From the Mediterranean to the English Channel by boat - Episode 10

EAT YOUR HEART OUT ANDERTON

Simon Jenkins is back from the boat buying trip of a lifetime, bringing his first historic barge from the Mediterranean to Belgium, and now onto the Channel coast. Last time Ambiorix went back in the water but had to be taken out again. Now the problem – a couple of popped rivets – is fixed and Simon and Amanda are on their way again This is his story, in his own words.

The next day and yet another canal. This one I was especially looking forward too, and it was Sunday - no commercials move on a Sunday. More importantly it was what we were about to experience that really excited me.

I have been boating virtually all of my life and have seen some pretty impressive engineering feats, but never have I experienced anything like what we had in store for us shortly.

This canal is called the Canal du Centre - it’s 24km long and only has 3 locks. We cruised along this waterway with its arms off here and there with boats being loaded and unloaded-it was like a giant scene from the BCN, back in the working days, with arms everywhere - going into warehouses, recycling plants and factories with boats being loaded.

Here it is on a massive scale. We passed scrap yards, recycling yards, steel works, glass works and aggregate works, then the scene started to change and so did the landscape, things becoming more rural again but we seemed to be very high up and getting higher. Then we came to it - the Strephy-Tieu boat lift. 

Ambiorix waiting for the lift

The side view gives an idea of the massive size

The boat lift was designed during the Canal du Centre's modernisation programme to replace a system of two locks and four 16-metre lifts dating from 1888 to 1919, not long after the canal was built in 1879. Those locks and lifts were able to accommodate vessels of up to 300 tonnes, but by the 1960s, this was no longer adequate for the new European standard of 1, 350 tonnes.

Work started in 1982 and was not completed until 2002 costing  € 160 million and, once operational, permitted river traffic of up to the new 1350-tonne standard to pass between the waterways of the Meuse and Schelde rivers. The lift increased river traffic from 256 kT in 2001 to 2,295 kT in 2006.

The four older lifts on the Canal du Centre, which became bypassed by the new Canal du Centre, are on the UNESCO World Heritage list, because of their architectural and historical value

The structure at Strépy-Thieu consists of two independent counterweighted caissons which travel vertically between the upstream and downstream sections. The caissons weigh the same whether they are laden with a boat or simply contain water.

The caissons measure 112 m by 12 m and a water depth of between 3.35 and 4.15 m. Each caisson is supported by 112 suspension cables (for counterbalance) and 32 control cables (for lifting/lowering), each of 85 mm diameter. 

The massive caissons

The way down

Four electric motors power eight winches per caisson via speed-reduction gearboxes and the 73.15-metre lift is completed in seven minutes. The structure is massively reinforced and has a mass of approximately 200,000 tonnes. The vertically moving watertight gates are designed to withstand a 5 km/h impact from a 2000 tonne vessel, so it’s not just narrowboats that occasionally hit the gates.

All those numbers don’t help expressing the experience of taking a boat in to the caisson and then lowering 73m in just seven minutes. They had planned a boat lift at Norbury when exploring the restoration of the Shrewsbury and Newport canal, but I don't think it would have been as grand as this.

It was a spooky place, we spoke to the L’ascenseur (lift operator) and announced our intention to travel down in the lift. The lights changed to green and we approached along a long wide concrete channel leading to the lift, with the gate open we entered this vast mechanical structure -not another person in sight.

The gate soon closed behind us, we tied our little boat up to the bollards and stepped off on to the walkway around the boat, No restrictions, we could lean over the sides and see the ground over 70m below. Some whirring sounds, a few clunks and then the motors started whining as the giant, open-topped coffin started its descent.

Ambiorix at the top of the lift

Ambiorix at the bottom of the lift

We both stood quite quiet as we went down, admiring the views over an impressive landscape, but still we saw no people. At the bottom, the gate the other end of this giant coffin lifted we had a green light and off we went.

All quite surreal, really!

We were soon leaving the lift behind us and on our way again with the canal to ourselves. It is wide and deep and not very exciting, the odd wharf or arm, the odd bit of industry, a few motorway bridges, but nothing notable and a bit of an anticlimax after the boat lift.

Leaving the lift behind

We were now on the Nimy Blatton canal heading for the river Schelde, we stopped for the night at the junction with the  canal Blatton-Ath/Dender, which we were tempted to travel. However, it was 86km with 34 narrow manual locks that needed a mobile team of lock keepers with you to work the locks, and we wanted to push on. So we took the decision to keep to the commercial routes as they should be quicker.

Tied where the old canal line had been severed

We had tied up at an interesting little place where the old line of the canal had been severed and the junction of the Blatton Ath went off. These were tiny canals in comparison to to the main line that we were on and we tucked ourselves in to the entrance of the old canal, which meant we are safely out of the way of any early commercials on Monday morning. We then went for a walk to see the first lock on this interesting little waterway. As we approached the lock a sign said that you needed to book passage and have lock keepers with you, you could see it didn’t get a lot of use. The pound above the lock was reminiscent of the locks and pounds and canal around Christleton on the Shropshire Union canal on the way to Chester, all very pretty, but not for us as we wanted to push on.

In the next episode: Another stoppage, and glorious Ghent