The Canal de Bourgogne to Dijon

To Dijon

After a lovely stay in St Jean de Losne, we set off for the Canal de Bourgogne - lock heaven!

There was a bit of fun leaving the home of barging as we had to reverse out of our mooring (barges are not designed to go backwards) do a 270 degree turn in a confined space and exit the port - all with a cast of thousands on all the surrounding boats watching every move! Phew - it went OK!

Our initial destination was the city of Dijon - but this was too far to get in one day so we had a very peaceful stop about halfway.  Then onto Dijon 22 locks later.

It is a wonderful old city and we have a mooring in the port with electricity and water about a 20 min walk (or 1 Euro bus ride) from the city centre. As it turned out we were not actually in the port - but in the basin alongside it - so even though we connected to the electricity and filled up with water they did not charge us! Yeah ha!

We have made the most of our visit as we will be in villages for the next few weeks - trips to the Dijon Market, the large shopping centre at Troison D'Or, and of course a visit to the fine arts museum. It is a lovely old town and we have enjoyed wandering around - with of course the odd lovely lunch along the way.

We are moored up near the lock at the entry to the port - the canal is so quiet - only one boat in today - 2 yesterday.  And about 8 eclusiers to look after the canal up to here. 2 Hotel barges arrived a few days ago, but both are now both empty.

 We continue to be amused by the bird life, Grey lag geese (that hiss at us occasionally), water fowl, a few ducks and even a couple of swans.

The River Saone

And so off the canals and onto the mighty Saone. It is lovely to be back on the broad and gentle river - it is such a different experience to cruising the canals. We plan to head North up to the Canal du Burgogne, which is supposed to be lovely but has 189 locks in its 242 km length - phew!

We have a trip of 74 km up the Saone with only 2 locks -and this first part has no locks...The weather has turned a bit rainy so at least we can hide in the wheelhouse with no locks! It is too far for us to go in one hop so we stopped in the middle at the small village of Verdun sur la Doubs for a couple of nights.  A phone call to the captainaire meant that a lovely reserved sign was waiting for us on a nice long quay, he even came down and took the ropes. It is a very pretty little town with buildings that go back to the middle ages and it tempts tourists with the offer of a tour of the Bread History Museum.

 Tom and Trisha and their barge Elizabeth (we had met them in Fragnes) turned up about an hour later and rafted to us for the night. This was arranged by phone but when they arrived the good captain dashed out to make sure that these were the 'friends' we were expecting. We wonder what would have happened if we had said no...never seen them before in our lives!  Rafting oftens happens when a port is full and we have been very grateful in the past to people who have kindly offered us this solution.

So off from Verdun to St John de Losne - often called the barge capital of France as it is where 5 canals join and has a massive port, workshops and chandlery - it is quite strange being here on board as we spent some time here looking at barges and the  broker we bought ours through is just up the road.

The trip to St Jean was very wet and poor Laurel got drowned - 2 complete changes of clothes along the way!  Not helped by the fact that our windscreen wiper broke last year and she had to keep popping out to squeegey the window! 

Once again actually finding the entrance to the Canal de Bourgogne wasn't easy, we can only conclude that a huge commercial barge tied up to the bank must obscure the signs...all very reminiscent of our troubles finding the entrance  to the Canal de Centre. Like all things once you find it you wonder what the trouble was but in the pouring rain we were both scanning the bank with our binoculars, and although we had a plan of the canal somehow it all looks a little different. A quick right hand turn into the canal then a sharp left into H2O marina and there we were!

We are moored alongside a 30 metre hotel barge - it makes us look quite small! We have taken the opportunity to visit the chandlerys and do some maintenance on the boat - top of the list was a new windscreen wiper and a replacement shower pump -[ Yeah! says Laurel] also some new fenders - it is surprising how few places on the Canals actually have places where you can purchase things like pumps and fenders.

Tom and Trish [Elizabeth] are also here,  moored up on the quay in town and they invited us to a lovely dinner on board Elizabeth with some other Roanne residents Simon and May from NZ.

We planned to head off on Monday - but the forecasts said storms (of course it didn't rain all day!) - so we have delayed for a day and will now leave on Tuesday . We are heading for Dijon and hope to spend some time there...great museums, lots of things to see and do.

