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Pleasing though it would be to have a French village named "Now", I suspect that this location is actually Maintenon (the country seat of Madame de Maintenon who, allegedly, secretly married Louis XIV.)

 

Citroen Onze Légere with the canoe on its roof?

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8 minutes ago, Athy said:

Pleasing though it would be to have a French village named "Now", I suspect that this location is actually Maintenon (the country seat of Madame de Maintenon who, allegedly, secretly married Louis XIV.)

 

Citroen Onze Légere with the canoe on its roof?

I suspect this is the work of the anonymous M spell checker

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2 hours ago, Athy said:

Pleasing though it would be to have a French village named "Now", I suspect that this location is actually Maintenon (the country seat of Madame de Maintenon who, allegedly, secretly married Louis XIV.)

 

Citroen Onze Légere with the canoe on its roof?

Sorry about that,  and I can't blame the spell checker. A few more photos of last September in Orleans to compensate. The locks up to the summit of the Canal d'Orleans, a disused lock on the River Cher, and a narrow lock on the Canal de la Sauldre.

Canal d'Orleans.jpg

Cher River.jpg

Canal de la Sauldre.jpg

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Today in 2015 . At the autumn equinox France has a weekend when historic monuments and houses are free to visit and many only open this weekend. The Chateau is near Pouilly en Auxois and is sandwiched between the A6 and the canal. The owner tried to get the motorway moved when it was proposed but was turned down. He then tried to have an exit there so he could turn it into a hotel but no luck. It was then let to the Tenant farmer who keep this livestock in it. When we visited a group of artists were in occupation and had part of it habitable.

The church doorway is in a small village on the Burgundy canal called St Thibault.

789BA940-DA89-457A-B466-833BD6993A75.jpeg

845CD490-32DE-4160-A0AC-8B9045E9139E.jpeg

Edited by Dav and Pen
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18 hours ago, Athy said:

Is the Canal de la Sauldre operational? I've been on the Canal du Berry and thought that it was the only (partially) operational narrow-gauge canal left in France.

The Canal de la Sauldre is derelict, but still fairly easily traceable, though definitely off the beaten track. After the Napoleonic Wars, there was a plan for a waterway network in France which would have included over 1000 miles of narrow canal. Only a few were built, and the Canal de l'Ourcq, with locks 3.2m wide, is one of them. In 1824, it was proposed to extend it by the Canal de Soissons. Other French narrow canals are just short sections, with the Canal de la Nieppe (3.5m) built circa 1830, and the Canal de la Jeune Autise, for 3m wide boats, around 1850, and in 1869, the Rigole de l'Arroux on the Canal de Centre was also made navigable.

 

Returning to the theme, a couple of photos of the Festival d'Orleans, this day last year. The first shows the English guests being fed and watered with locally-produced food and drink - its hard work being at a French Festival, and the second showing a visiting French 'narrowboat' from the Canal du Berry.

DSC_0064.jpg

DSC_0072.jpg

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On this day in 2018spacer.png

 

Hillmorton Northern Oxford C.

 

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The many-years non-operational lock-to-lock paddles which allow each lock to be a sidepond for the lock alongside.

 

spacer.pngIn a strange way, this would be true in all circumstances.

 

At Hillmorton, there is often one of the six locks inoperable, and  Someone Important thinks that the other lock in each pair needs to be closed for this reason.

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On 04/04/2020 at 11:06, PeterScott said:

L00185a.jpg

Rose and Castle hotel pair in July 1971 near Hawkesbury Junction, Oxford Canal. These were run by, or associated with, WillowWrenHC at the time, iirc.

4 hours ago, Mike Todd said:

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[On 19 Sept 2005]

Was that David Dare's former hotel boat?

Yes. And iirc the hotel boat had stopped operating about that time, having worked in those colours at least since the earlier picture in 1971. Same colour scheme also still used for the Oxfordshire Narrowboats hireboat operation. The Nice Mr Google found a TripAdvisor entry from 2007 here saying "For many years and many trips, [FBW of Brisbane] travelled on the Rose and Castle with David Dare, including 12 days on the Thames. Every trip was wonderful with great service, food, attention, knowledable information, great assistance & friendliness. Every night, we would moor near a pub in a delightful village where we could visit the church, village green etc.... family circumstances forced David onto land where he now runs a Marina and self-hire boatyard on the Oxford Canal."

