Tuesday 5th May 2015 Long to Abbèville KP140. 17.3kms 2 locks

A moored peniche houseboat

13.8° C Sunny first thing, then it started raining when we were getting ready to leave. Set off out of arm at 10.15 am following MR back on to the river. The guys building the new weir were starting to place a line of piling across the old weir, they paused to watch the nutters with the funny boats go past in the pouring rain – well, at least they were getting paid for being out in the wet! Not far to the first lock, Long 22. Past the stately home on the banks of the river called the Chateau de Long, an 18th century mansion complete with extensive greenhouses all along the river. A sign said visits possible.

Chateau d'Epagne

A new keeper was there to work the first lock for us. We were a bit early for the booked time of 10.30am, so the lock was full but the gates weren't yet open. The guys working on tiling the roof of the old lock house paused to watch as we dropped down 1.50m. The keeper asked how far we were going, just to Abbeville and we’d stay there for a couple of days. He said he would close down the barrage at the next lock as there was a lot of water flowing today. Along the next reach the wind started blowing a gale to add to

A paddle for filling up a lake from the river?

the torrential rain. The wind was blowing so hard that twice our brolly folded flat on one side as the stays bent, we were surprised that we managed to straighten it out. When there was a lull in the gale we put the umbrella down and braved the horizontally blown deluge in waterproofs. In the town of Pont Remy there was another good mooring next to several reconstructed iron age houses and two replicas of ancient boats, a dugout canoe and a wooden punt were moored just beyond the halte nautique. True to his word the keeper had stopped the weir from flowing until we were in lock 23 Pont Remy. As we enetered the lock chamber he was on his way back from the automatically

Mooring in the lock cut at Abbeville.

operated weir after opening it up again. On the lockside there was an orange lorry, a short wheelbase with four huge wheels. I asked if it was a quatre-quatre (pronounced cat-cat) a 4x4? Yes he said smiling and I said that’s very useful at times here, yes and more smiles. He said to watch out for a couple of boats that were coming upriver. Down another 1.50m in what used to be a turf sided lock and continued along the last reach into Abbèville, at least the rain had stopped and the sun came out to dry us out a bit – the wind was still fiercely blowing the trees (and us).  Another grand house stood close to the river at the village of Epagne Epagnette. We noted several fishermen ensconced in tents and wondered who were the daftest to be out on a day like today? There were two moored boats on the quay in the lock cut at Abbèville. The English couple off a Pedro cruiser called Lady Bess (they were the boat the keeper was expecting but they’d sensibly decided not to brave the wind and rain) they offered to move back up the quay a bit so we could both moor. We carried on towards the lock and winded, just about, and went back to moor between Lady Bess and MR as Graham and Jill moved MR back a bit so their stern end was overhanging the quay. It was 1.10pm. I made some lunch. Satellite TV was a bit iffy with the trees blowing about wildly. Graham took Mike back to Samara to collect our car.