April 2024
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It had begun to seem that we were stuck in Mailly forever, but finally, finally, finally, we were able to begin this years cruising! And Saturday, 20th April saw us cast off our ropes and move off, at a very civilised start of 9:30am. The weather left a lot to be desired as it was cold, a little windy and some rain along the way, and the water level was a bit high, such that at the first bridge we encountered, the wheelhouse only just cleared and the rear flag pole took a hit! After that though, the following bridges were all fine and we continued with no other issues, passing through a total of eight locks and arriving five hours later at a quiet spot on the edge of Vincelles where we stayed for our first nights travel on the water.
Despite no rush to keep going, we moved on the next day and left Vincelles behind on our second cold, chilly day, another relaxed start at 9.45am. As per usual, the team of lock keepers were ready for us at the next lock and we were on our way through seven locks with a lunch break (for the lock keeper) around midday in Ecluse 79 Augy.
Today’s journey was a mere four hours long, and we arrived early afternoon in Auxerre, mooring alongside the Parc de l’Arbre Sec on the Nivernais Canal, in the same region of last year’s DBA rally.
Another cold day with several rain showers, but fortunately we managed to avoid them when we were mooring so didn’t get too wet. Having settled in and after our evening meal, we took a walk into the lovely town of Auxerre to walk around for a while re-visiting some of its medieval-looking streets and houses returning just as it got dark. So far, although there have been several Le Boats and Locaboats on the move, we seem to be the only private barge on the water and its been pretty quiet on the canal.
Awakening the next morning (22nd April) Nicki headed off with the dogs for a quick walk and then we were ready to leave Auxerre and head off onto the Yonne river on a sunnier (but still chilly) morning passing through six locks to moor at Gurgy. Today was just a three hour journey – our cruising time seems to be reducing daily!
The mooring in Gurgy is a good sized pontoon with coin operated availability for water and electric, alongside a campervan parking area and a few wooden ‘sheds’ selling food and drinks, although with so few people around there was not much business going on. We took a walk into the main square of Gurgy, which seems to be a smallish community, boasting just a supermarket and pharmacy, and returned via a pleasant walk along the riverside back to the mooring. A few hire boats stopped either side of us for a while, but otherwise all was quiet.
Day 4 of our travels (23rd April 2024) and we were on our way again with no fixed destination in mind, just looking out for something with potential. After the last few days of lock-keepers following us along and processing the locks, we were surprised to arrive at our first lock of the day – ecluse 6/Neron – and find it was fully automated. Leaving that we continued through to ecluse 7/Raveuse passing out of the Gurgy lock-cut and back onto the Yonne, and heading towards ecluse 8/Bassou where we had noticed on the DBA guide that there was a fairly new mooring pontoon with free water and electric. We had to wait a while for a work boat to enter the lock from the other direction, and so were prepped and ready to start our entry once the work boat left …. the gates opened in front of us, but the work boat stayed in place with the various crews chatting together. In the end, with nothing going on and there being no indication that we couldn’t enter, we slowly pulled along behind the work boat thinking he was probably going to retrace his journey, but a few minutes later we were somewhat confused when the work boat pirouetted in the lock and passed us by despite us now being roped in – nobody else seemed at all bothered but we would have expected them to exit before letting us in! Strange! Eventually it was an easy lock-in and we were quickly out the other side and we headed to a newish pontoon further down on the other side of the river. This seemed like a lovely pleasant spot, so we decided to stop for the day (this time after only two hours of cruising). With another free water and electricity metre available we took the opportunity to top up our water tank, before taking out the dogs out for a walk around the area – a very pleasant and peaceful town with some pretty houses along the roads, and a large park right next to the mooring.
Along one of the roads was a long stone wall which we later found out was the boundary for the “Bassou Leprosia” where returning crusaders from the Holy Land were treated. Along the preserved enclosure wall were square holes which was where food could be passed to the lepers within.
On our return I was able to wash down the sides of the boat, just to spruce her up a little before moving on in the morning.
