Travels with Forty Roses: Returning to Compiègne

After a delightful interlude in the UK with one of our favourite little people, we returned to Port Cerise, just south of Paris, rested and organized ourselves for a day before beginning our trek north to summer boat berthing. We have had magnificent travel days. sunshine and blue skies; literally no other pleasure boats on the water except ourselves. Yes, some commercial barges as they are always working. All give friendly waves as we meet or they pass us by. We have shared a few écluse with the Big Boys but nothing daunting. Those more formidable écluse lie ahead! To make fast work of our travel time to Wambrechies and our summer Port de Plaisance we have decided to take the Canal du Nord. The stats for it are:
Length: 95 KM
Total Rise: 54 or 176 ft
Lock Length: 195M or 640 ft
Lock Width 12.50M or 41 ft

You can see by the size of the locks that they are built for the big commercials. . .and we will be sharing the space. The rules of the road are that we are last in the lock after the big guys and last out. If we cannot fit in with them we wait. Business is first on this busy canal. Thank goodness we have locked through so many now that I can throw a line over a bollard first time. . . generally!
In the meantime, we are stopped at Compiègne, a favourite town from our trip through last September. It has been fun to reacquaint ourselves with the area as we wait out the May 1 holiday where everything closes down in France. And we must wait anyhow as the Canal du Nord has been closed all winter for repairs and will only reopen May 2 . We have a delightful tie up along the park, surrounded by swans and other water birds. The first ducklings are appearing so we must watch carefully as we travel for the little fluffballs. They are very fast and usually stay close to shore but we are always ( me anyhow) on the lookout for ones in our path.
We will see what festivities or demonstrations take place here on May 1 then move on to the north. By next week we should be in Lille.