L'Avenir - cruising Europe's inland waterways

Riqueval Bridge The summit of the St Quentin canal passes through two tunnels. The first presents no problems. It is one way but controlled by traffic lights so you just wait around for the green light and then through you go. It is a couple of kilometres but there is reasonable headroom and lighting and as long as you take your time there should be no dramas. The second tunnel is an altogether different proposition. Here you can't go under your own power. Twice a day an ancient electrically powered tug tows the boats through. The first boat (the biggest) is attached by a long cable to the tug and then any subsequent boats use their own ropes to attach themselves to the one in front. As the canal is so quiet we weren't anticipating anything untoward. In fact, for once, I hadn't given it any thought at all. I assumed we'd just hitch up to the tug and off we'd go. Rob had organised a really long rope so we could attach to another boat if necessary although as I ...

La plage - Saint Quentin On a whim we turned our backs on the canal du Nord and headed up the Oise and then onto the canal St Quentin. The canal du Nord is the main waterway to/from the north and carries a lot of commercial traffic. This gives it a slightly fearsome reputation which, I have to say, having travelled the more circuitous route – ignore! Whilst the canal du Nord may have large ships and few interesting places to stop it is a fast (in boating terms) and easy trip. There is a tunnel, of course, but there is also one on the St Quentin. Having traversed both tunnels give me the canal du Nord one any day. More on that later. Before the opening of the Canal du Nord in 1960s the St Quentin canal was the main freight waterway and in the late 1800s up to 110 barges crossed the summit daily (through that tunnel... I cannot begin to imagine that!). Nowadays, after leaving the Oise and joining the St Quentin proper, there is very little traffic at all. Some days we met...

We farewelled the Seine at Conflans Ste Honorine, an important barging town in days gone by and according to our guide, a place bargees go to retire. The guide hasn’t been updated for many years so perhaps they retire elsewhere nowadays but there were certainly many unused barges stacked along the banks. We didn’t stop but swung around the bend to join the River Oise (have yet to find out the definitive pronunciation). There was a lot of commercial traffic on the Seine and this continued on the Oise. The river was initially a lot smaller than the Seine so we were up close to some large craft – a lot of ‘convoys’ (one barge pushing another) which are the waterways equivalent of   B double trucks with which Australians will be familiar on the roads. The navigation signs required us to change sides of the river quite frequently to give the ships the best channel which I found a bit nerve wracking as they didn’t seem to correspond exactly on the upstream and downstream banks...

We dropped down through the lock from the Paris Arsenal onto the River Seine just after 9am. Uncharacteristically early for us but the day was forecast to be hot and we wanted to cover some distance to make up for the 10 days our boat had languished in one spot whilst we enjoyed the sights of the city. Waiting for the lock to empty and the gates to open is a bit like waiting in the slightly scruffy and dingy wings of a theatre and then suddenly it’s time; out you sail onto a glittering stage with the most magnificent backdrop of grand buildings and your audience waving from ornate bridges which gleam gold in the sunshine. Not that boats on the Seine are anything unusual of course. Dozens of them plough up and down every day and evening carrying thousands of tourists. There are cargo barges too but smaller private boats are not quite so common. Being reasonably early in the morning meant we more or less had the river to ourselves and whilst the star of the show is the city itse...