Our mooring for Wednesday night |
Once through the lock it is only 18 kilometres to the end of
the navigable river where we will join the Canal latéral à la Marne. Our current plan is to stay at the far end of the river
until well into October so we can finish off touching up the paintwork. We know of three pontoons that are low in the
water so we will have easy access to the sides of the boat.
We went up the lock at Mont-St-Père and moored up so we
could fill up our water carriers It was
only noon when we finished so we carried on to Jaulgonne where we moored up for
the day.
Tuesday mooring at Jaulgonne |
After lunch we took a walk to the village of Varennes which
turned out to not have a lot to offer other than a few farms, a mairie, a
couple of champagne houses and a lavoir.
Unfortunately, for us, the lavoir had a solid door which was
padlocked shut and also there were no windows.
This meant we couldn’t see inside until Karen noticed that the door was
a sliding one and she was able to pull it back a couple of inches so we could
see inside.
It was clearly used to store community items, but it was
interesting to us as it had three wash pools.
This was the first we have come across with multiple pools. Not only that, the pools were raised so the women
had to stand to wash their clothes. This
was also unusual and is only the second one we have seen of that type.
The three wash pools of the Lavoir de Varennes |
As usual, more information and pictures can be found by
clicking here.
Whilst reading the notices outside the mairie it was
interesting to see they suffer from the same invasive plants as we do. There were warning posters about Himalayan
Balsam and also Japanese Knotweed.
On the mairie noticeboard |
When we returned to Jaulgonne we had a quick look around but
there wasn’t really anything there. They
seemed to be proud that several of the vineyards around the village are owned
by Moet & Chandon as was the same in Varennes earlier.
As it was the first of the month, we checked the smoke and
carbon monoxide alarms. The fire alarm near
the kitchen goes off fairly often when we create steam through cooking but we
had noticed that it hasn’t happened over the last few days. When testing it we found it didn’t work and
upon opening the back we found there was no battery in there!
This completely flummoxed us as we wouldn’t remove a battery
without replacing it with a new one. All
we could think was that it was taken out during a particularly steamy cooking
session with the intention of putting it back. Then
maybe it got mixed up and lost in the recycling pile, which is directly under
the alarm, and then moved, unbeknownst, to the recycling bag in the cratch
later.
Anyway, all the other alarms were fine 😊
Anyway, all the other alarms were fine 😊
Our evening view at Jaulgonne |
On Tuesday we cruised 14 kilometres up one lock.
While Karen was out on her run on Wednesday, she passed some
stone kilometre markers. We haven't seen many on this river and they have all been set a fair way back from the riverbank. In the horse drawn days the markers would
have been easily seen by a person walking the horse(s) or from the boat but
nowadays, trees are allowed to grow so they end up hidden away.
Pk40 – 40 kilometres to the end of the navigable river at Dizy |
Reading up about the history of the River Marne later I was
surprised to learn that men also towed boats right up to the end of the
1800s. They could pull a Freycinet sized
barge, 38 metres long weighing 250+tonnes, up to 800 metres an hour. This was compared to a pair of horses who could
operate at over 2kph. Of course, horses
had to be fed and housed so were more expensive compared with a bargee towing his
own barge.
We set off at mid-morning and even though it was a lovely
sunny day there was a stiff breeze. This
made it ideal to dry the washing as we cruised along 😊
Fortunately, those black clouds missed us! |
We did drop the whirligig down going through locks to ensure
we didn’t catch it on anything.
We stopped for lunch when we reached Dormans and ended up
staying there for the rest of the day. On
a walk later, we went through the town to top up with fruit from the
greengrocer that we rather liked when we visited previously.
Moored at Dormans – ideal for paint prepping |
As the sun was still out and no rain was forecast, we got on
with prepping the left hand (port) side of the boat. For some reason this side has very few paint
chips compared with the other side and we’re not sure why that is.
We'd managed to avoid hearing the result of the French rugby match during the day so had a tense evening watching it on catch up. Yet another game that had us on the edge of our seats but at least the French came through in the end. Sorry Kiwis, but we're rationing our viewing of games to the UK home nations and the French until we get to the knockout stages.
We'd managed to avoid hearing the result of the French rugby match during the day so had a tense evening watching it on catch up. Yet another game that had us on the edge of our seats but at least the French came through in the end. Sorry Kiwis, but we're rationing our viewing of games to the UK home nations and the French until we get to the knockout stages.
On Wednesday we covered nine kilometres and went up one lock.
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