Tuesday 9th May 2017 Gray to Lamarche-sur-Sâone 34.5kms 2 locks

Restaurant pontoon at Arc-les-Gray

7.5°C Sunny with white clouds. Set off at 8.50am, winding and heading downriver. The two boats moored in front of us (a DB and hireboat) were still there on the quay when we left, plus two more Le Boat hireboats that had arrived the previous evening. 11.4kms to the first lock, gently meandering through the wooded valley, passing Mantoche’s chateaux and into the long lock cut leading to lock 17 Apremont. Mike looked

Bois de Charmois KP265

through his binoculars and could see a DB going the same way as us. It went into the lock and down and then a hireboat came up. Apremont is the first of the four widened lock chambers (8m instead of 5.20m), so that the local boats of that time could lock through side-by-side. Down another 2m and off on another long reach, 14.9kms, mostly through forest. We passed one uphill hireboat then nothing until we were almost at the next lock cut and then we passed an uphill

Lichen on trees

cruiser by the open weir where there was a load of floating mats of blanket weed, so we kept towards the middle to stay well out of that. The canal section was edged with the stuff, some stirred into the middle by the wash of the boat which had just gone past; we dodged round the clumps and Mike managed to keep the weed off the prop. Took photos of an old dumb barge, with a square stern and a big rudder, which had been left in the layby for many years. A heron was using it as a

Long abandoned barge 

perch and swans were nesting on the opposite bank. The junction with the canal de la Marne à la Sâone (or the d’Heuilley as the boatmen call it) was off to the right, close to lock 18 Heuilly. The lock cabin under the bridge where the keeper used to ask for “papers” was slowly decaying. This lock was once 8m wide, but had been altered and narrowed to 6.86m. Down another 2m. 13.5kms to the next lock. Another uphill cruiser went

Keeper's cabin at lock 18 Heuilley

past, its wash ran through the scuppers on our front deck – glad I moved the deck mats earlier. 3kms down river we passed through Pontailler, which has an offline basin for mooring and a stepped quay. A green and red tjalk was moored on the quay and a hireboat was just coming in to land. A couple of kilometres downriver was an overgrown quay belonging to the Poudrerie Nationale – the national gunpowder factory, hidden deep in the forest at Vonges. I looked it up on the

Stepped quay in Pontailler

Internet and found that they made black powder here from way back in 1691 AND, surprisingly, the factory is still in production, one of the last in Europe to make black powder for fireworks, antique firearms for re-enactments and blasting powder. TitaNobel’s head office is in Pontailler! No wonder the area is marked on the chart as terrain militaire and mooring is forbidden. A few more kilometres and we moored on the old stone quay at Lamarche-sur-Sâone. No

Moored on an old quay at Lamarche

other boats, just a couple of campervans. Earlier than expected, we arrived at 1.45pm, aided by the flow of the river which in some places had increased our speed from our usual 6kph to 9kph.

Moored at Lamarche