The Roanne canal is 56 kms and 10 locks and this is each way. It is a dead end canal, so you must come back the same way you came to get out. Some locks are greater than 6 metres and manual, requiring a lock keeper to manually open and shut the gates and the lock keeper lowers a hook down to take the rope to put around the bollards. The bollards on this canal, even in the smaller locks are a long way back from the edge and impossible to reach.
This canal was built in the 1838 for shipping steel, cotton and textiles but now is a tourist canal and known as the tranquil canal. Peaceful farm land is our main scenery of dense trees along the edges. The canal was very shallow and caused John grief as it was slow going and we got prop walk when the water got very shallow. This meant the stern of the boat got sucked towards the edges of the canal in the shallow water. We have a draft of 0.8 metres so we are fine but the edges of this narrow canal had to be avoided.
First two nights were at la Beaume and Melay-sur-Loire they were overnight stops only with hot weather and nothing to see close to the canal.
We did a 1km and return 1 km bike ride to the town of Melay it was small with a few facilities all closed for the afternoon, as they always seem to be in these small towns. The rest of the afternoon was spent trying to keep cool in this heatwave. Temperatures were 35-39 degrees and very steamy. France is having a heatwave and the upper saloon of the boat very unpleasant to be in, we are using downstairs lounge for eating our dinner, where it is generally 10 degrees cooler than upstairs.
Roanne was a major port in WW1 for shipping artillery and shells and dates back to Gallo-Roman times when it was called Rodumna. We walked around town and saw all the historical sites, shopped and tried to keep cool. Impossible! The harbour here is huge and we were moored behind a floating waterfront restaurant.
Our second day in Roanne was more town sight-seeing, photos below.
In the afternoon we caught a bus to the Medieval village of Villenest and went swimming at the Lake there. So relaxing and a relief from the heat for a short time. The bus driver was a lunatic and must have thought he was a racing car driver, instead of a suburban bus driver. He threw the bus around at great speeds as if it was a mini minor. It was well worth the trip as the village had many very old buildings.
We have been confused by the progress with lock 13 in the Lateral a la Loire canal. Firstly, we were told it would be closed for an indefinite time, then next we were told that they hadn’t started work due to an insurance battle, now we read on August 3rd it will be open. Hooray, the plans had been changed to pick up our guests Di and Mick elsewhere and we had not looked forward to turning back and battling the numerous locks and Pouilley tunnel of the Bourgogne to get back to boat-yard. This is a region we want to do but not now and in a hurry. Anyway, with the lock open plans are back to plan A, unfortunately we had to get our guests to change their plans to meet us at Digion again. Jackie and Marco arrive on the 5th August and Di and Mick on the 6th. These are friends we met 3 years ago while cruising around Croatia.
We left Roanne for Digoin.
Our first stop
Artaix
A pretty mooring with nothing close by, the area used by lots of camper cars.
The next morning we did a 5 km bike ride to Marcigny, a town with lots of history, pretty and it had a museum we visited. Debbie was spoken to by a local gendarme (French Policeman) for lolling about in the middle of an intersection. She had started off into the intersection then had to stop because of oncoming traffic. Bike riding was best done in the morning as any activity like this in the afternoon is silly, it is just too hot. The museum was visited and was in the tower of the building below, the museum told the early history of the town.
We arrived back to the boat for the 1.00pm lock, motored up and the lock failed. We had to wait 1.5 hours and when all was about to be lost, John was able to help the VNF repair man open the front gates, which was very difficult as the lock was leaking so much water and put a lot of pressure on the front gates. We then entered the full lock which was then drained and away we went. How lucky, because it was then closed until further notice as it was too hard for a single lock keeper to open the gate because of the force of leaking water through the lock. We learnt later it was open 1 day later. It could have been a bad hold up, if John had not help force the gate open.
We powered on to the mooring we had the first night in the canal, at La Beaume. However, the water levels here had dropped considerably since earlier in the week, where we had moored easily. This time we got stuck on the bottom. Seeing we only draw 0.8 m the water level was very low. We proceeded to pole off and use the bow thruster to get us off the bottom and moved up to moor outside the next lock and wait for the 9am lock opening.
Drought and lock closures are becoming a real concern for the canals at this time. Each direction home to the boat yard has been affected by the lack of rain, we will find ourselves having to wait for other boats to share locks as they won’t operate them for one boat at a time. Lock closures and waiting for repairs and hiccups becoming more common.
Onwards and back to Digoin .
Digoin, our mooring out of town to await our guests. The town moorings were closed as this weekend is the “festival of snails” and they are planning fireworks. A maintenance afternoon as John fixed a railing opening, found dry rot and the job to fix became the afternoons work. John got to use the giant magnet on board to rescue the screw-driver that he dropped overboard.
