We went for a walk through town this morning, again in warm sunshine, following signs to various ‘Caves’ (including Bollinger - keep walking!) until we reached the vineyards of “L. Bénard-Pitois”; Champagne tasting (J not clear why she’s presented with a bucket?!) and buying ensued (with Roxy in on the party as she razzle-dazzled in the tasting room!) And although we are moored not too far away they insisted on delivering our single case to the boat before our departure!!
So, clear headed I assure you (hic), we cast off at
11.40 – in T-shirts and bare feet, youpi! The first lock is still automatic but
we had no bar or sensors to activate it, so not entirely sure how it knew we
were there, but it did... And then another first – a bar activated swing bridge
moved to let us through, but the same can’t be said for the mechanical digger
attached to a barge on the other side, just by a narrow bridge! The digger was
dredging the exact spot he waved us to pass through to get by – and helpfully
called out to be careful, it’s not very deep! Errr, thanks for that!!
On average, from activation (bar twist) to lock out it is
taking us 10 minutes per lock, as they all have been set up in our direction by
a boat going the other way; very lucky and saving us plenty of time over the
course of a day.
Initially we had set ourselves an ambitious itinerary,
heading for a mooring after lock #4 (we’re working backwards numerically on
this canal) we did 7 locks today, the last being #7, before mooring at Pogny at
17.30 – we knew there were no services and according to the guide book not even
a shop in town, so no exploring was done, but thanks to our late start and with
the locks closing at 18.00 we cut our losses.
No comments:
Post a Comment