Canal Lateral to the Loire

On this route, one canal ends and another begins without much fanfare. So it was when the Canal du Centre became the Canal Lateral to the Loire, in the town of Digoin. There is no clear end/ start point, but there is a clear difference in how they are managed. Whereas only the entry lock onto the Canal du Centre was manned, every lock on the Canal Lateral to the Loire is worked by a lock- keeper, usually manually though there are a few locks where the keeper can press a button instead or winding a handle. We do enjoy the contact with the keepers who are almost invariably welcoming and cheerful. As well, manual locks are quicker and less prone to breakdown than the remote- control automatic ones.

Pont Canal at Digoin
The Canal Lateral to the Loire was competed in 1838 to provide a navigable alternative to the Loire River which always presented navigational difficulties and was becoming silted in places. It connects the Briare Canal (our next stage) to the Canal du Centre (our previous one) to provide a route from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean. Importantly, this canal also provides a good route to Paris and in its early days 75% of its traffic was bound to or from Paris. It was then a very busy waterway, with 21,000 barges travelling through one particular lock in 1896. It was necessary to keep the locks open night and day to manage the heavy traffic.

Tree lines Canal Lateral
One advantage of this canal is its moderate drop. 97 metres over a distance of 196 kilometres with 37 locks, so on average one lock about every 5 kilometres compared with about one per kilometre on the Burgundy Canal. It also seems a bit wider than several of the other canals. The scenery is as usual mostly agricultural and beef, with few large towns. One great advantage is that the Loire River is never far away.

This Canal begins and ends with long aqueducts, called "pont canals" or canal bridges. The first aqueduct at Digoin is 240 metres, the last at Briare is 663 metres, both over the Loire River. There are many others in between.
At the town of Decize we left the main canal to join the Loire River where we took advantage of some beautiful summer weather to pump up our inflatable kayak and go for a paddle on the Loire. It was a great way to explore  shallow and winding parts of this great river, the fourth largest in Europe with a length of over 1,000 kilometres. This is a very important river for salmon and special jumps are installed to make sure that they can travel up it (and its tributaries such as the Allier) to spawn. It is illegal to catch salmon here.The fines are huge.

The Loire at Decize- great for our kayak
We enjoyed re- visiting Nevers, the main city of this area especially as our stay coincided with the annual Fete de la Musique.

Beside the old Loire branch at Decize
An interesting excursion was a walk through a national park to the Bec (Beak) d'Allier where the Allier River, itself a major waterway, joins the Loire. It was amazing to see the huge confluence of these two rivers, regarded as the last two untamed rivers of France and also to find how the landscape changes in flood times as they penetrate the surrounding countryside.  

The Bec d'Aliier
The weather is really heating up with several days over 30 degrees and 38 predicted for next week. We will need to find somewhere cool where we can launch our kayak or have a swim. Water water everywhere, but the Canal is not really a place to swim, at least for us more mature people. A group of French teenagers had a great time just near us yesterday, starting off with the time- honoured process of throwing in one of the girls, then all jumping in themselves. They were most impressive neighbours, no smoking, no alcohol and every bit of their rubbish cleared away before they went home on the dot of 7pm, French dinner hour after five hours of noisy fun.

 A small boat crosses the pont-canal at Le Guetin

Best Regards,

Penny and Dave