber. It cleared the lock then we went down. A widebeam narrowboat was waiting below the lock. It had no name or flag, but the crew spoke English, one with an Australian accent who asked if they should go into the locks before the green lights came on! The lights went to red and the gates closed. Mike asked if they had zapped, they said yes, but we reckoned that they hadn’t succeeded. We said we’d do it for them. You have to get very close to the post for it to register. The lock lights changed to green. They waved. As we

A basking terrapin near Fumay

headed for the tunnel at Revin, there was a pénichette hireboat from Pont-à-Bar coming up the weirstream from the moorings at Revin. It followed us so we slowed down to enter the chamber and it came in with us. We thought they were French but they didn’t seem to understand when we said that the lock, 50 Revin, was a deep one, 4m. I made some lunch. The hireboat was long gone when I sat out to eat. The road alongside the river was busy with lunchtime traffic. 6kms to lock 51 St Joseph. There were still two big cranes working at building what looked like boxes for a floating work pontoon to build a new weir from. Presumably they would have to build a weir well above St Joseph due to the bridges right over the chamber and the current needle weir. We passed another big UK cruise, that was heading upstream by the old quarry. A Canada goose by the old hydroelectric plant was fighting to untangle itself from some fishing line, nothing we could do to help it as we couldn’t get near it. Another cruiser was coming up in St Joseph. Two VNF men were cutting grass by the lock, then a third left the lock cabin and went back to his strimmer, as a large Dutch cruiser emerged from the lock – it went past and none of the crew even looked in our direction! We went in and dropped down, a train crossing the bridge was very loud, fingers in ears – it didn’t stop the swallows nesting under both the railway and cycle path bridges. Below the lock we could see the houses at Fumay in the distance. Ox-eye daisies were coming into bloom along the towpath. Yet more uphill traffic at lock 52 L’Uf. Two cruisers, a German one and a Dutch one with no flag (Dordrecht on its stern). Although the lock had been fenced off the gate had been left open and there were cyclists on the lockside gongoozling. Mike took photos of the work going on by the lock to make a road for the heavy plant to cross the weirstream to make a new weir. The water below the lock had turned brown from all the work in the weirstream. Passed the houseboat Selamat by the chalets and on around Fumay. There were three campervans on the bend and two boats on the quay – one was the hireboat we’d locked with earlier. The wood factory, built on top of a wall made of scrap slate from the old slate works on the opposite bank, was very aromatic with some sort of wood preservative like creosote. Yet another cruiser came up in lock 53 Vanne-Alcorps, an Australian, and so we hovered until it went past us then we tied up in our usual spot by the lumpy bank above the lock. It was 4pm. Black clouds were gathering and it was hot, we expected thunderstorms but nothing arrived. I got stuck into the chores, Mike clipped the edge to keep the ants off the boat.