07 January 2014

Maison éclusière

There are two low dams with locks along the Cher River in our village — there are 16 such locks between Saint-Aignan and Tours.


A lock in French is une écluse, and the houses where the lockkeepers lived are called maisons éclusières. The one in the picture below is not much more than a mile from our house.


In theory the Cher is navigable, and in centuries past it was used for the transport of merchandise. Then along came trains and trucks. I don't think all the locks are in working order these days.

4 comments:

  1. There's an association Les Amis du Cher Canalisé dedicated to maintaining the Cher navigation, in the face of invasive weeds, fishing interests that want to destroy the barrages, floods and the passage of time. Their website http://www.amis-du-cher.fr/index.html shows which locks are navigable, routes, riverside facilities, slipways (les cales) and a lot of history. Fascinating!

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  2. lovely! hope your people in NC are staying warm. its insanity out there for us. but the "polar vortex", which is what they are calling it, should be gone by tomorrow. our low was -7*F with -27*F windchill. doing farm chores has been really tough but so far so good.

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  3. OFGirl, I noticed that the temperature where my mother lives was +20F (-7C) this morning. That's really cold but probably mild compared to where you are. Hang on -- your weather is about to improve, from what I've read. I'm still worried about all that frigid air moving across the Atlantic and freezing us.

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