Learning the ropes (in France) Pt 5- the finale

It was not all bad. We had a wonderful time. In fact we would love to go again.

The picture is of our hired narrowboat, Saint Nazaire with the crew. The fact was that we were under crewed. In the large locks one really has to tie on to something to stop the boat being tossed around and this means one needs a crew member fore and aft and another on the lock side. Some of the locks have such a large rise and fall that one cannot put crew ashore and there are long poles set into the side of the lock to pass a line around to control the position.

There is one lock that is on a river section of the canal with a lock cut that narrows considerably. It is traffic light controlled but to tell the control system of your presence one has to turn a switch that is dangling over the middle of the canal from an overhead line. When you don't know that it is there, discover it late and pass it it is a job to back up and position the boat so that one can reach the dangling switch which is swinging in the wind that is making it very difficult to back up the boat!

Mooring is fun. One can moor just about anywhere but bollards and rings are very rare. The canal is lined with Plane trees and most of the time one ties to one of these sturdy items of canal furniture or to one of the thousands of roots that dip into the water and form a bank of sorts.

The french hire boats do not seem to know the beauty of taking things slowly and wash making is very common. The french commercial barges also do not slow and keep to the centre of the canal making it quite daunting as they approach. We felt that our little narrowboat would be swept away by these towering beasts. They are big.

One thing we should say. We learnt a lot on our adventure on the Canal du Midi and the Canal de Robine. We went to Narbonne and Carcasonne as well as Beziers and stopped at many villages in between. We loved the countryside and the people. We went to Minerve and the vineyards and sampled Muscat so smooth that it slid down the throat. We visited a chateau right beside the canal and bought wine from the vat. We had steaks and mussels and cassoulet. We loved the Mediterranean sea and the bright blue skies.

And we got there before the Narrow Dog.

Learning the ropes (in France) Pt 4: Tipping is optional

All the guide books suggest that the lock keepers on the Canal du Midi do not expect to receive a tip. However, many of them have a little stall displaying Mon Mammon preserves and Vin de Table at highly inflated prices. Sometimes a purchase from these stalls might not speed your passage through this time but might do on the return. The lock keepers also have telephones. They might communicate with the next lock keeper if you are sypathetic to their wares, the next lock keeper might also expect you to be.

At one lock, the lock keeper displayed a large number of wood sculptures. Many were obviously fixtures but there were some smaller works of art that were definitely for sale. I must say that I am not a collector of sculpture and it didn't really interest me. This lock keeper also had a large yellow labrador dog. He was particularly fond of mooring ropes and would not let go of ours nor would he let us get to it to retrieve it, pulling the end with great strength and gusto, dropping it and then barking furiously before attaching himself to it again. This game went on for quite a time. Long enough for us to get a picture anyway.

I wondered whether he was trained to hold on to our rope until we had bought a sculpture or left a tip!

Learning the ropes (in France) Pt 3: Stopping for lunch

In France, everything stops for lunch.

As we were travelling just around Easter time when there were not too many tourists about we also found that in the villages lunch was a very lengthy meal. There were several days that we stopped when the sun was high and walked into a village to obtain the basics, milk and bread, to find that it was closed for lunch. And I mean everything! Church, shops, garage, houses and businesses.

But there are some things that one does not expect. We approached an automatic lock at a time just about lunch time. Being good English boaters trained on the ettiquette of the canals, we looked back to see a plastic hire boat approaching the lock about a third of a mile away. We waited for them. As they entered the lock the gates automatically closed behind them and the Best Mate pressed the "Ascend" button at the controller.

Nothing. As it was now 1302h, the lock had closed for lunch. The Best Mate was ten feet above us and we were trapped. We were in the lock, the Best mate on the lockside. All we could do was have our lunch. With no way of getting off we made sandwiches on board and attached some of them to the end of the mooring line in a plastic bag. The Best Mate pulled them up. We then tied on a plastic bottle of tea to refresh her spirits.

What can you do when you are in a lock? Well one thing is splice the rope that was cut when it got crossed on the bollard! So that is what I did.

