COB Photo Challenge 2016, Week 2…nautical oddballs

The last time we visited France, we were fortunate to be able to meet a fellow blogger and her husband and spend a day with them.  They spend many weeks a year traveling the waterways of France on their beautiful barge.  Here are a few oddball photos from that lovely day, odd in the sense of not belonging in any specific category except, perhaps, nautical.

For links to more oddball photos, click on the highlighted link, highlighted once Cee’s post goes up and I get home from church to link to it.  🙂

Barging around in France…the canal

“Here today, up and off to somewhere else tomorrow! Travel, change, interest, excitement! The whole world before you, and a horizon that’s always changing!”
~Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

Not all barging is done on rivers.  Canals are also a big part of river travel and commerce.  And when you have a boat in another country (Sandra and Neville are from England), you have to have somewhere to keep it when you’re not using it.  In this case, that spot is a marina where they leave the barge while (or as Sandra would say, whilst) at home in England, whether for the winter or between trips in the summer.  After some time on the river, we turn and head for the canal the leads to the marina.  But first, the boat has to go through a lock.

Locks are used when water levels vary between a lake and a canal or two part of the same bit of water.  Very simply put, much more simply than the process is accomplished, the gate nearest the boat opens, allowing the water level to become the same as where the boat is.  The boat enters the lock and the gate closes behind it.  The the water level is raised or lowered until it reaches that of the water on the opposite side of the lock.  The gate in front opens and the boat moves out.