The canal links the River Ourcq at Pont-aux-Perches to the Canal St Martin at Pont de la Crimée. It has several small rivers and streams that feed it as well as the Ourcq itself. It has a link to the Canal St Denis about 200 metres before its southern end in Paris.
The canal is 108 kilometres long and runs from La Villette basin in Paris to the start at Pont-aux-Perches. There are ten locks along its length but we only travelled through five of them as the canal became too shallow because of the drought in 2019..
It was built to take waters from the River Ourcq into Paris for drinking water. Nowadays it is used to supply half of Parisian's non drinking water needs such as street and sewer cleaning.
It was opened in 1822 and its locks are a lot narrower, down to 3.1 metres wide, than other French canals. For this reason not many pleasure boats are seen on the canal. The first 11 kilometres out of Paris is broad gauge and used by commercial boats.
The locks are operated by the boater and a key for this purpose is available at locks 7/8 on the Canal St Martin and a couple of other sites on the Parisian canal network.
This link provides more useful history about the canal:(visit link)
This lock marked the end of our journey on this canal as we had to turn around due to lack of water. We had to spend the night of Bastille Day in this lock and the lock keeper's wife gave us some homemade Brie de Meaux. Read our adventures on this canal by clicking here.
Écluse 6 - Varreddes (no pictures)
Écluse 7 - Mareuil (no pictures)
Écluse 8 - Queue d'Ham (no pictures)
Écluse 9 - Marolles (no pictures)
Écluse 10 - La Ferté Milon (no pictures)
No comments:
Post a Comment