 

L1141_20050919_0237a.jpg.97fd0f6a26738bf0e5429b733b6cbb41.jpg

 

Edited by PeterScott
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13 minutes ago, ditchcrawler said:

Is the whole just to slid the shaft out?

Yes when the new shaft was put in in 2000 they cut the hole out to get the old shaft out. This time they had to get the shaft out to renew the stern bearing so cut round the same hole again. The cut out was welded back in before refloating. Lot easier than taking the rudder off.

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8 hours ago, Dav and Pen said:

Today in 2015 . At the autumn equinox France has a weekend when historic monuments and houses are free to visit and many only open this weekend. The Chateau is near Pouilly en Auxois and is sandwiched between the A6 and the canal. The owner tried to get the motorway moved when it was proposed but was turned down. He then tried to have an exit there so he could turn it into a hotel but no luck. It was then let to the Tenant farmer who keep this livestock in it. When we visited a group of artists were in occupation and had part of it habitable.

The church doorway is in a small village on the Burgundy canal called St Thibault.

789BA940-DA89-457A-B466-833BD6993A75.jpeg

845CD490-32DE-4160-A0AC-8B9045E9139E.jpeg

A French friend told me that when she was a child her family used to take holidays in this upper part of the valley here. Few other visitors came and there were wild flowers growing right across. Now the main autoroute from Paris to the south makes its way through.

 

When the autoroute spur from Pouilly was proposed, it involved filling in the Canal de Bourgogne on the stretch nearer Dijon While there was still a fair amount of freight on the waterway then, leisure traffic was slight, so the lobby for retaining the canal was small. Somehow, though, it prevailed, and the spur was built alongside instead> Its presence on the approaches to Dijon explains why the hotel-barge operators in the region, who nowadays are many, turn their boats around some distance from the city.

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On 19/09/2020 at 09:52, Dav and Pen said:

Today in 2017 we ere getting out of the dock and on our way to our winter mooring, only 85 locks and a tunnel to go. The dog was very happy to be under way.

4A208492-2761-4AA8-A722-E20CE48B9D57.jpeg

847A7FAA-6C2A-4DFD-A816-B22CFFE2D894.jpeg

When our barge was in there, to lift her higher than the water level allowed they used to moor the freight barge you can see on the RH side of the top photo, stern-to against the gates, then run the motor flat out . The backwash from the propellor then did the job. Meanwhile a guy in diving gear shoved steel chairs beneath the hull.   We were in there for a long spell and various other vessels came and went, since the dock could take two. Using the freight barge was an event they seemed to keep until late each Friday evening, when the entire staff would muster for the experience.

Edited by John Liley
Mis-spelling
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59 minutes ago, Dav and Pen said:

Yes when the new shaft was put in in 2000 they cut the hole out to get the old shaft out. This time they had to get the shaft out to renew the stern bearing so cut round the same hole again. The cut out was welded back in before refloating. Lot easier than taking the rudder off.

OK I thought the hole was there all the time

 

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18 minutes ago, John Liley said:

When our barge was in there, to lift her higher than the water level allowed they used to moor the freight barge you can see on the RH side of the top photo, stern-to against the gates, then run the motor flat out . The backwash from the propellor then did the job. Meanwhile a guy in diving gear shoved steel chairs beneath the hull.   We were in there for a long spell and various other vessels came and went, since the dock could take two. Using the freight barge was an event they seemed to keep until late each Friday evening, when the entire staff would muster for the experience.

They still do that for the deep barges. The first time we went in there I wasn’t prepared for Phillipe to come along in a very patched up diving suit and get into the water and couldn’t understand why at first but it’s a good way of getting the chairs in the right place especially as we had exposed cooling pipes.

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On 18/09/2020 at 13:26, Dav and Pen said:

9A7643DC-22BE-4BDA-A719-7F99F87C38AA.jpeg

 

9 minutes ago, Dav and Pen said:

... we had exposed cooling pipes.

  

On this day in 2016 ...spacer.png

 

... we had been in drydock to have the engine-cooling skintank, which was leaking into the boat from an inaccessible position, sealed-off and its cooling function replaced by this external trombone arrangement. It's turned out to be good at cooling, and hasn't been wrenched off and sunk the boat (yet). Reassuring that it's not just our boatyard fitting such things, then.

Edited by PeterScott
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