Day 12 - Le Somail to Narbonne.

We were going to make a detour to Capestan before Narbonne but after looking at what was ahead of us we decided to head straight for Narbonne, our final destination, and spend our last two nights there as we had heard it was an interesting place to visit.

Before we left we had coffee and met a lovely lady who put our minds to rest, just a little, as we were heading for 10 automated locks( no lock keeper), an intersection in the canal and a 4 hour trip if all goes well.

    I obtained these pictures from Karen the lady we met while having coffee. She took a few pics of us going under the bridge on the way out of the village. She worked for another boat hire company and I tracked her down by going to their Facebook page and leaving a message. Karen got back to me and emailed me a few pics. This is the little cafe where we had coffee.

 Setting off just 20 metres from our mooring was the first of the many very small stone bridges that are near impossible to fit under. At times, Mez is at the helm and I am up at the front of the boat instructing her which way to move the boat to fit under the bridge as she has to sit on the upper deck floor and cannot see where she is going, otherwise she will hit her head on the underside of the bridge. We unfortunately have a boat that is one of the tallest on the canal and the other thing wrong is that it has a very square box shape upper deck making it near impossible to clear the bridges. If ever you decide to do this trip or hire a boat for a different canal, we would definitely not recommend the Horizon Boats, even though they are newer.

    This is the bridge out of Le Somail one of the taller ones as Mez can see where she is going but at a lot of them she is on the deck behind the steering wheel. Pic courtesy of Karen.

    This is not us of course but this is like the clearance or lack there of when we went under some of the bridges. A bit frightening at times.

Our first automated lock was just a short distance away and our luck was in, as a young man who was working on one of the very long barges that tour up and down the canal( you can get a spot on one of these barges relaxing letting someone else do all the work for about $7000 for a week) was at the lock already. He pressed the entry button and helped us with the ropes and instructed us on what to do and what buttons to push. He was the front man going ahead to get the locks open as they can take a  while sometimes. 

    This is a typical site we found all day with no one around and normally no boats moored as well. Pic from net.

He was also there at the second of the locks as the barge was following us down the canal. Normally you can fit a few boats into the lock at a time but we were on our own the whole trip which was very unusual. Thank heavens he was there as the lock doors did not open as they should have and we were stranded down at the bottom of the lock with nowhere to go, trapped in the lock. He rang for help, speaking in French, and we had to wait for about 30 minutes for the emergency lock keeper to drive over and fix it. Not a very pleasant experience.

   This was our view at the bottom of each lock and where we were stuck, not good.

   This would have been a view of us from above as we were going down river. ( net pic)

Thought I would put you in the picture of what we have to do to get through these locks.

Firstly Mez pulls the boat over to the bank before the lock. I jump off( my knees are too old for this) tie a mooring rope to a post, throw the rope back to Mez who holds the boat to the bank with the rope as well as using the thruster( thank god for the thruster) from the top deck. I then run up to the lock's control panel( about 40 metres) press the button corresponding to the direction we want to travel. Then run back to the boat, get the mooring rope jump back on board, wait a few minutes for the green light and then Mez manoeuvres the boat into the lock( not an easy task). Once in the lock I jump off the back of the boat securing the back mooring rope before Mez throws me the front rope at the same time still steering the boat into position. I put the front rope into position throw it back to Mez who now looks after the front of the boat, I then grab the back rope and jump back on board after hitting the green button for the lock to do its thing. It's not over yet. After the water level goes down and as soon as the front lock gates start opening Mez will pull in her rope while I'm still got some control at the back as soon as she is in position to drive I pull in the back rope. Mez then has to get out of the lock and most of them today have been attached to a low old stone bridge so it is a very slow progression out of the lock with me looking back at the boat from the front watching sides, roof etc, not an easy task for Mez. After that I get the ropes ready to start all over gain.

    Some of the scenery that we saw on the way to Narbonne.

   It's such a shame I lost these pics.

Well you can see why we were a LITTLE stuffed at the end of this days trip to Narbonne as this had to be done 10 times.

   We made it.

   Mez enjoying a well earned rest.

After doing an impressive sideways park by Mez we moored for the last time, had a glass of wine and took ourselves off to the city for an early dinner( nothing opens for dinner till either 7 or 7.30) then back to the boat.