Lesson three: stop early for lunch. [To be continued

Learning the ropes (in France) pt 2 Beware Automatic Locks

The French waterways have been modified by the electrification of the gates and automation of the locking process. However, this can have disadvantages if you are a relative novice boater or unaware of the hazards, as we were on our trip to the Canal du Midi.

Having turned in the round lock at Agde we were returning toward Beziers and were rising for the first time. We entered the first lock alongside a german crew on a plastic hire boat. The gates closed automatically behind us. We had experienced the automative system and I, Eeyore, was on the lock side. I looped the centre rope of the narrowboat around the centre bollard and pressed the 'Ascend' button. I admired the view as the paddles opened automatically, water entered the lock and the boat began to rise. The flow of the water into the lock pushed the boat forward as the rope around the bollard slackened as the boat came up. But only so far. As the roof of the boat came above the top of the lock side it started to tighten again and as the boat had moved forward the rope was crossed and locked onto the bollard. The boat began to tilt quickly and dramatically. The boys were on the boat and plates started to slide off the table onto the floor and items started to crash around them.

Fortunately I noticed in time and hit the RED EMERGENCY STOP button. The paddles closed and calm was restored with the boat at quite an angle but clear of the water. The German crew were not amused as they were stuck in the lock with us. Their skipper shouted at me to get a knife. I got the boys off the boat first and then took a kitchen knife to the taught mooring line. The boat jumped up and bounced back into the upright position.

Voies Navigables de France (VNF) the French navigation authority sent their engineer out to find out why the button had been pressed and reset the controls. I explained and apologised. No harm done!

I had learned a second lesson. Watch the ropes at all times!

It is this incident that makes me believe that the newly installed extra bollards on narrow locks will be "an accident waiting to happen". It happened to us. [To be continued

Learning the ropes (in France) Pt 1: Tie both ends.

The Fonneseranne Staircase is a monster. Seven ovaline stone chambers linked by gated steps up the side of a hill near to Beziers on the Canal du Midi. While we were burning down London in 1666, a little known frenchman was connecting the Atlantic to the Meditterranean by an amazing canal.

We had come from the hire base at Le Somail via the 54 km pound and this staircase of locks was our first experience of french locks. We arrived in the late afternoon, discovered that the locks are a one way system: down in the morning and up in the afternoon with a break for lunch. We moored up and walked down the locks. We were amazed by their size in comparison to the narrow locks we were used to around the Birmingham Canal Navigation or even compared to the barge lock at Teddington, the largest lock we had ever encountered. What was scary was the fall of each lock: about the depth of Somerton Deep at each lock.

In the morning we were gestured into the locks by Messieurs Eclusers along with another craft and we decended. The water fell. the gates opened and one after another we glided down in a smooth operation. The lock keepers did all the work and we went down on the water. Easy peezey.

After visiting Agde and the Mediterranean we returned to queue at the foot of the stairs. This time the lock keepers beckoned all the plastic cruisers into the lock past us. I thought we had been forgotten and then our tres joli bateau anglais (a nerrowboat) was brought in at the rear. The lockkeepers shouted and cajoled a dutch teenage beauty who was draped across the front of her cruiser to get inside. She reluctantly complied and then saw why. The water entered the lock and we started to bob up with such force that she would have been swept off the bow of the boat. We too realised that we were placed at the back of the lock because the inrush from the gate paddles would have swamped our fore well deck with disasterous results.

When about half full the gates opened and we bobbed forward into the next lock chamber against the flow. It was as near to white water rafting as I have been in a narrowboat.

But that wasn't the worst of it. In each lock I had to throw up to the lockside a line fore and aft. This was about a twelve foot throw. We were short of crew as we were travelling with Piglet, my four year old son, who could hold but not throw, and Poohbear, my special needs ten year old who can't throw or catch. My Best Mate was on lockside to catch at the bow end and a dutch lass helped out by catching the rope that I threw from the stern. That was except in the third lock of seven when, to my horror, she missed my throw and I saw the rope's end disappear into the water followed by all the rest of the line as the other end flipped off the 'T' post!

I reported to the lock keeper that there was about 15 meters of rope in his lock. He did not go to look for it imediately. We had four more locks to ascend.

We got out at the top and were glad of the reprieve and the long pound back to the hire base where we replenished our stock of mooring line. The next one was polypropelene. It floats! [to be continued