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| Our mooring at the summit of the Canal du Centre for a couple of nights |
For the next week we will be passing between Côte de Beaune
and Côte Challonaise as we get to the end of this canal and, hopefully,
enjoying some wine tasting on the way.
We will have a couple of days or so cruising on the River Saône before heading
up through Dijon as shown on this map:
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We’ve been warned that we may get boarded by the river
police in the Dijon area as that is where they are trained in the regulations
for inland waterway craft. We think (and
hope) we are fully compliant though.
We treated Monday as a Bank Holiday and had a rest day. Until the 1960’s the Grand Burgundy Tile
Factory was based in Montchanin and was one of the many factories in Burgundy
that produced the glazed coloured diamond shaped roof tiles that are so typical
of Burgundy. Our guide book told us that
if we walked around Montchanin we should see many examples.
We went for a bike ride after lunch and as we were moored by
the town, we went on a hunt for some of the examples. Try as we might, we couldn’t find any and we
did cycle around a fair bit of the town.
The best we could do was this house:
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As we will be moving through some of the popular wine
producing areas of Burgundy, we hope that these richer wine producing areas will
provide plenty of examples of the Burgundian tiles we were looking for today.
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| Looking up and down the high street – nicely shaped plane trees but no ceramic tiles in sight |
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| The feeder canal in Montchanin |
We found one of the old locks which is now partially filled
in with a road running over it, but the old lock cottage was still in place and
inhabited.
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| Narrow lock on the left next to the lock cottage |
The sun was out and there were only a few wispy clouds
around when we set off at 9.30am on Tuesday.
We had asked for the first lock to be open at ten and we had to travel
the three-kilometre summit pound to get to it to start our descent to
Chalon-sur-Saône.
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| Passing an interesting looking old factory soon after we set off |
Most of the first dozen or so locks on the descent are deep
by canal standards; most being more than five metres deep. The locks were still automatic as they had
been on the climb up from Digoin and, as has happened every day on this canal,
one lock failed to operate so we had to call out an éclusier.
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| Control tower by the first lock |
The control tower is positioned such that an éclusier can
see down the first few locks but now they are automatic I doubt they ever use
it. Still, it’s a strange structure with
a mural commemoration of the canal’s chief architect/engineer from the 1790s,
Emiland Gauthey, and the fact the canal links the Loire with the Saône.
The lock numbering starts at 1 again on this side of the
summit and each is suffixed with ‘Med’ which is short for Méditerranée which
itself indicates we are on the Mediterranean side of the summit.
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The deeper locks have floating bollards which make it much
easier to descend and avoid the need for using our extra-long lines.
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| Getting lined up with the floating bollards |
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| Going down |
Most of the floating bollards have graffiti depicting boat
names and we wonder if the owner of this one was the owner of the Lazy Bones we
have been hearing about on our recent travels.
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| Nearly at the bottom – doesn’t look so deep here |
We started passing more houses that had the Burgundian tile
patterns we had been looking for on Monday.
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When the canal was first built (and known as the Canal du
Charolais) there were more locks on the descent than there are presently. When the locks were enlarged at the end of
the 19th century to the 38m x 5m Freycinet standard several were
removed, hence the current deep locks of today.
As we went down, we came across several sites where the
remains of the original locks could still be seen.
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| One of the bypassed locks |
We were still in beautiful countryside with green fields
even though we were heading back to vineyard country:
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We moored up for the day just before lunch at a place called
St-Julien-sur-Dheune. We were moored opposite a restaurant/bar which seemed to
be the only commercial outlet in the place.
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| Our mooring for Tuesday night |
After lunch we went for a cycle ride further down the canal
in search of more of the remains of the abandoned locks. We found four more in various states of decay
and then returned for a wander around the village.
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| The tiny church of St-Julien-sur-Dheune |
When we got back, a narrowboat was mooring up in front of us
on its way up the locks. Paul & Pia
were planning on stopping for a couple of nights before moving on and we had a
pleasant late afternoon sitting in their cratch in the sun sampling Paul’s
homemade bread with some welcome wine and cheese.
Paul (an Englishman who has lived in Iceland for the last 45
years) and Pia (who is Swedish) had their boat shipped to Belgium last June and
have made their way slowly down to here.
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| Unusual sight of two narrowboats moored together |
On our cruise on Tuesday we covered seven kilometres down eight locks.
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