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Orconte, we stay for the night of August 30.
Towards nightfall the sky starts to become red (no color filters or Photoshop used!), rain starts and the most wonderful
rainbows build up.
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The pot of gold must be close by.
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The next day we enter
Saint Dizier. The canal leads through some run down industrial area and
we think 'let's get out of here as fast as possible'.
But then we tie up in the harbor and what a surprise! I think it is the surprise town of the
season.
Saint Diziers lies between the canal and the Marne river, has a very clean and
picturesque
center with a large shopping/pedestrian zone. We visit an excellent Restaurant - La Gentilhommière -
and instead of leaving early in the morning we decide to stay for a second day and enjoy the town.
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The Prefecture of the department.
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On Thursday we leave Saint Dizier and continue our journey by passing one of the many drawbridges.
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Our stop for the night
below lock # 50 in Chevillon. The Moulin Rouge, no not THE
Moulin Rouge,
offers good home-made food and sells bread in the morning.
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The book says 3.45m for the bridge, our wheelhouse is 3.38m, a tight fit, but we pass!
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Looks like Venice but is
Joinville. The river Marne passes through the village, the canal leads
around town.
Brigitta joins us here for a couple of days. I wait at the train station for one of the few
trains that stop here every day. The 4:25 train is announced; I see a fast train moving towards
the station; moving too fast; moving through the station.
Puzzled looks from `like to be' passengers and from the SNCF station-head.
Then finally 200m after the station - screeching breaks and the train stops and the passengers
step off the train in-between freight cars, but not in the station.
Bienvenu en France Brigitta!
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Early morning on the canal - the mist lifts quickly
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Thousands of spider webs line the banks of the canal. |
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We pass over the Marne river. The Canal moves straight up the valley, while the river meanders
from the left to the right side of the Marne Valley - so we pass over it several times.
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Reflections or Symmetry - you select the title
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Brigitta seems impressed by the lift-bridges and makes a picture while the wheelhouse passes
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Here is Brigitta - just a few locks and she is handling the back-ropes like a pro which gives me time
to make pictures.
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The Port de Plaisance of Chaumont. We decide to stay a week here as train connections to Switzerland
are very good and the town offers all services.
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Nearly all services I should say.
I don't know why, but it was the only town on our journey where we did not
have a single good meal in a restaurant. Disappointing for a town with more than 70'000 inhabitants!
I'm sure there are good restaurants, but just not in the town center.
The town is set on a hill and the river and canal flow around the city.
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Walti and Vreni join us on the 11th, we leave Chaumont on the 12th and Walti gets drafted for
lock duty right away. Most locks on this stretch of the canal are still manual and the lock-keepers
appreciate a little help.
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One of the few dinners we have outside this season. Mostly not for the weather, but the
large number of quite aggressive wasps make it sometimes not very enjoyable to sit outside.
We stay in
Foulain for the night, a two restaurant (both closed Sunday evening) and zero bakery town.
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The sun late afternoon of September 12. No it is neither an UFO nor did I use some
elaborate graphics tool to create the halo.
I asked Heidi and Isaac, the San Francisco Bay Areas most well known Astronomers,
and here is what they had to say:
This is a sundog. For an explanation see try this
WEBSITE.
For comparison photos try the
allthesky or the
astrophys-assist web-sites.
And just a few days ago they sent me a picture with a moon-dog (a 22deg Halo around the moon).
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How is that for a curiosity? The turn bridge is located a few kilometers outside
Langres.
It turns in the middle of the canal, creating two separate waterways. The lockkeeper is operating the
bridge from the center - so I wonder what they will do if it ever breaks down? Leave the lockkeeper
stranded until repair crews show up? After all - this is France and it could take a while!
I wondered when I read the maps and it instructed 'to pass port-side by the bridge' for both up-
and down-stream traffic.
Now we know why!
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In the evening we reach
Langres. The city is built on top of a hill. Don't
believe the signs at
the port that say '1km to centre ville'. The person that wrote the sign must have been the same
person that paints the billboards that says 'Intermarche 1 minute'.
I always wondered if he meant 1 minute by TGV or Apollo 11 but definitely not with our car!
But sorry I digress - the 1km to town center means it is at least 5 km steep uphill! So call a taxi - it
is worth it. Incredible views (like here to the feeder basin of the canal), a nice town and good restaurants.
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Vreni on the back-ropes ....
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Walti doing the front .... (I'm sure someone will give me again a hard time for using back and
front, this way I'm at least sure that most of the web site visitors will
understand what I mean.
Or do you prefer Bow-, Aft-, Stern-, Proue-, Poupe-, Bug-, Heck- rope?
Walti and Vreni have been `promoted' to full crew after just two days on AvantiB! Betty had to leave
for a family emergency to Switzerland and so Walti and Vreni took over! Ropes, Kitchen, Croissants, ...
all of a sudden it was a vacation for me ;-).
We had days with over 20 locks - so definitely no easy going!
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The tunnel of Balesmes. It is 4820 meters long, a little over 3 miles! The tunnel is at an altitude of 340m and is part of the
dividing pond between the Marne Valley and the Saône Valley.
It is a self-drive tunnel and obviously one-way. The lights were out of order, but the lock-keeper
assured me that nobody is coming from the other side!
The worst part was the first 100 meters where the light from behind reflected in the windows making
it hard to see anything. I guess the `fog' inside the wheelhouse that built up when we entered the tunnel
did not help either!
After a little over an hour we emerged on the South side starting our descent towards the Saône.
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Mooring in the wild - not near anything really!
After a long day we expect to not make it in time for the next lock, they close at 7, so we decide to tie up on the
banks of the canal.
Today we left the Champagne region and enter the Burgundy region.
This is the reason the VNF, or may be their marketing people, have decided to rename the
Canal de la Marne a la Saône as the 'Canal entre Champagne et Bourgogne'.
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Thank god there is a fence between him and us!
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Entering one of the many lock of the canal .... |
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Not only Betty has flowers - some lockkeepers keep their gardens nice and colorful.
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He or she has even more pots than the Avanti B!
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There is still some commercial traffic on the canal. We meet an average of 2-3 commercial
barges per day.
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On September 17 we pass through our
last two canal locks and enter the Saône at 9am.
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Cat-house-lock .... there must be a story to it.
While we wait for a Saône lock I notice a cat on the right bank, the cat sees us approach and
runs towards the lock door.
We enter the lock, the door closes, the cat walks over the lock door up to the house on the hill!
There would be always the bridge 100 m downstream, but I guess laziness makes inventive.
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Swans on the Saône
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Auxonne on the Saône - our stop for the night.
The cathedral is quite worth seeing.
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