La Ferte to Chalons

We were joined at the La Ferté Port de Plaisance by a 13m x 3m Dutch barge look-alike with an Aussie couple, their daughter and granddaughter, who with some misgivings we said could moor on Riccall for the night as there was no room elsewhere. For some inexplicable reason we took an instant dislike to them (more especially him) and later, when we went for drinks with Ken and Rhonda (Somewhere) discovered that they had felt exactly the same as us. Funny, how sometimes you just know you’re going to hit it off with people, and at other times you just want to hit them!

The Aussies left early the next day, much to our relief, and the following day 'Somewhere’ left too heading downstream for Meaux. Later we headed off ourselves up the Marne.

We had a rather dull day and eventually arrived at Château Thierry – sounds wonderful, but the town is rather dreary, and we could only find a shallow mooring where we had to jam tyres under the turn of the bilge to protect us from the stony bottom and even then we were about 1 metre from the wall.

The next morning two small cruisers moved off the 40m fixed pontoon a short distance ahead, and before we had even cleared away breakfast we made a fast break for the space.

The water and electricity had long since been vandalised but the mooring itself was safe and deep and our decision to move was quickly confirmed by several boats passing during the morning with looks of disgruntlement as we had bagged the only decent moorings in the town!

Best of all – an unlocked wi-fi from the flats opposite allowed us to post blogs etc and catch up with old and new friends.

After two more days and nights of appalling weather we set off again up the Marne for another very pretty if relentless few hours to our next moorings. The only incident of interest was being caught up at a lock by a flash cruiser flying a blue ensign. They did not respond to the radio or signals by us to enter the lock behind us (plenty of room for two) so we went on through alone. About 8 k later, they overtook us and the lady wife gave a cheery wave.

A couple of hours later we passed them moored at a pontoon having their late lunch and possibly stopped for the night. Again we gave friendly waves and ‘wifey’ waved back happily but ‘The Commodore’ studiously kept his back to us without so much as a glance. Sometimes we think only the British can be quite such prigs. The fact that it was flying the blue ensign (only allowed for members of certain clubs and ex RN guys) all ties in with the high-falluting attitude. PAH!! A pox on them all!

We found, courtesy of the DBA moorings guide, another 9½ out of 10 mooring just below Lock 3 – Vandières, total country, no roads, view of acres of hillside vineyards, five picnic tables on the island (should you want them), the chuckle of a small stream entering the river and evening sunshine, giving the hope of morning sunlight through the bedroom portholes!

The promised sunlight through the portholes did indeed materialise, and we had the opportunity to clear, wash and paint the whole rear deck. This we finished by about 3 o’clock, and we then set off on our bicycles for the ‘village on the hill’ which we could see a few kilometres away, complete with huge, intriguing statue dominating all the land around. The statue, Pope Urbain II, erected in 1897 in Châtillons sur Marne, was quite a feature (and the views from it superb) but so was the 11th-14th century church close by which Alex discovered had an unlocked spiral staircase to the upper levels!

Avoiding dead pigeons and pigeon shit on the stairs he ascended to the first level where he was greeted with total darkness. This was a very old church so with some trepidation he crossed the old wooden floor to the next set of wooden steps leading upwards, these suspended 30 ft above the nave. At the top of them a half-closed and stiff-to-open door led into the bell chamber. Still no light and in view of the fact that it looked like nobody had trodden this path in the last millennium, Alex lost his nerve and beat a hasty, if delicate retreat, only pausing to take a photo from half way down the exposed stairs.

We left the Marne river just north of Epernay and entered the canalised section (Canal lateral à la Marne). We were now looking for somewhere to stop and eventually as we came through Lock 14 at Ay, we saw something that looked possible. Louise dashed forward and asked the Danish boat if they could possibly move forward a bit to give us space. Husband was fine and willing, but wife was not – a fat, unhappy, frump. But they did anyway, and we squeezed in thinking that as we had not seen a commercial vessel for three days anyway, we would be OK on these rather imperfect moorings.

The next day, Monday, a commercial sidled past us at 10 o’clock. Our ropes and wires held OK but were not perfect, so as soon as the Dutch boat moved off we moved back into a much better mooring. Some time later we were surprised by another commercial, but this one was going backwards – yes backwards into the lock!! We had ridden three kilometres by bike the previous day to suss the scene ahead of us and we knew that there was nothing – no commercial quay, no turning place, nothing – either ahead of us or behind us where we had come from, so this guy was reversing for at least 6 kms. We have seen this only once – way back last year in Krommenie – where one boat a week came to the linoleum factory and had to reverse out, but that was a much bigger canal and no lock to encounter.

The other reason we wanted to stop just here was that we had misunderstood from Derek and Erica (Star of Destiny) that we could get diesel here. Not so easy, as a phone call to them told us that this was not in fact the right place!

However, not to be dissuaded, we went to Ay town Mairie where Louise did a sterling job with the Mairiesse (!) who rang several suppliers before successfully persuading one to deliver 500 litres of gazoile blanc to us at the lock the next day. But, would it actually happen?

Yes, it did!

By the time we left Ay we realised that about three barges a day were reversing past us empty, then returning full the following day, and in due course we came across two of them offloading dredgings three locks and 10 kms from our mooring at Ay! That’s some reverse – we can’t even manage 50 yards without ending up in the ‘ditch’ but we don’t have a bow thruster (or hand operated bow rudder as one of them had).

We also met one of them reversing towards us as we made our way up the canal and this posed an interesting question. Which side do you pass? In effect you are overtaking another vessel so you should pass on his port side but …

All this talk of reversing really set us up for the next day. We had arrived at the junction where we could turn left for Reims or carry straight on for Châlons-en-Champagne and we had decided to go to Châlons first, but the best mooring was 75 metres towards Reims, just before the first lock. Alex spent a worried night wondering how he was going to reverse Riccall past all the other Tupperware boats without crushing one of them but as it turned out they had all gone by 10 am except a narrowboat (La Camellia) belonging to such a nice Dutch couple (he a spry 81 year old and she a very fit fiftyish).

Our first attempt found us right back on our mooring point but after that we got it about right and managed to get away.

However, more was to come when we got to Châlons. Paul (from ‘Eleanor’) had promised to keep a listening watch on Ch 10 but by the time we were close enough to raise him for directions we had taken a wrong turning, almost through a narrow bridge off the main channel where we thought the moorings were. ‘No’ said Paul, ‘Not there, but above the lock’.

We backed out of the bridge apologising profusely to the amazed fisherman who had had to move all his rods for us, and then realised the operating device for the lock (a rod suspended over the canal which you twist) was another 100 metres back up the canal we had just come down!

More reversing!! We must have looked a bit like a pinball in slow motion as we bounced from one side of the canal to the other as we reversed up to the hanging rod.

However, this feat accomplished, we passed through the lock and moored up in Châlons where we shall no doubt continue our socialising, shopping and sightseeing.