The locks sure do slow you down. Eleven so far and only two more to go before we reached the river Saône (pronounced "sone" like zone with an s instead of a z.) At each lock there was an old lockman's house, many of which were lovingly restored and lived in by someone who presumably has no commercial relationship with the canal.
As each kilometer passed I was learning that Henry was a true character. A bit quirky or eccentric. He told us many stories of his exploits such as sailing the boat along the west coast of Africa or how he had to tie down (literally) his girlfriend when the North sea got rough on the way to France. "She'd become a bit loopy and dangerous to herself and, respectfully, to my person." he explained with a smile. As we approached the twelth lock, he abandoned the tiller, walked up to the front of the boat and told me to drive into the lock. "No, I'm good here." I said. "Bollocks - go ahead, you can do it" he replied as he walked me to the back. I grabbed the tiller, trying to remember how to steer. As he walked away he said "you've driven a boat before right?" I didn't want to let him down. "Of course I have."
I did ok - didn't smash to boat up at least. The only feedback was to hit the full reverse thrust to deaden the boats momentum as we approached the ballard.
Then we reached the thirteenth and final canal lock. This was the big boy - it would drop us 30 feet to the Saône - a large commercial river. Henry estimated we could do twelve to thireen kilometers per hour, especially with the current. The Germans had on their lifejackets, which gave me some pause. Where were ours, I thought to myself.
This lock was so deep that it had floating ballards, a nice invention. The ballards themselves drop with the water so you simply tether to them and they stay with you at eye level. You can see them in this photo - they're the vertical channels in either side of the lock wall.
Here's a short video of us leaving the lock and making our way into the river.
2 comments:
The picture of the lock-keeper's cottage could have been taken from our England canal trip boat--do these cottages look this way in Holland? In Germany?
@Sal - no idea, but I bet they look similar.
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