Esnon (the last stretch)

Moored at Esnon for a couple of days

For those of you who’re a little tired of hearing about lavoirs then fear not as we saw none on Sunday.  You’re not saved from the other recent repetitive theme though: éclusiers not turning up.

My morning walk with Buddy took us around the small park in St-Florentin that we hadn’t visited during our stay here, not even on the heritage tour.  Once again, the sun was out, and it felt very warm even first thing in the morning.  Two rivers run through the town, the River Armançon that we have been following for some days now and a tributary to it, the River Armançe.  The Armançe is the river that flows through the park and where we saw what looks like a bandstand built as an island without access.

The island bandstand in the River Armançe

We had definitely agreed on Friday afternoon that we wanted to go down the St-Florentin lock at 10.00am on Sunday.  The éclusier and both of us even repeated what we agreed a couple of times and we heard him ringing it in too.

As we were moored in sight of the lock, we could see no sign of life as ten o’clock approached but we were being positive and pulled up to the aqueduct just before the lock so we could stake our claim 😉

Sure enough no one turned up and I called both the numbers that were (unusually) present at the last lock we went down on Friday and I had made sure I had made a note of them.  As luck wouldn’t have it, both went through to answerphone, so I left messages on both.  The next approach was to ring the port and get a number from them.  Both numbers given in the waterways guide for the port were no longer in service, so we resorted to a web search and finally found the correct number. 

The guy who answered was extremely helpful and even said everything in French and English which was amazing as we hadn’t stayed in his jurisdiction as he pointed out 😉 He said he had seen us waiting on the aqueduct and had already rung VNF and said an éclusier was on his way.  He also mentioned that those who pay for moorings in the marina or quayside (in his jurisdiction) get the additional service of him arranging an éclusier for them.

Zachariah was our enthusiastic éclusier who saw us through the first three locks and was full of apologies.  In the past, when we haven’t moved for a couple of days, we have been knocked up by an éclusier checking when we want to leave, not so over the last week.  We do remember seeing Zachariah scooting past us several times over the weekend, enthusiastically waving, but never thinking of stopping.

A rather twee lock cottage

Because of the delay in getting going we didn’t complete our journey before lunch so stopped just short of a place called Brienon-sur-Armançon having arranged to restart at 1.30.  This time the éclusiere was ready for us when we arrived, and she quickly got us through.  We were back to a guy at the last lock and when he asked when we wanted to move on again, I made sure I saw what he wrote in his notebook.  Yes, he had written down ‘Chalkhill Blue 2 – mardi – 10’.  Mind you I did confuse it all to start with as I had been thinking today was Monday and not Sunday so had originally said we wouldn’t move until mercredi!

Last lock of the day – Moulin Neuf at Brienon-sur-Armançon

As we came out of the lock, we passed a blackberry bush in full bloom and it seemed to be smothered with marbled white butterflies.  If you can ever see one at rest, we think you will see they are really beautiful butterflies.

Image from ukbutterflies.co.uk

We moored up at a small village called Esnon and will be staying here for a couple of days before our last cruise on Tuesday before coming back to the UK for a few days.

On Sunday we cruised 12 kilometres down five locks.

As it was going to be a hot day on Monday, Karen went for her run early and I put another coat of undercoat on the side we are working on.  First, I had to do a bit of gardening by cutting back the long grass and nettles on the bank to avoid being stung when I was doing the painting.

When Karen returned, she said that the towpath back down to Brienon-sur-Armançon was practically in the shade all the way and suggested we took a bike ride down there.  We were glad we did as we found three lavoirs!  I will refrain from saying too much about them other than their basins weren’t the usual rectangular shape, instead being round, oval or hexagonal.  They will be added to the ‘Lavoir’ tab with more information when I find the time 😉

Cycling past the port at Brienon-sur-Armançon

The three lavoirs of Brienon-sur-Armançon

 The town church seemed to be quite a mash up of styles from the outside.

 

Some of the streets and a château in the middle of the town:

 

On the ride back we stopped at a lock as we saw Kev & Deb were having lunch on their boat, Rangali, while they waited for the end of the éclusier’s lunch break.  We had been moored near each other when we spent a couple of days in Tanlay last week.  We had a quick chat about our respective plans but had to leave as we were getting rather hot standing out in the open.

Later in the afternoon we had a walk around Esnon and were rather surprised by this strange looking building on the edge of the village:

  

The reason we were surprised was that it turned out to be a lavoir.  So after saying I wouldn’t mention them I kept my word for Sunday but with four in one day on Monday I just couldn’t resist it.  Oh, and while I'm at it, you may remember I said that Peter & Helen, who visited us on Friday, had told us that they were also keen on lavoirs.  This morning I received an email and pictures from Helen as they had found a lavoir at St Gengoux-le-National after leaving us. 

On Tuesday we will be heading the last six kilometres back to Migennes when we will have completed our round tour of Burgundy – 414 miles through 389 locks since 27th March 😅