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| Typical style of bridge on the Canal entre Champagne et Boulogne |
One of the locks we went up in the morning wasn’t working by
the télécommande and had an éclusiere present to see us through. She was at great pains to confirm what our
plans were for each day and that we could get off the canal by Sunday. It took
a while to satisfy her, partly because I was getting my vendredis and samedis
muddled up! Fortunately Karen heard what was going on and came over to sort things out.
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| Manned lock |
You can see from the picture above that all the metalwork on
the locks on this canal is painted the same shade of blue. If you look above the left lock gate you will
also see the éclusiere has a tee-shirt in the same colour too. Thinking about it, the couple we saw
yesterday also had the same colour. It’s
a bit like a brand within a brand as usually éclusiers wear the national VNF
uniform whereas these have a discrete VNF logo on their own style of uniform.
I mentioned yesterday that this canal is on its third name,
having originally been the Haute-Marne and then the Marne à la Saône. The information plates on the lock cottages
(where they still exist) were clearly installed during its second
incarnation. The centre upper
windowsills on the cottages also have the canal opening date inscribed: 1864.
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| Plate and inscription on a lock cottage |
We weren’t too far into our journey when we crossed a
department boundary heading from Marne (51) to Haute-Marne (52). We are still in the Grand Est region though
and I have only just realised that this is spelt the same as ‘grandest’ 😊 We have been in Grand Est for most of the
Champagne area making it the fifth region we have visited on the boat out of
the 12 current mainland French regions.
I included the department numbers as I know some people are
interested in these as vehicle registration plates include the department where
the car was registered. From 1950 to
2009 the final two digits of the registration number represented the
department. If a car was sold to someone
living in a different department (or the owner moved) then it had to be
reregistered with the new department number but not so nowadays. Since 2009 the department number is shown on
the registration plate but is not part of the registration number itself. Still, the game to keep children quiet on long
car journeys when holidaying in France can still be played. The object is to see as many of the different
department numbers as possible during the holiday.
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| Welcome to Haute-Marne |
During the morning we had heard the occasional jet fighter
flying low and fast overhead and were really surprised that the noise didn’t
bother Buddy. One came over when we were
at the bottom of a lock which made the sound even louder, but he still didn’t
flinch. We found out from Steve &
Debbie later that we were watching Rafale fighter jets operating from St-Dizier-Robinson
aerodrome.
We found two bollards for a lunchtime mooring right
alongside the airfield and were treated to what felt like our own private air
display.
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| Moored for lunch outside St-Dizier-Robinson airfield |
I have to admit that my heart always pumps harder when I see
planes hurtling towards the ground before finishing their dive and shooting off
into their next manoeuvre. It’s really difficult getting a shot of a plane when
doing aerobatics, especially with a phone camera; this was the best I could get
for our records:
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| Rafale fighter overhead |
As we approached the penultimate lock of the day, which was
on the outskirts of St-Dizier, we saw a couple of people working at the far
end. We therefore weren’t surprised that
the télécommande didn’t work and after trying a few times, sat there for a
while expecting the VNF guys to set the lock going for us. Nothing happened and, after using the
binoculars, we realised it was two VNF girls painting the metalwork and totally
ignoring us.
By this time, we had drifted right up to the lock and so
tried the télécommande again. This time
the red and green lights lit up and we knew we would be on our way soon.
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| Even their protective gloves were in the blue branding |
We approached the first set of moorings in the town, which
were below the last lock of the day and consisted of a long high quay with bollards. It was just as well we didn’t want to moor
there as a fishing competition was ongoing.
Goodness knows what we would have done if we had wanted to moor there!
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| Fishing competition on the moorings |
Once up the last lock we were in the centre of town. There was a long low quay with bollards,
water and electric points running for a good three hundred metres alongside a
car park and opposite a leisure centre.
There were no boats moored so, after turning around, we had the pick of
the moorings.
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| Moored opposite the swimming pool |
During Wednesday we cruised 22 kilometres up ten locks.
On Thursday morning we took a walk to the far side of town to find the tourist information office. As usual we wanted to see if they had a leaflet showing the route of a heritage trail. Indeed, they had one, but we decided to continue our own walk first and follow the heritage trail in the afternoon.
The lady in the information office told us that, although the old city walls are on the tour, they are currently not open to the public and neither was the château inside them. We wandered down anyway to have a look from the outside. The city walls date from the 13th century and were built with 12 towers of which only four remain.
On Thursday morning we took a walk to the far side of town to find the tourist information office. As usual we wanted to see if they had a leaflet showing the route of a heritage trail. Indeed, they had one, but we decided to continue our own walk first and follow the heritage trail in the afternoon.
The lady in the information office told us that, although the old city walls are on the tour, they are currently not open to the public and neither was the château inside them. We wandered down anyway to have a look from the outside. The city walls date from the 13th century and were built with 12 towers of which only four remain.
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| Part of he château behind part of the walls |
After looking around the old town we crossed back over the
canal into the modern area and retail parks to pick up a few things from Lidl
before returning home for lunch. After
lunch we set out on the heritage tour, once again with Karen doing the leading.
Several of the sights we had seen during the morning and
several interesting buildings and monuments weren’t even on the tour. In fact, it was a bit like the heritage trail
in Reims where we found it would have been better to devise our own tour after
doing some research on the web.
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| One of the half-timbered houses dating from the 1400s |
As we went around, we kept reading about the devastating
fire of 1775 which destroyed large parts of the town accounting for 2/3rd
of the living space. We were surprised
that so many of the timbered houses survived such devastation.
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| We thought the pipes of the church organ were impressive |
St-Dizier came to prominence through its many iron foundries
and there are various examples of works produced by the local plants. The only one on the heritage trail was a 19th
century cast iron water fountain which, unfortunately, wasn’t working at the
time of our visit. This one was designed by the British philanthropist Richard
Wallace who is probably best known for his water fountains found throughout
Paris.
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| Water fountain designed by Richard Wallace |
Part of the tour included a few examples of iron works by
the sculptor Hector Guimard. He designed
the elaborate iron work entrances to many of the Paris metro stations in the
1900s and was born and lived in St-Dizier.
Many of the buildings in the town have examples of his work in the form
of balconies, window bars, cellar windows etc.
Apparently, there are over 70 examples in the town but with only
five on the heritage trail we decided to do our own tour and found many more.
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| Some of the balconies |
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| Some of the window bars we found |
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| The mairie rebuilt after being destroyed in the 1775 fire |
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| The theatre and some likely looking bars |
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| Afternoon tours finished! |
Tomorrow we will start the journey back to Vitry-le-Francois
in order to meet the deadline of getting off this canal before it closes on
Sunday night.
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