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| Chalkhill Blue with spots |
When I was talking on the previous blog update about how
lovely this mooring at Cry-sur-Armançon was I forgot to mention the foxes. When we arrived, there was litter all over
the bank and we soon realised that a bin bag of rubbish had been split and the
contents strewn around. Assuming it was
a fox or similar, Karen had used one of our litter pickers and cleared it all up
and double bagged it. Anyway, when we
got up on Tuesday morning another rubbish bag had been split open, so I bagged
it all up before we got on with the painting.
Things had all taken longer than we thought, and we decided
to ring the éclusière and tell her we wanted to delay our departure for a
couple of hours until three o’clock.
While we were having lunch, she turned up on her scooter and asked if we
would like to leave at 2.30 instead to avoid being held up by a hotel boat and
we said that was fine.
Before lunch we went for a walk into the village of
Cry-sur-Armançon as the guidebook had mentioned a wash house.
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| Looking down at our mooring on the right with a quarry in the hill |
The village was the far side of the river Armançon, but we
found the lavoir on the canal side of the river.
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| The lavoir at Cry-sur-Armançon |
We were a bit surprised about the write up in the guidebook
as all it mentioned was the river and the lavoir. The village was really rather pretty, and in
our opinion definitely worth a mention in the guidebook.
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| A grand entrance to the village when crossing the river |
As we were looking down at the river, we saw our first
kingfisher for many weeks and we were reminded of how few we have seen over
here.
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| Yet another stone cross on a bridge commemorating some local dignitary |
Karen spotted them first, but there were several houses that
had stone guttering, some of which looked quite precarious.
When we walked around the back of the church, we saw a sign
for the crypt and, to our surprise, it was open so in we went. It was amazingly cool so we probably spent
longer in there than we normally would.
Apparently, it dated back to the sixth century and there were several
artefacts on display such as a stone sarcophagus also dating from the sixth
century.
There were also two exhibition cabinets, one with
prehistoric items found locally such as Neolithic flint arrowheads. The other cabinet contained other locally found
items, these though were from much earlier times such as fossilised remains. What we found surprising was that the
cabinets and the crypt were completely open, and visiting was clearly allowed
on trust.
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| This house has a date of 1604 on the lower window keystone |
On the way back to the boat we let Buddy have a play in the
river. Unfortunately, a frog or
something frightened him at the edge and he leapt, deer-like, in the air and
wouldn’t be persuaded to go back in.
As we had agreed earlier, we met our éclusière at 2.30 and
went down a couple of locks with her before mooring up for the rest of the day
at Raviéres.
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| First lock of the afternoon |
Most of the journey was at the bottom of a partly wooded
scree slope and thankfully shaded in many places by tall trees on the other
side.
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| Heading into a shady stretch |
When we approached Raviéres we passed a marble factory and
realised that the recent quarries we had seen on the hillsides must have been for
marble extraction as well as granite.
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| The first sign of industry since Dijon |
We had hoped to moor on a little quay out of town, but it
was taken up by a full size péniche, so we headed to the moorings in town.
The far end of the town moorings were owned and reserved by
European Waterways, the middle section was reserved for the hotel boat that was
following us, so we moored on the first section which was free. We set the sunshade up and sat out outside
for most of the afternoon listening to the cricket. We find cricket very easy to listen to on the
radio; it is one of those sports where the excitement, tensions and frustrations
can be visualised without the need to see the action on a screen.
It is also easy to listen to when cruising which we are able to do by using one each of Karen's running bluetooth earphones.
It is also easy to listen to when cruising which we are able to do by using one each of Karen's running bluetooth earphones.
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| Sitting in the shade at Raviéres |
Right next to our mooring was a large block of granite. The display also included some of the paraphernalia
that was used for extracting and shifting blocks of stone.
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| Display exhibited by the local granite & marble works |
Later in the afternoon the hotel boat, La Belle Époque, came
into view. I walked along chatting with one of the French crew on the front and
then took his line and hooped it over a bollard while they sorted themselves
out. We had seen the boat a week or so
ago on an earlier trip and had had a short conversation with two of the six crew who were English. I noticed that
one of them was driving so I went up to ask if he needed help mooring up, to which
I added, no doubt you’ve done this countless times. He laughed as an English girl came out and
said it was his first time. He told me
it was true and that the usual captain had been in bed all day with sunstroke!
