Arzal Lock

I thought it would be fun to post a couple of videos of me single handing into the Arzal lock on the Villaine.

The lock is renowned as a busy throughway between the ports of Arzal / Camoel, Roche Bernard on the Vilaine River and the sea and at certain times it is crammed. Particularly busy times are last lock in and first lock out in the morning. Of course nearly everyone wants to proceed out of the river around high tide.

The lock keeper keeps his cool and manages normally to coordinate everyone, particularly those "diagonal entrants" to the lock with good humour.

Here are two videos to give a little flavour to the joi d'vivre.

Foleux me

On April 7th in the nick of time Seascape arrived in Foleux. Just an over night before the 6am departure to St Malo for the ferry.

The week previously had been punctuated by frequent checks of the weather and the news from the Arzal lock which had for the previous week determined that the Villaine was unnavigable due to the strong flood currents in the river from the incessant rain over the last few weeks.

Arzal Lock with the Torrent

Redon Bridge with the high levels of water

If things had not worked out, we had been willing to leave Seascape in Redon by the grace of Antoine, the harbour master who shrugged his Breton shoulders and commented "c'est la vie" but on the last day the floods abated and off we went through the river, past the bridge at Cran and on to Foleux. We initially moored on the hammerhead offside of a large yacht to unload as much as we could into the car. We then picked up a marina dinghy and towed it to the mooring buoy where we tied up fore and aft using our own lines and put the kettle on.

The alarm went off at 04:00 and we rowed back to the car park in the drizzle which was less than pleasant. At least it was all downstream.

Passing friends (Adam and Lynne) offer a toast to Seascape on her mooring

Here in Redon

27km up the Villaine River is the town of Redon. The Villaine River that has upon it Arzal Lock, Roche Bernard, Rieux and is considered in some unkind parts as England Sur Mer. But this far up river is a different thing altogether. Proper French France.

 Having travelled up a number of rivers in my life, I have never ever seen a river to compare with it. Two and a bit things made it particularly special - the first is that after Arzal Lock there is no tide and almost, almost no current whatsoever. This means that there is no rise and fall to worry about so the depth is the depth. If you park your boat somewhere, subject to wind there is no drift and so where you leave the boat is where you will find it.

 The second thing is that for a river it is delightfully consistent in depth throughout. Almost 4m depth which makes it an absolute joy to navigate up. The third thing (of two) is that it is absolutely blindingly beautiful, adorable and delightful.As well as being almost entirely unused and so you can traverse the length of it and see no-one. It is therefore assuredly a place where you can travel up it and not need to share it with anyone. I know of nowhere else can you go up a river in a yacht with Willow and Oak trees lining each bank and cows down at the river bed drinking bovinely. Where else can you determine to just anchor within ten feet of the cow feeder! Oh and finally all the gunk on the hull and propeller, all the fouling, snuffs it and drops off. A free scrub off. The river is deep right up to the entry to the Redon port where it reduces to under 2m and so we have to scuff in through the soft mud which has built up there.

Once in the port there are finger pontoons both sides

Port de Redon