Barge Holiday on Le Cher, The Boat and the Barrages

The Boat

Our home for the week was the barge Nymphea who in her working days use to carry beer. She is 81 ft long by 14 foot wide and was built in 1921 and now fitted out to take 6 guests in 3 cabins. We had booked the cabin in the bows that in her working days was the crews’ quarters, The up side of this was that we were separated from the rest of the boat by a double bulkhead. A requirement for passenger boats on the continent. The down side was if the weather was bad then we would have to go out along the top deck to get into our cabin.

The boat is not steered from a wheelhouse like lots of barges but from outside on the stern. The small hatch that Leigh is coming out of leads to the crews quarters.
This means that the area that is normally taken to drive the boat now becomes a top deck lounge and this is where we had dinner on the last night with both Leigh and Alain.

Lounge during the day

Captains Dinner on the last night. L-R Leigh, me, Judy, (guest) Alain, Geoff (Other guest).

All other meals were taken in the dining room on the lower deck which in turn leads to the other two cabins.

	Jenny (standing) and Erell

All our meals were produced by Jenny in this tiny Galley and what meals they were, For breakfast there was freshly squeezed orange juice, cereals, fresh bread and Croissants.
For lunch we just had a self service light cold salad based meal, followed by cheese and wine of course.

For diner each evening we had a starter followed by main course and then two cheeses followed by a dessert, This was all washed down with two different wines and topped off with coffee.

 

The Barrages

The Barrages are interesting structures to say the least. On one side of the river is a conventional lock and the other side a fixed weir to control the water level above the barrage. Between these two structures is a removable barrage.

The barrage is built on a stone foundation laid on the bed of the river. The down stream side of the foundation has blocks of stone with holes in them standing proud the upstream side has a grove running across the river with oak beams set into it.

Fitted between the wooden beam and the stone blocks are pivot points on the bottom of the metal A frames. This enables the A frames to be hinged to the riverbed. They are set at 90° to the flow with the upright side facing upstream. You can see the stone block holding the back leg in the photograph and the wooden beam lying along the front. This allows the A frames to hinge down sideways. The one in the photograph below is in the partially lowered position. The platform on the top latches on to the next A frame to form a walkway above the water

The chain and winch are used to haul the frames from the riverbed each spring and lower them in the autumn Once all the frames are erected across the river then wooden fingers are slid down the upstream side to hold the water back until it flows over the weir at the end.

If more water is required to flow down the river then individual wooden fingers can be drawn. You will notice some of the fingers/needles are painted blue, these are sponsored and have the sponsors name on them.

Every year lots of the wooden fingers or needles require replacing these are about 70mm square with turned handles on the top and a little over 2000mm long.