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| Lock 5 Venon. C de Briare |
Cool morning, blue sky, sunny with nice breeze. Mike went to get a loaf and I got on with the chores before setting off at ten following Charley. As we left Mike rang the VNF and booked the next lock with the keeper at the top lock. 1.8 kms to lock 6 Corenvaux (4.1m) which was ready for us. A young man in a van arrived as we got there. He insisted on taking my rope although it was an easy step off and back on. He pressed the button and we chatted. The 19th century lock house was empty and the roof was about to fall in, (it had been empty when our book about the C de Briare had been written in 1993 and they said it was going to ruin then) An uphill hireboat arrived as we left (now we know why we’d got a VNF helper). We went under the pipe bridge which carries (or should that be carried?) water pumped from the Loire up to the summit. I made a cuppa as we ran down the 1.3 kms pound to lock 5 Venon (3.50m). No one to assist at this one so I stepped off with the centre rope, pressed the button and got back on board. The lock house was inhabited, it looked very smart and still had its ancient metal lift bridge at the tail end of the chamber.
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| Lock 4 Cognardiere on the old canal to Briare & the Loire |
No more downhill locks and the first of the uphill ones would not be until a distance of 20 kms along the Latèral à la Loire on the far side of the famous Briare aqueduct. Followed Charley down into Briare. As we passed the old canal lock, Cognardière - the first of three still on the old 1830 “gabarit” of 31m leading down into the moorings in the canal basins, a cruiser left the lock coming uphill, turned into the canal in front of us and followed right behind Charley. Another one with a very smoky engine! Another cruiser went down into the lock he’d just left, which we noted was now automatic but still keeper activated. The old line of the canal leading down to the basins and the Loire was abandoned in the 1950’s and restored in 1987, although the access lock on to the river was not reinstated. We were now travelling on the “new” canal Latèral à la Loire, opened in 1896. We moored next to a very smelly bank (town doggy toilet, I cleaned up with a shovel after we tied up) just before the old commercial quay, which was now home to a hire base and pay moorings. We couldn’t get our stern next to the bank as it was on the bottom so Mike heaved a quant pole out to keep it out as traffic went past. It was 11.30 a.m. The trip boat from Briare went past heading uphill – a good test of our mooring lines. Set the satellite dish up, the line from the satellite just missing the trees, and tuned in TNT French terrestrial digital too. Lunch. Quite busy with hireboats and cruisers up and down. We had Bouygues on 3G again. First good Internet connection since Montargis on the 25th July, eleven days ago!
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