Saturday 29th June
Today should have been a leasurely 25km along the Marne River with 3 locks. However when we arrived at the first lock we pressed the remote control, watched the lock lights flash and finally settle on 2 reds, a 'protracted stop'. What was probably an hour later and following a one way phone call, the lock engineer arrived and manually activated the gates. The same happened at the third lock, although this time the lock keeper was expecting the call and was waiting.
An interesting thing about these 3 locks is that they have had 45° sloping sides, which for a keel boat would have been very bad news, but fortunately they had installed pontoons. Why sloping sides? I haven't a clue.
So tied up at Épernay, the capital of the Champagne region.
