Friday 10th April 2015 Pinon to Abbècourt. 25.4kms 5 locks

Lock 4 Leuilly, different style of lock house (others were red brick)

0.8° C Sunny and warmer, breezy later. Mike and Graham went to move vehicles early, they left our car at Abbècourt and came back in Graham’s. We set off at 10.15 am in glorious warm sunshine. Almost 4kms through woodland turning to jungle, dead and live trees overhanging the canal. There was another dead pig floating in the water, but many birds in the trees and butterflies in the grassy towpath. Still signs of the towpath haulage system they used to use on this canal with the occasional concrete pole that supported the electricity cables to power the little electric mules that towed the

Into the locks side by side. Leuilly

barges. Down lock 5 Vauxaillon and another 5kms of woodland. Woodpeckers in the distance and pied flycatchers chasing flies across the canal (first ones this year). Lock 4 Leuilly followed by a shorter pound to lock 3 Crécy (with De Nogent on the lock house plaque) A loaded boat called Prodest from Dunkerque went past heading uphill by the silos at Pont-St-Mard on the short section to Guny lock 2. We delayed lifting the blue bar while we topped up our water tanks from the convenient lockside hose,

Moored at Abbecourt

housed in a hole with a metal lid. On to the long pound, just over 11.5kms, still in thick woods. As we approached the last lock the canal was on an embankment to cross the tiny river Ailette, whose valley the canal had followed from the summit. Then over the Oise on a grander aqueduct and into the last lock. Abbècourt lock 1 is a deep lock, just over 4m deep and is now surrounded with high fences of green plastic coated wire to keep people off the locksides now there is no lockhouse or resident keeper.  Followed MR round to the left on the Latèral à l’Oise and we both moored on the old quay. It

Not long before the rodent population decreased by one
thanks to our neighbours' mouser par excellence Daisy cat.

was 4.15pm. Mike and Graham went off to get Graham’s car. I put the satellite dish up and started on the log. Hooray we have 4G, a good fast signal. BBQs out when they returned.

Click here to look at lots of interesting info on (mostly) long extinct canal haulage systems in France

And this one (all in French but loads of pictures) of towpath mules of all kinds used in France. An excellent site, explains a lot!