On the Somme

So now we were truly on the Somme and were feeling quite optimistic about the trip though mooring may not be as easy as elsewhere, or so we thought at first.  When we reached Cappy the next day, Danni and Elspeth (from Switzerland) helped us moor up, which was no easy task given the shallowness of the water, but we were able to move along to the pontoon mooring later and they came for drinks and a really good chat.  They liked RICCALL’s fit-out and we had a look at their boat L’ARC EN CIEL. It’s brand new this season, a 13m x 4m state of the art cruiser: and it’s quite amazing what can be fitted into a relatively small footprint.

Now we were into the thick of the First World War arena of the Somme.  We all tend to think of it as mud and trench foot, of ruined landscapes pockmarked with craters and littered with ruined villages.  And of course, this is just what it was like 90 years ago, but now it is hard to comprehend bearing in mind the total transformation.  The towns and villages have been rebuilt, often to the exact likeness of what had been before, the trees have all re-grown or more likely been re-planted, the trenches have been obliterated by farming and there is hardly a trace of it all, apart from the relentless progression of cemeteries across the landscape, the monuments to the dead in every town and village, and war museums everywhere.  But the memory is being kept alive of an extraordinary waste of life in every corner of this area.

Among many memorials in the area, in Chipilly there is the famous sculpture of a soldier comforting his dying horse – for Alex the most moving memorial we saw.

We cruised down to Long with its wonderful chateau and hydroelectric generation plant and had a bit of trouble mooring up due to the current flowing towards the weir right opposite the mooring, taking RICCALL with it, but with the help of a boater also on the mooring we were able to bring the back end in – eventually!

This village owed its wealth to peat cutting and was one of the first in France to have hydroelectric power.  The power was limited, however, and each house was only allowed one light ‘on’ at a time and only at certain times of the day – but progress nevertheless.

We were due to catch up with our good friends Peter and Nicci on AURIGNY at Pont Remy.  Alex knew there would be quite a strong flow and had wondered how best to cope with it, but in the event we were there, approaching AURIGNY before we realised it!  The mooring turned out to be on the right hand side, whereas for some reason, Alex had imagined it on the left so hasty decisions had to be made.  We couldn’t turn round before reaching AURIGNY because there was a small historic barque moored directly opposite (we wouldn’t have been thanked for smashing it up) so taking a good chunk of tree with the back end we tried to turn opposite AURIGNY – not quite enough width – abort – ‘Sorry’ about the scratch in AURIGNY’s paintwork and we were carried down 1km in the strong flow to the lock.  The gates of the lock were closed of course, so we had to come to a stop on the rail which protects the weir!  We rang the lock keeper who arrived within 15 minutes and quickly understood the problem.  A quick suss of the area below the lock showed that with a bit of care, and using the flow re-entering the cut from the weir, we could turn there in order to retrace our steps.  The lock keeper let us through the lock to carry out a textbook about-turn (making up for the fiasco just minutes earlier) and back we went up the lock to moor in a controlled fashion upstream of AURIGNY.  Phew!  Alex calculated the flow at about 4kms per hour - not easy for mooring while going downstream! And impossible for RICCALL with her dramatic paddle effect to the left in reverse.

Peter and Nicci have had their car with them all this season, so with their encouragement we borrowed it and moved our own car from our Tournai Yacht Club mooring to Seneffe, our winter mooring (a rather longer trip than we had realised). We also drove down with them to St Valery on the Baie de Somme where the Somme enters the Atlantic.  This is a wonderful area of mud flats and shallows, with nature reserves and bird watching hides everywhere.  There is also a narrow gauge steam train which runs round the bay to Le Crotoy where we had lunch in a restaurant – the ubiquitous ‘moules frites’ before the return trip to St Valery and thence back to the boats by car.  The weather unfortunately was dreadful – cold and very wet, but the company more than made up for it.

We decided not to take RICCALL any further than Pont Remy, some 25kms shy of St Valery on the coast, as the current on the Somme was surprisingly strong and this would mean our upstream journey would be slow and somewhat tedious, particularly as the last 15kms of the canal is a straight concrete trough, the Canal Maritime, built in 1835 to improve what had been a difficult part of the Somme to negotiate.  Instead we cycled the 10k to Abbeville beside the river all the way.  We had visited Abbeville on our way south by car some 20 years ago and had spotted a British barge moored up.  We were very impressed by the whole idea of this way of life and I’m sure it was one of the things which encouraged us to make our fledgling dream a reality.  So, once again in Abbeville (not in itself a very charming place!) we tried to find the spot where that barge had been moored: and eventually we think we did find the exact place!