We continued along the Yonne until we turned off the river onto the Canal de Bourgogne and entered Ecluse 114/15Y La Roche – a 5 metre deep lock with no wall cleats which necessitated the eclusier passing down a hook to us to collect our ropes. She then pulled them back up and attached them to bollards at the side of the lock. The water ingress from the gates was extreme once the sluices were opened, and it took all our strength plus the engine in full reverse to hold our position in the ecluse. Exciting, if pretty scary!
Out the other side, we immediately roped in at some canalside moorings in the town of Migennes, where we stopped for the night. We made a brief foray into the town but were disappointed to find that it all seemed very tired and was very quiet. We did manage to get in a few supplies though and on the way back took a gentle stroll along the canalside before settling in for the rest of the day. One thing we were pleasantly surprised to notice was just how clear the water was in this stretch of the canal, so much so that we could see plenty of fish – some quite large – swimming around, even a few shoals at times on our travels.
As we quickly found out, the mooring turned out to be pretty noisy as we were opposite a railway station with quite a busy schedule running throughout the rest of the day …. and night. Ah well, you can’t win them all. Moving on in the morning we carried on through two more ecluses (113Y Cheny, and 112Y Moulin Neuf) to reach Brienon sur Armançon (a town at the junction of the Créanton river and the Armançon river, crossed by the Burgundy Canal) after roughly two hours of cruising. Aside from one or two hire boats, we haven’t seen much in the way of boat traffic so far, which is helping with finding moorings, and we easily slid onto a pleasant and definitely more quiet mooring here, on a nice stretch of grassy bank. This was our first paid mooring this year.
A walk into the town later on found us passing through one of its regular weekly markets, which comprised of all the usual outdoor stalls as well as an indoor marketplace. A quick walk the next morning took Nicki, Casper and Pip back along to our last ecluse, mostly alongside a main road, passing across the lock gates to the towpath on the other side, which ran alongside a railway line – despite these two busy stretches though, overnight was fairly quiet – then back across a nearby bridge and home again, ready to head off once more.
Now heading for St Florentin sur Amancon, we journeyed on through three more ecluses (111Y Boutoir, 110Y Duchy and 109Y Maladrerie) in slightly murkier waters with a little tree debris to keep watch for. Today (26th April) was a slightly warmer day which made locking-in more of a pleasant experience, and the ecluses are not quite so deep (since our Migennes experience) all was going smoothly until leaving ecluse 109Y the eclusiers advised they were heading off for their hour lunchbreak.
We now only had one more ecluse to get through – which was only about ten minutes cruising – before St Florentin, so we had hoped they’d get us through it before taking their break, but no, that wasn’t to be. Still, instead of waiting it out at lock 109Y, we decided to slowly cruise on up to 108Y which had been left open for our arrival, and we were able to sit in the lock with our mooring tantalisingly in sight but just out of reach.
This almost fairy-tale like property overlooked the entrance to ecluse 108Y – on our tour of thd town we wandered around the roads to view it from all sides, to no avail – so on visiting the local Tourist Office we asked for any information, only to be told that it is a little folly in the grounds of a private residence, and unfortunately we were unable to get any closer.
Eventually however, the eclusiers returned and set us up to exit into the nearby Port de Plaisance, and we happily found a great little spot to moor up to, four hours after leaving Brienon. As we were in no great rush, we decided to stay a couple of nights here (30.88 € for two nights, including water and electricity) and have a good look round. I took the dogs for a wander through the town, and then Nicki and I had a more thorough investigation on our first full day.
As you leave the ecluse you pass across a short five-arched aquaduct, which allows the canel to span the Armance river, and apparently is one of the few works of this type seen over the water.
Park de l’Octroi near our mooring (26-27 April 2024)
The town was built on terraces and looking up towards the town centre, we could see the Church of St Florentin dominating the rooftops, and decided to pay a visit. Although this16th century church was in the process of being renovated/restored and was locked up, a notice advised that a key was available from the Tourist Office and so we made our own personal viewing of its interior. Slightly unusual to be inside such a large empty space on our own, but definitely worth taking advantage of, with some fabulous orginal stained glass windows from 1520s.
