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| The river Aisne in the middle of Soissons (looking downstream) |
We left
Thurins on Tuesday morning for Soissons, near Reims; our penultimate leg in
France, a journey of about 350 miles. I
know it’s possible to drive from the south of France or the Alpine ski resorts back
to the UK without stopovers, but we’re taking our time. We remember hiring large MPVs and doing the
non-stop journeys down to the south or skiing with six or seven children with
us – we’re not sure how we managed now 😉
The
journey itself was pretty uneventful and we found our Airbnb, practically
inside a large church, by about three in the afternoon. We were both surprised that we had booked a
place in the middle of a city – most unlike us.
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| Our quirky but cheapest ever Airbnb and the clock/church/cathedral bells don’t start chiming until eight in the morning fortunately |
We have
used Airbnb for three years now and have stayed in some wonderful places, from studio flats just for us, to large country houses for the
extended family. We have stayed at over 20 different houses over the three
years in ten different countries and haven’t had any issues so would recommend
it for holidaying or short stops to anyone who is a bit nervous about trying
it. Not so for their website, it is the most user-unfriendly site we have come
across and we get frustrated every time we use it, but it doesn’t seem to deter
us.
After
settling in we went for a walk around Soissons.
At first, we thought it wasn’t up to much but we found the river and the
old town and started to change our minds.
As Karen said, “It’s not Auxerre, but then it’s not Migennes
either”. The best way to describe what
she meant is to use the analogy that Mike & Aileen use where they describe
places in terms of the football leagues: Auxerre would be in the premiership
and Migennes in League 3.
We mention
those places as Migennes is where we are having the boat dropped into the river
Yonne next March and Auxerre is likely to be our first stop when we start
cruising.
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| Looking upstream in Soissons - no boats on any of the moorings |
The canalised
river Aisne together with the Canal latéral à l'Aisne joins the Ardennes with the
Parisian waterways. It was used to bring
a lot of the building stone into Paris but there is little commercial traffic
nowadays, unlike many of the waterways in northern France. The journey from the Belgian end down to
Paris is about 350km and, as there are very few locks, it sounds an easy and
pleasant rural cruise. However, reading
up on it, it seems there are very few services on the route and consequently
very little leisure traffic.
They have clearly tried to improve things in
Soissons, with relatively new service points for water and electricity but, as
can be seen in the pictures above, all the moorings were empty and there were
no boats in sight.
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| One of the several newish service points along the portside of Soissons |
Aileen had mentioned that there had been a
breach on a canal section this year and also some troubles with water shortages
so that may also be a contributing factor to there being no boats.
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| An autumnal avenue of plane trees by the river |
Our walk back to the house was through the
older part of town and we will have a better look around on Wednesday.
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| The Abbaye Saint Leger, parts of which date back over a thousand years |
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| Town hall – as ostentatious as they always seem to be in France (relative to the size of the town) |
Karen had mentioned that it sounded like I was
having a bit of a moan in the blog entry for when we travelled from Italy to
France. She was referring to my comments
about the cost of the Mont Blanc tunnel and the cost of getting Buddy “UK
ready”. I didn’t mean to moan as that
isn’t my general way, but our conversation did trigger something. I had said the tunnel toll was 44.40 euros
and Karen thought that was wrong. She
found the receipt today and saw that it was actually 45.20 euros! Strangely it costs more to travel from Italy
to France than the other way around - I had mentioned the France to Italy cost!
Karen went for a run along the river first
thing on Wednesday and came back happy for two reasons. Firstly, she ran along the towpath and
consequently had no hills and, secondly, she saw a commercial boat heading for
the lock. If she hadn’t been on a run,
she would have stopped to watch it go through the lock.
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| The Alamo approaching the lock at Soissons |
The boat was what is called a péniche which can carry 220 tonnes.
These barges were built to fit Belgian and northern French locks built in the late 1800s
and is 38.5 metres long and 5.1 metres wide.
To put it in perspective it is more than twice the length of our boat
and 2 ½ times as wide.
The French use a gauge called the Freycinet gauge to dictate the size of inland waterway barge
that can be accommodated in locks. The
standard size (class 1) relates to the péniche we have been talking about and is often just simply
referred to as the Freycinet. There are other classes
up to class 5 representing barges 95 metres in length – the locks on the Rhone
are double this length, 190 metres.
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| The lock at Soissons |
The lock at Soissons, as with the other six locks
on the canalised river Aisne, are slightly larger than the Freycinet standard
at 46 metres long by 8 metres wide.
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| The control tower where the éclusier sits to operate the lock |
Wednesday was market day in Soissons, so we
had a visit to top up with fruit and veg.
It was a damp grey day, but it hadn’t deterred the tourists and we
suddenly realised that it must be half term in the UK judging by the number of
English-speaking families we saw.
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We also bought a holiday present for
ourselves, a tagine. It was a bit ironic
as we always like to buy something local but hadn’t really found anything in
Tuscany nor during any of our time in France on our way to or back from Italy. So, in the end we have ended up with
something Moroccan – I suppose France has the highest population of Moroccan immigrants (c2m!) and
many immigrants in Italy are Moroccan so it’s probably politically correct to
say we almost got something local.
Oh, and we bought a bag of turmeric as we knew
we were running out on the boat and that wasn’t local either 😉
After our shopping trip we did some
sightseeing. Firstly, we went to see the
remains of the Abbey of St. Jean des Vignes. The part that is still standing can be seen
from miles around as it is on a slight hill in the town.
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| The impressive remains of the church part of the abbey with two sides of the cloisters left on the left |
The abbey was mainly destroyed during the
dechristianization of France following the French Revolution and the stone sold
off for construction of other buildings.
I’d never realised this happened during the French Revolution but
thinking about it, the drivers of the revolution like removing power and wealth
from the few to distribute amongst the masses would naturally attack the
wealthy land-owning powers like the church.
We also popped into the cathedral which is
alongside the house we are staying in. This
is still complete, but we were asked to leave because we had Buddy with us,
strange considering how dogs are allowed into many shops and restaurants unlike
in the UK. By the way we have never been
asked to leave historical churches when sightseeing in the UK because we had a
dog with us ☹
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| Inside Saint Protais cathedral before we were asked to leave |
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| The outside |
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| Our journey since leaving the house in Italy – not far to go now 😊 |
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