Lagarde to Xouaxange - Time to play Petanque (French bowls).

6 May 2017

26.3kms, 7 locks, 5 hours 50 minutes.

One of our purchases at the very reasonably priced captainerie at Lagarde was a set of boules or French bowls – small steel balls which you aim at a wooden (definitely not plastic!) jack and which thereafter follows the convention of English(?) lawn bowls. Xouaxange has a ‘court’ within 50 meters of the mooring so we were keen to refresh our skills not used since a trip to the south of France in the Nineties. But let us not get ahead of ourselves…

Itching to get going, we had agreed to be at the first lock, some two hundred meters away, dead on nine ‘o clock when they started operation. An hour before planned departure I saw a Le Boat cruiser lining up for the lock and the next thing was the lights showed in preparation mode – green light on and off the cruiser went. Hmmmm….consulting the oracle (Fluviale Guide) it appears that the stretch of waterway between Nancy and Lagarde has operating hours of 09h00 to 18h00 and on the next stretch thereafter from 07h00 to 18h00. In time Lynn was ready and we said cheers and grateful thanks to Colin and Joy and lined up the lock, only to be faced with double red lights (lock inoperative)! Then a single red light and back to double red with water gushing from beneath the lock doors. After a couple of rounds of this they stabilized to a single red light and, holding thumbs, we activated the remote and happily the lights changed to green/red and then to green – at last the cruising can commence!

Six uneventful locks later we were at the big Rechicourt #2 lock where a French TV crew (which we had been told about in Lagarde) were waiting; they were filming a documentary on family cruising on the canals much to the excitement of Navig France whose boat they had chosen to use. Some thirty minutes later another hire boat joined us and eventually the lights turned green but not before the lock-keeper had instructed us that the TV crew were to enter first. Eventually the three of us were crammed into the lock, the door closed, the film crew played “lock, lock” a couple of times,

The TV boat.

and the 15 meter lift started as did the ‘issues’. Firstly the lady on the TV boat in front of us released her line against some pressure on their bow while almost simultaneously the hire boat bow lady slipped her line against the rebound pressure and they ended up squashed against our stern with the TV boat almost on our bow.

The boat behind.

Ouch for us.

But even worse for the hire boat, their stern swung across to the opposite wall and became jammed and for the rest of the lift we were treated to the sound of expensive gelcoat being trashed against a rough lock wall – they exited the lock, turned around and fled back down to the safety of the Navig France base at Lagarde.

Ouch for them!

As we arrived at Xouaxange the weather deteriorated, the drizzle set in and we abandoned our game of petanque for some more favourable day.