General Witterings -
Spotlight on Briare - a canal town

The Canal Lateral de Loire wends its way northwards on the western side of the River Loire.  The river eventually swings westward, to enter the Atlantic at Nantes and St Nazaire.  This means that the canal has to cross the river.  The first crossing was at Chatillon, a couple of kilometres south of Briare.  This crossing locked boats down onto the river, and then locked them up on the other side.  The geology prevented the locks from being directly opposite each other, so, apart from crossing the river, the boats also had to travel nearly a kilometre along it.  The Loire is a vicious river, and the crossing was tricky at the best of times.  It could flood in the winter due to rain, and it could flood in the summer when the sun melted ice and snow at its source in the Massif Centrale.  The delays and dangers of the crossing caused a search to be made for an alternative crossing.

Briare was eventually selected as the crossing point, and a 662 metre Pont Canal (as the French call a canal aqueduct) was erected (1).

The Aqueduct consists of masonry piers, supporting a metal trough (2).  Eiffel (famed for his tower in Paris) was involved in the masonry piers, but sources seem to differ as to his involvement with the trough.

The French canals were constructed as State enterprises, so that French pride is often displayed in flamboyant monumental embellishments (3), which are often missing in the more homely, private enterprise, UK canal system.

The current canal actually by-passes Briare town(4), though a short branch, with 3 locks on it, takes boats down to the Port de Plaisance with serviced moorings for about 30 boats (5), most on finger pontoons, but a few alongside the quay.  Rosy spent a very happy 2001-02 winter here (6) amidst tranquil surroundings (7) whilst still being only 2 or 3 minutes away from life's essentials - such as a newsagent's, bread shops, bars and a supermarket.

The Port de Plaisance is bordered, in places, by substantial 19th century buildings (8), and some elegant bridges have been erected to provide for water-side walks (9).

Winter time is the time for boat maintenance, and one of my jobs was to sort out Rosy's stern doors.  They are often exposed to the weather, so the internal decorations were beginning to get a trifle tatty.  I got as far as rubbing down, filling and priming the 'grained' work, and applied a couple of coats of cream paint. It had been the intention to try out some scumbling, in order to recreate the graining, but the plain cream paint looked so good that I've left it as it is (10).  The 2001 floral display on Rosy's roof died off in October, so I put in some primulas, which have done very well.  (11) I might mix in some winter pansies next year.

The old canal at Briare is still very much in evidence.  It has been cleaned out in places, and bits of it are still used by trip boats.  Evidence of its importance is still clearly visible, as in this substantial, elegant lock house (12).  Several houses in Briare have marks engraved into the door posts recording past flood levels (13).  The highest floods were the summer ones.  Flooding in the Loire is now not such a problem, partly because the fivenuclear power plants along its banks abstract so much water.

Some of the old bridges are functional rather than elegant (14) though in the right setting - like a fine, windless, crisp March morning - their beauty becomes apparent (15).

This same morning (which happened to be Good Friday) also produced a profusion of blossom (16 and 17), which then brought the following to mind ...

Loveliest of trees the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

(A.E.  Houseman)

Actually, I don't think that this tree is a cherry, and it's in a park rather than a wood.  Still, it's a nice poem, and well worth an outing.