Tue 23rd July
Today saw the last of the Canal Entre Champagne et Bourgogne with a final 3 down locks and one as we entered the Saone. At the final canal lock we had to hand in our remote control before we could leave, so it’s back to either twisting a handle at the lock approach or radioing to the lock keeper in very broken French asking to enter. Thankfully with just the Saone and Rhone to go, we won’t have to worry about too many more locks. Overnight we stopped against a concrete quay in the village of Lamarche sur Saone, and even ventured in the river for a cool down swim.
As we leave the Canal Entre Champagne et Bourgogne a few words about it, 114 locks over a length of 224km. It’s about 25 metres wide, and very weedy in parts. All the canal is very attractive, with generally tree lined banks, going through very arable countryside, with vineyards only at the northern end. Throughout the canal, we only saw 2 commercial barges, probably reflecting that these days its cheaper to transport materials by road, particularly compared with this canal and probably no more than 30 pleasure boats. All the locks were of the same size, taking vessels up to 5.06m by 38.5m with drops or rises ranging from just under 3m to 5.2m, with most being about 3.4m. The locks were self operated via remote control, and although each lock had a lock keepers cottage, these were either in private ownership or empty. There were always VNF staff driving up and down the banks to help if necessary and generally asking what was our destination for the day and what time were we starting in the morning. The canal depth was a fairly constant 1.8 metres but only in the middle, closer to the banks it dropped off and many times, with our draft of 1.5 metres, we stirred up the muddy bottom if we ventured too close to the edge. At this time of the year there is the risk of insufficient water in the canals, and only in one section was the water level a few inches below the top of the lock gates.
