Change of plans - Canal lateral a l'isne, river Aisne and Seine to reach Paris (insetad of river Marne)
Sans Peur
Grete & Fred Vithen
Sun 12 Oct 2014 09:00
| 49 23 33 N 03 39 32 E - Halte Nautique de Bourg et Comin, 10-11 October We left Rethel and Bernadette & Heinz (we will meet them in Paris again) on barge Dagens 2. A Swiss couple with 4 years of canal travelling and more to come. Spending the evening on their roomy “home” having dinner and supporting us with helpful information. Heinz speaks French which is a great advantage. It turns out that we have to change our route to Paris in order to get there, Three locks are closed from 4 Oct to 28 Nov. Today, after 6 locks we will leave Canal des Ardennes but instead of turning towards Reims,Champagne, at the junction Berry au Bac we have to continue on Canal lateral a l’Aisne and then continue on the rivers Aisne and Seine to reach Paris. A bit disapointing not to be able to visit Champagne. Thank you Bernadette & Heinz! We have learned our lesson now. As said before slowly slowly slowly is the key words entering thoose very narrow locks. In average we spend about 15 min locking now. And then it works without damages and stress. Today we made 8 without any problems at all. There are many more to come in the future so we had to figure out how to fix it. This is the new remote for the locks on this canal. We spend the night here. Water and electricity. But there is a camping 10 min away thats where we are heading now for showers and crepes for lunch before we leave. Only 5 locks and 28 km today. No it’s not a flower pot. This is the way our water filter looked like this morning. Has to be checked and rinsed everyday. |