Back Up the Somme, August 2-8

As we came down the Somme we kept an eye out for good places to stop on the way back. Wednesday morning we were off to our first stop, a pontoon just a couple of k upstream from Long. After an hour and a half lunch stop we arrived at just a little after two to find a fisherman with his gear all over the dock. As we came in we told him we would share, only using half of the pontoon and our stern in the weeds but that wasn’t good enough for him. He wished us a sarcastic “bonne vacance” as he stalked off. We used the whole pontoon. Our timing was good, too, because as soon as we got settled it started to rain.

The next morning we were off back to Amien, this time staying at the moorings just above the Amien lock. There was just enough room for us on the bank but everything conspired to make it very difficult to get the boat alongside. When reversing the boat pulls to the right (starboard). Of course we had to moor on our left (port) side. The wind was blowing from left to right and there was no room to back up to get the boats head to the dock. Luckily the very nice Belgians on the other boat moored there gave us a hand and we did eventually get tied up. When we mentioned we had spent a couple of months in Belgium and enjoyed the beer we were invited over for a tasting. The two couples were from the French-speaking part of the country and spoke very little English but everybody speaks beer. We had a couple.

We stopped for lunch one day at the approach to a lock.

Friday was a very trying day, 9.5 k and a hour and a half to a mooring at the Lamont-Brebiere barrage. There is a little cafe there that is trying to be a tourist spot with some “unusual” lodgings, a teepee, a yurt and small cart but things were not busy at all. We did have a beer. We also discovered that right across from where we had moored was one of the power and water points that have been installed. In the morning we shifted across the channel and spent the 2 euros for power and water to do a load of laundry. We shoved off about 10:30 for a stop at Corbie. Sunday morning we headed out for our last stop on the river, just past the lock at Eclusier Vaux.

Looking back at the lock from our mooring, the third of the three platforms along the river.

The mooring from the lock bridge.

Phoenix and Tango, the two barges we’d seen on the Scarpe had been tied up there when we went by down the river but the docks were empty when we arrived about 3pm. The weather was going to be good for the next couple of days so we decided to hang out a little.

This area is in a big “buckle” in the river; part of it makes a big curve while part keeps a pretty straight line down the valley. We decided to ride our bicycles around the outside of the buckle. It only took us a couple of hours but there were hills involved so we got the heart pumping.

It also took us past a couple of informational signs about the freshwater eel fishery on the Somme. Who knew that the eels were born on the Somme, swam all the way to the Sargasso Sea in the Caribbean and then migrated back to the river for spawning? We didn’t. Overfishing  and habitat destruction have caused a major decline in the population so much work is going on now to study their life cycle and bring them back. They use this “eel box”, sort of like a sluice used by gold miners, to count the young ones as they’re heading for the ocean.

In the afternoon we hiked up to a park on a hill overlooking the river. This was a major battlefield site in WW I and the remains of trenches and mortar craters still scar the area. It also provides a great vantage point to view the “buckle”.

The navigable portion of the river is at the bottom of this shot. 

You can also spot the old dikes used for medieval fish farming.

Tuesday morning, after just 3 locks and about 3 hours we left the Somme, moored up at the town of Perrone, once again on the Canal du Nord. It was time to start making our way south and east for our winter mooring in Toul.