Leaving the church and having returned the key, we carried on through some of the picturesque side streets streets, even finding a turtle sculpture on our way, and made our way up Priory Hill (Butte du Prieuré), a pleasant tree-lined esplanade that looked out across the church, bell tower, rooftops of the old town and valley.
This very detailed sculpture of a ‘flying turtle’ was installed in 2016 on a square in front of the local museum, and was donated by its creator, Yvan Baudoin, as part of a temporary exhibition, but since then, the Friends of the Museum had managed to raise enough money to purchase it for the sum of 9,900 euros and it is now a permanent installation.
After a busy day, we returned to the boat to get on with some jobs and for Nicki to take out Casper and Pip, this time in the opposite direction to the town, heading past a very large sporting complex and into farmland beyond, finally joining up with the towpath at ecluse 109Y and continuing back to the port. Whilst she was out, I had a visit from Charles (Moondance) and he was able to give me some useful advice for our journey through the Pouilly-en-Auxois tunnel in a few days time.
Waking on the Sunday morning, Nicki took out the dogs for a brief walk before leaving for our destination at ecluse 107Y where we had agreed to meet the VNF eclusiers at 10 am. Luckily/unluckily the harbour mistress caught her before she had gone far to advise us that we couldn’t continue on the canal at that time as a tree had fallen in the water and was blocking the canal, and it could take a few hours at least to move it out of the way. At about 2 pm we heard that the way had been cleared but it was too late in the day to achieve anything useful so we stayed another night.
Today (29th April) ended up as a five hour cruise, passing along much weedier waters than at the start of the canal. Everything went really well, and the weather was much nicer than of late, and we progressed through ecluses 106/7 Germigny, 105Y Egrevin, and into 104Y Percey where we had to stop and wait for another boat following in our wake. Once they’d squeezed in behind us we were all off again, through ecluse 103Y Chailley where the eclusier left us for her lunch hour. Our comrades decided to stop there, and we carried on to spend our lunch break in 102Y Villiers-Vineux but unfortunately as we approached the ecluse we could see that only one of the lock gates was open. With nowhere to moor outside of the ecluse, we edged Shensi as close to the wall as we could and with some trepidation (and use of ramps and ladders) Nicki jumped onto land and was able to fully open the gates.
I gingerly motored into the ecluse and Nicki waited on the lockside to catch a rope as I passed and all was going well until …. it wasn’t! Trying to be useful, she took a leap from the side of this 2 metre deep lock onto the roof of the salon, her foot slipped off the edge and as she tried to grab a rail she fell onto the gunnel and over the side of the barge down into the water, sinking between the boat and the wall. She quickly bobbed up and after a lot of hand holding and pulling from me, rope grabbing and finally deployment of a ladder, we finally got her back onboard, absolutely sodden but in one piece. At that point we still hadn’t properly attached any ropes, so whilst Nicki went inside to shower and change into dry clothes, I made the barge safe and steady. Happily there had been no-one around to witness our shame and utter unprofessionalism, so at least on this occasion we could strike embarrassment from our list of non-achievements. Shortly after this trauma Nicki realised that, as well than a few bruises, she had in fact possibly twisted her ankle in the fall so she would be limited in her usefulness for the next few days.
Now our comrades had caught us up and we all passed out of 102Y heading towards our final two locks of the day, 101Y Flogny 101 and 100Y Flogny 100 (they couldn’t think of anything too original here, I guess)
All was going well until we exited our final ecluse and some idiots heading towards us parked their boat directly in our path – the rules of cruising on the right didn’t seem to have any relevance for them, and there was some gesturing to us to move out of their way! Some people have no idea. Anyway, we spotted our nights mooring ahead and steered in through the weed, with our Canadian comrades astern. This seemed like a nice spot so we thought we’d stay a couple of nights, especially as the eclusier had informed us that the canal would be closed on 1st May for their Mayday bank holiday. We invited Tim and Liz (our followers) in for drinks later, and spent a lovely evening with them.
