Set off through the tunnels at one. The headlight wouldn’t work and the first tunnel, souterain de la Colancelle was 758m long. I went up front on the bow to make sure it was plugged in properly. We had light for about half the tunnel! The summit cutting was very steep and lined with bricks or concrete to stop land slips and after a short open section we entered the souterain de Mouas, a short tunnel, 268m long. Another short open section before diving underground again for the souterain de Breuilles, 212m long. In several places there were water feeds from streams, some of which entered the canal as waterfalls and others were obscured by concrete canopies.
We moored next to an old motorised flattie, filled with fresh straw that looked like it had been used for transporting livestock, judging by the slurry in the corner nearest our bows. Charlie moored next to the sloping stone wall behind us. Within a few minutes of us tying up a couple of VNF personnel in a van arrived wanting to know what time we wanted to set off down the locks. We told him nine but said we couldn’t lock together as we were too long for the 30m chambers. (In truth it is a very tight fit and we have to overlap a bit and that doesn’t do Nick’s nerves much good as he is not happy about steel next to his plastic! And we can’t blame him.) Mike went to have a look at the first bit of the flight and found two deserted lock houses, one looked like it had been left exactly as it had been when the occupant died and the contents of cupboards and drawers had been scattered. On his return from his walk Mike decided to add an indicator light to one of our electric sockets so we could see if the mains supply was on or off. A nice little green neon appeared and lit up whenever we had 240v – why hadn’t we thought of doing that before! Decided to leave the car where it was as it would have been difficult anyway to get the bike across the old workboat. Still no Internet.
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