Saturday 31st July 2010 Dammarie to top of Rogny flight. C de Briare 6.13 kms 6 locks

An original 17th century bridge

Cool overnight and the boat was shaded from the sun where we were moored as there was a thick belt of trees. We got up early as we had decided to move on. Mike moved the car into the village of Dammarie and we set off at 8.30 a.m. to be at the locks when they opened at nine. A nice quiet run into Rogny. There were about a half dozen DBs moored on the pay moorings. Already there was a boat (DB Marie) going up in the first lock, 18 Ste Barbe (4.00m), and a yacht waiting below the flight to go up. We joined the queue. Neither of us looked up the arm to see how many boats were moored there. A keeper took ropes for us, just our bow rope, and the yacht only had one rope which they kept doubling and threading through the rungs of the ladder as they were next to the control rods. 

Fireworks alongside the old 17th c 7-rise staircase at Rogny

The keeper controlled the automatic lock, pressing the button on the panel at the top of the rods. As expected, the bow of the yacht moved over to the other side of the lock. Above the lock they had set up the fireworks on the left hand bank and up the flight of the old seven-rise staircase ready for the show later in the evening and a huge set of speakers hung from a crane arm, while on the right there was a bank of seating and rows of chairs. The British couple (in their sixties) on the yacht were new at locking (and the panic showed) and were en route for Greece from Kent. A youth in a VNF van went up the flight with us, taking ropes and pressing the button to set the automatic sequence running. 

Seating for the fireworks display at Rogny, opposite the 7-rise.

Up lock 17 Rogny (4.20m), Nick and Diana came down on their bikes on their way into the town for a look around and paused for a chat. Up lock 16 Chante-Pinot (4.10m), lock 15 St Joseph (4.20m) - lock 15 didn’t close behind us and the keeper had gone on to the top lock, he came back to lock 14 Racault (4.00m) and started the locking sequence again. A man and two women on bikes came to chat as I’d walked up from lock 15 after failing to get it working again by putting my hands over the exit sensors. They had come to Rogny in their campervan to see the fireworks display and were interested in boats. He later said he had a boat in Antigua. The yacht caught one of its horizontal planks in the gates and broke it (some yachts tend to hang horizontal planks over their fenders to try and make a flat surface against the lock wall), that made the lady who was steering it in and out of the locks even more nervous. 

Lock 18 Ste Barbe, first of the "new"19th c locks at Rogny

Up the top lock 13 Javacière (3.90m) and we moored beyond Charley on the right bank. Mike had a job chopping down the overgrown vegetation along bank to keep the spiders and ants off the boat. Lunch, then Mike watched the F1 qualis from Budapest and I did the log. No Internet again. Two loaded Dutch péniches, Traveller and Sonnepaerd, arrived at 5.30 p.m. trailed by a catamaran and a large hire boat full of late-teenaged youth, about a dozen, all male and playing very loud rap music. They all came to a stop above the lock. Mike took a walk to see what was going on while I made a salad for dinner. The Dutchmen had loaded bauxite down in the Midi for Paris and, when Mike said he was surprised they’d come up the Bourbonnais route, they’d said it was prettier than the D’Heuilley (Marne à la Saône – the péniches preferred north-south route) 

Two loaded Dutch peniches, a catamaran and a hireboat.

but they’d had a load of trouble (we’d heard them scraping on the gravely bottom as they had slowly passed us). They said they’d let the two little boats past them several times but they kept stopping for coffee, etc, so they stopped letting them pass. VNF wouldn’t let the boats down the flight. The Dutchmen said they were really fed up with the VNF, they said there was no lock keeper to take their ropes in some of the deep locks coming up so they said they had sat in the lock chamber and called them out, refusing to move until they had assistance with the locks. When they realised they wouldn’t get down the locks, the boat full of noisy youth turned round and went back along the summit to the next bridge (thank goodness for small mercies) and the catamaran moored between us and Charley as Mike had left a space rather than chop down loads of brambles. 

Later Mike and the neighbours walked down four locks to watch the firework display – Fireworks of the World – I stayed on board and watched some of the display reflected in the large windows of the Dutch péniche, but retired before the mossies found me and I started reading a “new” (just received in the post) Oldie magazine. The towpath had been blocked off around the second lock up from the bottom of the flight as it was a ticket-only do. (Don’t remember seeing prices on the posters, maybe it was in small print at the bottom!) Mike said it had been a good display. A person told the story of fireworks, with music, Melodiotronic was what they called it on the posters!