Sun, wildlife and 19th century locks

1955 Set off at 0810 with two fresh baguettes from the baker. Yesterday when we enter this section of the canal a lady came out and gave us a brochure for the area and asked us what time we were starting and where we would be starting from. As all these conversations are in French, we're not sure about any of them, but it made sense when we got into the first lock and a man with a van was there waiting to open the little road bridge at the other side. He followed us for a few miles, opening bridges as we got to them, then swapped with another man in a little two stroke car who did the same thing. We climbed 17 locks throughout the day and as we got deeper into the hills & forests the equipment became more dated until at the bridges, the man had to close the road by hand with a gate, then attach a steel rope onto the bridge and wind it up by hand and the last lady to follow us had to open and close all the lock gates & sluices by winding handles. The canal dates back to the 1860's and I think this was original gear. The day got sunnier as it went on and we only saw about five boats again all day - two were barges at the last lock. There was no wind and the water was so calm you could see the pond skaters zipping around in front of the boat. There were lots of dragon flies too. I saw a big brown bird of prey that looked like an eagle, but I wasn't going to claim it until Mayuri said she saw a fox up a tree, but didn't mention it as I was just entering a lock at the time. She said later it might have been a ginger cat. I also saw two more lizards and got a picture, but the best one for the day has to be a metre long snake that swam out from one bank to the other just before we finished at 1755.