Cordelias Visit and on to the end of the canal du centre

Cordelia arrived in Paray after a very long trip from London.  It was lovely to share our barging experiences with our daughter who took to it like a duck to water.In fact one of her favorite things was feeding the ducks!

We had a good wander round town and visited the beautiful basilica, where we had attended a concert the week before. Once again the town was beautifully lit at nightime with photo ops around every corner. After a day to relax, including the now traditional visit to the 3 Pigeons restaurant [no Hewitt can resist the dessert chariot].

On Saturday we set off for Genelard, the town is famous for being a part of the 'Vichy" line during the second world war. It was an easy introduction to barging for Cordelia as the day was warm and sunny and all the locks were ready and waiting for us. We arrived just after lunch and quickly set up our chairs under the trees. It was nice to see Gill and David from Avontuur already settled there.

After a very peaceful night we set off in the morning, passing surprisingly few other barges, there seems to be a lot less boats around this year which makes mooring much easier.  We stopped for lunch under the trees  at La Gravoine where a table and seats were set up in a lovely picnic spot. Then on to Montceau Les Mines via the 3 amazing opening bridges...they are so both functional and stylish and it seems like magic when they open just in time. So into the port where we actually found a pontoon end vacant. Cordelia learnt the hard way that an unsecured pontoon is a very very wobbly place to be ....the big surprise was that she actually did not fall in to the water.

A vide grenier was in full swing on the quay and a huge general market was in town, lots of people were enjoying the afternoon in the Port. By 7pm however all was quiet and peaceful.  This made me tempt fate by declaiming to Cordelia just how peaceful French towns were on Sunday nights.  Wrong!  An errant young motorcyclist on a very small, noisy machine started to do laps of the port, loudly.  A French couple took exception to the racket and she got off their barge to flag him down to complain. He didn't take it well and pulling his t-shirt over his face, made a sign of a pointing gun. Well, her husband ran out, mobile phone in hand, calling the police. Kid took off and all seemed calm....with police driving up and down for some time....but an hour later, he returned with a friend and started throwing something at the barge.Cue the arrival of 2 policecars, police with batons leaping out and the 2 boys running away over the passeralle being chased by baton weilding gendarmes. Lots more police milling about for the next hour or so then peace reigned.

Cordelia went back to London on Monday afternoon, we enjoyed her visit and we think she enjoyed her break. We are staying here until Wednesday morning when we will head off up the canal. Today there was a big fresh food market here so we stocked up on fruit and veg. Weather is terrific, very warm with cool breezes in the evening.

 We left Montceau and have been slowly making our way up the canal du centre.  Mostly we have been travelling in the morning and stopping around lunchtime.

We had a lovely stop at St Julien sur Deune, and managed to have a very tasty dinner out at the Auberge. Last time we were there we got dressed up looking forward to a nice meal wandered over and found it was closed for a private function! - our specialty ferme exceptional!  And of course it was the only place!

The weather has got very hot and we had some very hot days and nights at Montchanin and St Leger sur Deune.  We then moved on to the wine village of Santennay at a lovely picturesque mooring with views over the vineyards on the hills opposite with nice shade trees on either side of the canal. We stayed for a couple of days and enjoyed the beautiful mooring.

Then onto Changy where we moored up in the channel leading to the port.  This is a cutting where you are moored in the bottom with steep tree lined banks on either side. Quite sheltered and very cool.  We arrived on the day before Bastille day and that evening there was a large firework display in the port.  We sat and watched these with an NZ couple and a girl travelling with them from Ringwood - the suburb where we lived in Oz!  Its a small world!

The next night (bastille day) there was this massive storm and although we were sheltered a lot of trees on the bank got  blown down into the canal. Fortunately none near us, but the canal was a real mess.  We decided to stay until they cleaned up - so were entertained for the day with trucks, cranes and chainsaws clearing away the debris.  The VNF flushed the canal and when we left the next day it was pretty clean - good job VNF!

So onto the lovely port of Fragne which is our last stop on the Canal du Centre. We have a lovely mooring on the quay with power and water. So we have caught up on tidying the boat and doing our washing.  Of course like last year we took the bus into Chalon Sur Saone (which is a very pretty town) - like last year the bus was a taxi each way for 1 Euro! Luxury!  Had a wander and did a bit of shopping and then back for drinks with some other boats in the port - some of our friends from Roanne were here so we will catch up with them later in the year when we return.