Thursday 20th April 2017 Villey-le-Sec to Bayon 35.4kms 10 locks

Arched supports for railway nr Villey-le-Sec

-3.9°C Colder still, sunny clear blue skies with a very cold wind. A 700-tonner loaded with scrap went past heading uphill at 8am. We set off an hour later at 9am on a long pound, 13.1kms winding through the beautifully forested hills of the upper Moselle valley. Neuve Maisons, lock 48, lifted the boat 7.20m. No posh floating bollards here, we lifted ropes up five sets of bollards easily as the lock fills so gently - no ropes are really needed. The keeper came down from his tower to give us a telecommand for the canal de l’Est branch Sud – or the canal des Vosges as it is now called. First thing he

Mooring for trip boats at Maron

did was to tell me off for not wearing a lifejacket. Easy to fall in, he said, and hard to get out in the immense chamber. OK, next time I’ll remember. We continued chatting, answering his questions about narrowboats (first time he’d seen one by all accounts) and showing him pictures from old Waterways World magazines. He said he had to go as there was another scrap boat due to come up. Above the lock was a large steel works with a scrap-unloading quay where this

Neuves Maison lock, last of the big locks on the Moselle

morning’s boat, German named Nauta from Wesel, was unloading his 700 tonnes of scrap metal. Further on there was a long line of railway wagons loaded with coils of steel wire and a Dutch boat called Thalia (110m x 11.4m 3,110 tonnes) was loading coils. Recycling on a grand scale. We could hear the lock keeper on the radio apologising for the delay to the skipper of the next scrap barge, telling him how he’d been talking about narrowboats with some English people. We were on to the Canal de l’Est now, 2kms to the next lock, 47 Messein. There was a huge winding hole

German 700-tonner unloading scrap at Neuves Maison steel works

(turning basin) and a zapper post below the lock. What a difference - 185m x 12m locks, now 41.3m x 5.20m (slightly longer than standard Freycinet gauge of 38m). The first lock was a shallow one at 1.6m lift due to the lock enlargement works on the Moselle from 1979. Back to lifting the blue rods. There was a cruiser above, pirouetting in the wind, waiting to come down. First hire boat of the year, it was from Navig’ France (from the eastern Marne-au-Rhin). Above it a

Scrapyard dumper truck in a cloud of dust Neuves Maison steel works

2.3kms pound, the canal was wide with houses all along the left bank then into woodland. Up 4m at lock 46 Méréville where there were several VNF vans parked as the house is the base for the itinerant lock keepers because it was close to the junction with the embranchement de Nancy and so they have three directions of canal to look after. Looked at the moorings that we had been heading for the day before and decided to push on as there was no parking for the car. A bit further on there was a new mooring at the little town of Richardménil, we paused to take a look, 6€ for mooring anothe

Dust from the scrapheap at Neuves Maison steel works

r 2€ for electric and water “for domestic use only – not for filling boat tanks”??? How do they think boaters use domestic water then if they can’t put it in their tanks? Weird ideas some people have!) We carried on. Road traffic was noisy, the N57 ran alongside the canal and the A330 crossed it before we reached lock 45 Basse Flavigny. The lock emptied and sat with red/green lights on for ten minutes before Mike gave the gates a tiny nudge with our bows (well buffered by a very under-used button fender) and

Onion grab moving the scrap at Neuves Maison steel works

backed out again. The gates opened and we went in and up another 3m. Water had been pouring over the top end gates so maybe the lock had problems making a level. 1.5kms to the middle lock of three, buzzards soared and there was a lake on our right (the result of gravel extraction from the old bed of the Moselle), lots of them along the canal. We knew the top lock would be Haute (high) as the bottom was Basse (low) and we tried to decide what middle would be called. Turned out it

Coils of steel wire - transformed scrap -  at Neuves Maison steel works

was 44 Prieuré (Priory)! Had a short wait while it emptied. Up another 3m. The lock house had been renovated, quite recently by the looks of it, but didn’t look lived in. Houses along the bank including some old low little houses made of concrete with flat roofs that looked like they may have been two-roomed weekend and holiday places, but most looked long disused. An old cabin cruiser sat forlornly on the bank, also long disused. There was a long line of lovely old plane trees along the towpath.

And a 3,000-tonner to transport the wire - Neuves Maison steel works

Up another 3.2m at lock 43 Haute Flavigny and across a long aqueduct over the Moselle on to a 5km pound.  Made a cuppa. Noticed that the steel piling was rusted through on waterline for most of the length of the pound, which was on an embankment for most of its length. Lots of breaches waiting to happen if VNF don’t get some new piles in soon. The ever busy N57 was at the bottom of the bank. A large British cruiser went past, its skipper steering from the open top deck, earphones on, didn’t respond to our waves, nose in the air, we’re invisible again. Up lock 42 Benney, named for

Control gear for Haute-Flavigny lock

the forest we’d just passed through. There was a campervan parked next to the lock but it left as we entered the chamber. Another 3m lift on to a 1.8km pound. We saw the first drowned dead deer for ages, floating in the canal. Lock 41 Crévechamps had an area of big greenhouses to its left. We had a short wait while the chamber emptied then we went up another 3m. Lots of people out braving the cold wind to enjoy the sunshine, walking the towpath or the little road below it. Lots more flooded gravel

Aqueduct over the Moselle at Haute Flavigny

pits, some of which were advertising fishing. A German cruiser was moored not far from the next lock, its crew seated on the top deck facing the sun. Up lock 40 Neuviller, there were crowds of gongoozlers around the lock as there was a car park adjacent, ideal for walkers. There used to be a moveable floating footbridge (based on old oil drums) by the town of Neuviller, hoot and someone came out to move it, a unique oddity, but it had gone. It was quiet as the N57 skirted around the far side of the town. A little further on there was a large winding hole, long out of use as

Moored under the silo's loading gantry in Bayon

it was silted up – but a fisherman was casting out across it and almost reaching the towpath before dragging whatever lure (a bright red flapping thing) he had on his line back towards him before refilling it with bait and repeating the procedure. Lock 39 Bayon was slow to open, we thought we were going to have to nudge it. Loads of water flowing over the top end gates. Up another 3m and we moored by the silo loading gantry after asking a guy at the silo if we were OK to moor there. No

Moored on the silo quay at Bayon

problems he said, so we tied up. (He later told us that water transport is too dear for them now, so everything goes by lorry – they had a new gantry for loading boats and he admitted that it had only been used once - he said we could stay moored there as long as we liked!) There was a yellow hulled German cruiser moored at the far end of the piled bank, which looked like it had been there all winter. Later a British cruiser arrived and moored in front of us. The skipper told Mike he’d bought his boat cheaply as it was covered in green gunge that took him a long time to clean off. He told Mike had had a house in Croatia and was taking the boat there. Best of British. He said he had come from Calais to here in a week!