With TRAMP, our 16′ double-ended pulling boat, on top of the Volvo station wagon, Ben and I had driven for days through vineyard-draped landscapes dotted with chateaux to reach Castets-en-Dorthe, a one-post-office, one-pharmacy village about 80 miles inland from where the tides of the Atlantic meet France’s Gironde estuary and flow past Bordeaux and into the river Garonne. We stopped near the first of the 53 locks of the Canal de Garonne to look for a slip to launch from and spotted a lockkeeper in a cobalt-blue T-shirt bearing the emblem of Voies Navigables de France (VNF), the authority managing the inland waterways. When we told him our plan to row along the Two Seas Canal to Sète and the Mediterranean Sea, he told us that we couldn’t use the locks in a non-motorized boat. Not once in our nearly two years of research in French and English had we found this rule, though we had heard from a rower who had secured official permission and had still been denied entry to the locks. After some discussion, the lockkeeper admitted that he really wasn’t sure and suggested we come back the next day when he could check with his boss.In the morning, on our drive from our campground, we crossed the single-lane road-bridge over the 100-yard-wide river Garonne. Just upstream the dark stone walls of the first lock’s twin corridors on the river’s left bank rose above the water. Set between the walls two sets of dark metal gates in parallel V-shapes at either end of the chamber pointed toward the canal. Beyond the locks, in the shade of the regularly spaced trees flanking the canal, the bottle-glass-green canal water lay still barely a foot below the flat grassy banks. We found the same lockkeeper standing next to his white VNF van just beyond lock 52. He phoned his boss and after a brief exchange, still holding his phone to his ear, gave us a thumbs-up.Before putting the boat in the water, we squeezed dry bags and duffels, a cart, and a four-gallon water container under and in between the thwarts. With cushions set on the thwarts, I settled aboard as Ben cast us off from the slip and jumped in. The first 600 yards we rowed was not enough for us to find a rhythm but it wouldn’t take long to synchronize our strokes effortlessly.
Read this article now for Free!
Ready for a second free article? Create a free account by entering your email address and a password below.
— OR —
Subscribe now for $29.99 a year and have immediate access to all of our content, including hundreds of small-boat profiles, gear reviews and techniques, adventure stories, and more! You can also browse our entire archive of back issues starting from September 2014, as well as post unlimited classified ads. This is an extraordinary value!
What a great adventure!
Thank you! The video is superb—charming, funny and wise. In a few years’ time your little on-the-way boy or girl will be watching it over and over, saying “Is that really you?!”
A very interesting story … but I learned that I would never dare to share the space of a lock with amateur boat driver in my nutshell-thin Northeast Dory. To read your adventure in the locks made clear why the French lock keepers had problems to let you in. They know their buddies in rented boats. Helas! I had some ideas of the canals of Burgundy, but reading your article … 🙂
An excellent adventure, thank you for sharing the details!
Terrific story! Good for you and thanks for sharing!
Bellissima ed emozionante avventura! Ho percorso il canale Du Midì più volte con una barca a noleggio e capisco perfettamente le vostre difficoltà incontrate e complimenti per la tenacia.
Online translation:Beautiful and exciting adventure! I have traveled the Du Midì canal several times with a rental boat and I fully understand your difficulties encountered. Congratulations on your tenacity.
Great adventure! Thanks for sharing the story!