You may think that we would travel light between the UK and France as all we are doing is travelling from one home to another, but it’s surprising how things mount up and however carefully we plan we still seem to have a car load. For example, Karen has a list of provisions that we either cannot get in France or are ridiculously expensive over there; these need to purchased and taken back with us. Buddy’s dog food is really difficult to find in France and as he gets through an 18kg bag every month or so, a few months’ supply takes up quite a bit of space in the car too.
As you can
imagine, channel crossings are really busy now both the holiday season is open,
and second homeowners can visit their foreign property. Services are back to normal
and trains are running every 20 minutes or so, but we still ended up having to
book one leaving at 5.20 in the morning.
Still it means we can get back to the boat at a sensible time. We will be dropping in to see the girls on
Puddleduck on the way for a welcome brunch as they are now on the canal de St Quentin which is in the area between Paris and Belgium. Like us, they have a list
of things that they get when in the UK, so they have taken advantage of us to replenish
their stocks.
One thing we
have been discussing for a while is where we will cruise for the rest of this
year. The late start to the season meant that our plans of visiting places like
Strasbourg and Nancy and venturing into Germany and Luxembourg have had to be
delayed until next year. We have now
decided to head south towards Mulhouse on the Swiss/German border. Whether we get there or not depends on how
much we travel each day of course. The
only fixed factor is that we need to get back to Châlons en Champagne before
the non-commercial canals shut for winter in November. We are overwintering in Châlons again as it
is only four hours from the tunnel and is an ideal base to start our travels in
2021.
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| The waterway regions of France and our planned route for the rest of 2020 |
If we cruise an average of two hours a day then the return journey, at 1,056km through 482 locks, is possible. We have chosen not to take a circular route which means we can turn around if we find we are going to run out of time. Our planned trip takes us:
- Down to the end of the canal Latéral à la Marne to Vitry le François
- South along the entire length of the canal entre Champagne et Bourgogne down the east side of Burgundy through places like Chaumont and Langres
- A few days on the river Saône passing through Auxonne
- Finally, east along the river Doubs valley on the canal du Rhône au Rhin taking in Dôle, Montbéliard and finally Mulhouse on the Swiss/German border where the canal meets the Rhine.
With the
coronavirus situation we have decided to move the car with us for a
change. We will both feel safer if one
of us needs urgent medical attention and we have our own transport close by. Train
station car parks seem to be the favoured place for boaters to leave cars in
France; unlike the UK, the French station car parks tend to be free to use. One thing in common with both countries is that many canals are built in valleys, which are usually the favoured route
chosen when railways were built. This
means that every week or so one of us can catch a train to fetch the car and
leave it at the next town along the route.
Needless to say,
we are really looking forward to cruising again but do wonder how many pleasure
boats we will see on the move. The hire
boat industry has reopened but with most private boats being owned by foreigners
who, anecdotally, won’t be coming over from places like the Antipodes, the US
and South Africa this year, it may be very quiet away from the hire bases.
The next update will be from somewhere new in France as we want to get on the move as soon as we arrive on Thursday.
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