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| Preparing to moor at Saâcy on Wednesday |
We stayed at La Ferté-sous-Jouarre
on Tuesday and as we had access to free water and electricity got all our
washing done first thing. Mind you,
getting hooked up wasn’t that easy as the closest borne or water/electricity
point was on the next pontoon by Bruno’s boat.
This meant that I had to hurl the hose across the, not inconsiderable,
gap between our pontoons. I then had to
repeat the operation with the hook up cable.
It must have been quite comical to watch as Karen had to hold onto me as
I hurled in case I fell in the water.
All was OK and I managed to get
both hooked over Bruno’s bowlines to stop them falling in the water. Well, it was almost all OK but when I went to
plug in the cable, I realised I had thrown the wrong end across the gap. So, I had to throw it back, make my way off
the pontoon onto the bank, come down to our pontoon and start again. Predictably, this time my throw wasn’t as good,
and the end fell in the water. Still,
they are made for outside use and, after I gave it a good shake and dry with
paper towels, we were plugged in and ready to go.
The problem with doing such a lot
of washing was that there was too much to fit on our tiller whirligig, so it
was out with the clothes horses. An
advantage of having the pontoon to ourselves was that we didn’t feel guilty
taking it up with washing.
After getting the washing hung out,
we set off for the market which our guidebook told us was on a Tuesday morning
and down at the other end of town. We
became a bit suspicious as we neared the area as it was so quiet and, yes, when
we arrived at the square it was empty.
Our not so trusty guidebook was out of date again. Our fault, as we should have checked
elsewhere before we set out.
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| Walking down to find the market – you can see that the houses have river access to their cellars |
As we were down that end, we
crossed the river on the other bridge in town to see the WWI war memorial
erected in memory of British troops killed in nearby battles such as Mons, Marne
and Aisne. To be more precise they were
the 3,741 British troops who died in local battles but had no known grave.
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| The WWI memorial |
We found the stone that it was
built from quite striking and it is called Massangis stone which is a limestone
found in Burgundy. The pillar to the
right of Karen is one of four that are on each corner. The four sides of each pillar are inscribed
with the names of the four countries of Great Britain.
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| England & Scotland on these two sides |
In the road by the war memorial
was a rather oddly decorated roundabout with a boat and a lighthouse.
Apparently, La Ferté-sous-Jouarre
was known worldwide for its production of top-quality millstones. The stones
were quarried from the surrounding hills, ground and shipped around the world
until the end of the nineteenth century.
There were many workshops along the river but nowadays there are just a
few remnants of just one factory. In the
early 1800s there were 23 companies manufacturing millstones in the town, the
largest company employed over 600 people.
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| All that remains of the 18th century workshops of the Gueuvin-Bouchon-Dupety-Orsel company |
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| Walking back along the river with the spires of the mairie visible in the old town |
After exploring the quaysides, we
went for a wander around the old town which, for once, was busy as it wasn’t
the ‘lunch two-hours’. We had a look at
the town tourist trail but found we had covered all but one of the items on
it. As the skies were starting to look
ominous, we headed back to the boat before we got wet.
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| The mairie |
Later in the afternoon we heard
from the port at Auxerre confirming they had received our deposit for our
winter mooring which meant we were in a position to cancel the one at Roanne
and request a refund. We also let Simon
know we wouldn’t be staying at Migennes either.
Migennes would have been a problem as it’s not so easy to get Buddy on
and off the boat there, but when I rang Simon, he said he’d already thought of
that and knew a spot where he could have put us. We thought this was sweet of him and felt a
bit guilty that we decided on Auxerre.
In the end it didn’t rain which
was good as we still need the doors wide open at night but we did awake to mist
on Wednesday morning, making it look like an autumnal day.
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| Our misty morning at La Ferté and 15 minutes later |
While Karen went for her morning run,
I filled up with water and got the boat ready for leaving. You’ll be pleased to know that she didn’t get
lost this time and found a nice path to run on heading east along the river out of town. Once she had showered, I topped up the water
tank again and off we went.
I noticed a hotel boat passing on
the main river and gave it plenty of time to get ahead. Karen said she had seen it moored up further
downstream and referred to it as a cycling for softies holiday boat. When she had run past it about 30 bikes were
being unloaded. These were of the
typical continental sit up and beg variety rather than road or mountain
bikes. On her return, the guests were
saddled up and setting off slowly along the path.
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| Getting the bikes ready at the cycling hotel boat |
We half expected to see the hotel
boat moored up somewhere before we got to the end of our cruise but didn’t. That doesn’t mean they were having a long
cycle ride as the 14 kilometres we travelled by river was less than six
kilometres by path and road.
We approached our first automatic
lock on this river with some trepidation as we had never used a remote control
before. In the end the system worked
well; as soon as I pressed ‘Montant’ a yellow light at the lock started
flashing to indicate the request had been received. Sure enough the green and red lights came on
to tell us the lock was being prepared and we could see where the water was coming out of the
ground paddles.
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| Waiting for the lock (Écluse 9 - Courtaron) to make itself ready |
Once in the lock I had to
manoeuvre so I could push a rod, recessed in the lock wall, to set the lock operation
in motion. We were used to the rod
system as we had to use it on the Canal latéral à la Loire and on a few locks
on other canals. It’s quite a good
system as we start the operation once we know the boat is secure. That way there is no panic that the éclusier
starts things off before we’re ready.
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| Another beautiful cruise on the Marne |
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| We saw no other boats on the move |
As we passed Sainte-Aulde we saw the lovely sight of four young lads diving from their boat and swinging from a rope
and dropping into the river. It reminded
us both of Swallows & Amazons – it’s great their parents trusted them to be
out like this.
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| Passing Saint-Aulde |
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| Pont de Luzancy – another one of the prestressed concrete bridges |
Just before the next lock was
meant to be a 15-metre pontoon which we were banking on being free. Fortunately it was, and we stopped for the
day and probably Thursday as well. We
could just see the first champagne vineyards from the front of our mooring, so
we now know we are leaving the land of Brie behind and heading into Champagne.
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| Coming into moor – our first champagne vines on the hill in the distance |
You will probably notice that we
went through the wrong arch of the bridge, but we could see there weren’t any
boats coming out of the lock ahead and it made manoeuvring to the pontoon a lot
easier. It was also one of those one-way arches so we knew it wasn't no entry because of an obstruction or shallow water.
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| Our mooring for the next two days |
After lunch we went for a walk around
Méry-sur-Marne which is a village on the other side of the river. We could see the clock tower of the church
from our boat and could see the clock was about four hours slow. When we walked through the village we made
for the church and found that the clocks on two other sides were telling yet
two more different times. We hoped for the villagers' sake that the correct one drove the evening and morning mass bells 😉
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| Two of the clocks |
As we walked out of the other side
of the village four goats joined us:
We hurried up our pace hoping to
leave them behind, but they started running too:
We turned a quick left and had hoped they had given up following us, but no such luck as they soon caught up with us:
In the end we stopped and told
them to go back as we were concerned about them following us for the rest of
the walk and possible consequences. It took
us a while to realise but it seemed they only understood French, but they
finally turned around and trotted back to the village.
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| This is when they decided to turn around |
We continued our walk and, as
usual, felt like mad English people as there was no one else around and we were
out in the sun, but we were happy 😄
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| Sunflowers on the turn near the end of our walk |
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