Before dinner we went for a walk around the town and found
it a little bit sad. It was like the
whole place needed a lot of love and attention.
There was the odd property that looked well cared for, but many were
either empty and in different states of dereliction or in need of freshening
up. As usual though, any locals we
passed were friendly and one woman was particularly keen to explain how the
book swap worked. We have seen many
different ways of storing books in the book swaps, but this town was the first
that used old fridge-freezers!
We did find the town lavoir and it was really incongruous as
it was so out of keeping with the rest of the town. It had clearly had a lot of money spent on it
recently as it had been renovated.
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| The date reads 1829 |
When we returned and had dinner, we were entertained by the
jazz band that was playing on the back deck of the hotel boat 😉
Tuesday saw us cruise four kilometres down two locks.
While we were having dinner, La Belle Époque came past and
went down the lock to find their reserved mooring in the port. Checking my emails later I found one from the
port at Paris Arsenal confirming that our request for moorings on the nights of
9th and 10th July were approved. So, our trip through Paris and some of the Parisian
canals is becoming real 😊 Talking with Mike & Aileen later they suggested we try and reserve a mooring in the centre on Bastille day as we will get a great view of the firework display down the Seine.
On Wednesday we cruised seven kilometres down four locks.
Seeing the embarrassing picture of the red spotted boat I
was determined to get the first undercoat on before we left on Wednesday. As it was going to be another hot day, I got
on with it while Karen & Buddy went for a run.
By mid-morning all the campervans had left apart from a
Belgian guy. He had been sat at a picnic
table assembling and painting a model aircraft.
When he finally packed up, I asked him where he was going next. He said he didn’t know but needed to find a
large open field to fly his plane.
Before we left, we moved down the quay and popped in front
of the hotel boat to have lunch and top up with water, and why not – it was
free!
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| Moored for lunch and water |
As we cruised we noticed the landscape seemed to be changing
from rolling hills to open arable fields.
An advantage of neither of us knowing this part of France is that we’re
not sure if this is a permanent change or what will come next.
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| Open fields |
We had to pull into the side at one point as another hotel
boat came towards us. This was ‘C’Est La
Vie’ which at around €7,500 per person for six nights was even more upmarket
than La Belle Époque.
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| Waiting for C’Est La Vie to pass |
When we were in the lock at Chassignelles we saw a sign to a
lavoir, so we thought we’d have to moor up and have a look.
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| Chassignelles - last lock of the day |
The éclusier told us that there were a few bollards soon
after the lock where we could moor for the night. Trouble was, the sides were so shallow that
we couldn’t get very close, so we tied up temporarily while we went to visit
the lavoir.
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| Entrance to the lavoir at Chassignelles |
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| The lavoir at Chassignelles |
Back at the boat we decided to continue on and try and find
somewhere else to moor. After a while we
found an old quay that still had mooring rings attached. It was fairly open so we moored up again.
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| Moored between Chassignelles and Ancy-le-Franc |
We went for a walk down to Ancy-le-Franc, partly to see how
far it would be to the Bi1 supermarket, partly to check that fuel was available
and partly to check out the moorings at the port. As we arrived at the lock at Ancy-le-Franc we
noticed some bollards on the other side of the cut. We crossed the lock and went to check the
water depth. It seemed fine so we
decided that when we got back to the boat that we would move yet again.
The port seemed to have plenty of water points, but it had
no space for us. There looked to be four
permanent boats, a reserved spot for La Belle Époque (which was following us
later in the day) and two hire boats. We
were glad we hadn’t risked going down the last lock as we wouldn’t have been
able to moor there.
We walked back along the other side of the cut and a pile of
old lock gates caught my eye in a small field.
Looking over the hedge we saw several piles of metal stanking planks
too. Coincidentally, earlier in the day,
Karen had asked me if I was collecting all the pictures of lavoirs we have
seen. Her reasoning being that we have
seen very few stanking planks over here.
Well, just maybe I will…
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| Metallic stanking planks and old lock gates |
When we got back home, we moved just under a kilometre to
the mooring spot above lock 80. As we
were tying up, an éclusier stopped on his scooter and asked Karen if were
wanting to go down the lock now. She
told him we were mooring for the night but would like to set out again on
Thursday at one o’clock.
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| Our third mooring for Wednesday night |
On Wednesday we cruised seven kilometres down four locks.
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