Amiens on our return upstream journey, was wet and windy so after a quick trip to Lidl and an express tour of the cathedral – the largest in France and big enough to hold two of Paris’s Notre Dames! – we sheltered back on RICCALL promising to re-do Amiens if and when the weather improved.

Corbie was all that we could hope for mooring-wise and the ‘Simply’ supermarket provided all we needed (including fresh milk for Alex).  We had been given an invaluable tip by Roz and Graham of OPABRADOR that the end bourne on the pontoon at Corbie gave out over 10 hours of leccy (and water) for your €2, instead of only 4 hours, so we immediately bagged it when we arrived!  They also suggested having a good supply of €2 coins for the Somme, as all the bournes will only take €2 coins, so it became a task for everyone who went shopping to try to get €2 coins in their change!  Not as easy as it sounds.

Our friends Mike and Jean arrived for a few days while we were there and we had a great time catching up with news of their recent house move and family stuff, and also an enlightening time visiting the Albert War Museum, which is housed in a 250m long underground tunnel and which was excellent, another narrow gauge railway - the Petit Train d’Haut Somme - which had been built to provide provisioning for the Allies at the front in 1916.  The 1916 front line runs very close here and the little railway line was used after the war until the 1960s to transport sugar beet from the depot on the plateau down to the canal.  We drove into Amiens (a bad move really – the train would have been better) and while Alex and Mike climbed the tower of the cathedral, Louise and Jean enjoyed a little time out with a glass or two of wine in the bistro next door.  It was a great couple of days and we were lucky with the weather which was largely fine and dry if cooling off for autumn.

The day after Mike and Jean left however was hot and sunny, so we felt the pull of Amiens again.  We caught the train this time and visited the two things we had so hoped to visit and which had escaped us the day before – firstly the area of Amiens called St Leu, sometimes called the Venice of the North - which is the old port district with its unusual buildings and many water courses running through it.  The present day canal bypasses this area so you don’t see it when passing through Amiens, so that was a worthwhile diversion. 

Secondly to the eastern side of Amiens is the area known as Les Hortillonnages.  The ancient marshland had been worked for peat many centuries ago, and these little allotment plots were gradually reclaimed from the marshes, banked up and used as market gardens.  The area covers 300 hectares and there are 65 kms of small canals criss-crossing it.  Nowadays few of the gardens are used for commercial production of fruit and vegetables as in the past, but it is possible to venture in amongst them by traditional boat.  We just happened to arrive at the booking office with 15 minutes to go before the small flotilla of boats was due to set off.  Success!  It was a great trip, even better for having cloudless skies and warm sunshine to enjoy the gardens and wildlife.

We cruised on to Chipilly where we breasted up on AURIGNY and had another great evening of dinner, drinks and jaw! 

And then we went our separate ways, for some months at least, while AURIGNY motored on in the search for winter moorings, and we ambled along looking at things of interest, one of which was an excursion by bike to the small town of Bray which does still have a canal branch leading into the town from the Somme, but which looked a bit uninviting when we passed by boat.  We eventually discovered the so-called Halte Fluvial  - a 20 metre wooden quay with a few small cleats, but to get to it, we would have had to negotiate 3 kms through a narrow canal and a wide open lake area.  The town once must have been vibrant with commercial boats coming and going: a Hotel du Port and a café du port at the terminus had catered for the batelliers, but now all was closed down with only a small Carrefour supermarket and a bar left as far as we could see!

So now we have left the beautiful and tranquil Somme for the Canal du Nord.  We had thought it would be good to visit Peronne on the way, but the moorings proved to be difficult.  On one side of the basin the bollards were far too far apart to moor safely and on the other side it appeared to be impossible to leave the mooring through a locked gate.  The Port de Plaisance was too expensive for a boat of our size, so having moored up on the expensive pontoon, we stayed for lunch for free and set off once again onto the very commercial Canal du Nord, promising that we would explore the ‘Historial’ Museum of Peronne and the town another time.