Châlons-en-Champagne (one of those days)

As many boaters will know it’s very common, when living on a boat, that only one job a day can be accomplished.  Living here in the port at Châlons is really bringing that home and it is a thought also shared by the other two couples living here over winter: Nikki & Gorete and Guy & Ardon.  Tuesday’s job was to go for a walk with Nikki and the dogs (Gorete was away in Paris with her sister for a couple of days).  As we go for walks every day, I suppose the real job was to get the food shopping done but by the time we got back and had a late lunch we didn’t really feel up to doing a big supermarket shop.

We were determined to go on Wednesday but nearly didn’t make that either.  The girls came around to try Karen’s latest cake and Ardon also joined us, Guy having gone back to Oz for a couple of weeks.  Once again it was a late lunch, but we then forced ourselves to go shopping afterwards; Karen went into the supermarket while I went to get diesel and a replacement gas bottle.  That’s when things started going wrong.

I filled up four jerry cans with diesel and queued up in the line of cars to pay.  When it was my turn I said I wanted a gas bottle and the girl asked me to show her my empty bottle before she would come out and open up the cages.  As soon as she saw the bottle, she said it was no good as I had bought it from Auchan, a competitor of the Leclerc store I was at.  Oh well, I would get the gas another day.  Then my debit card was declined for the diesel and unfortunately it was the only card I had on me.  I wondered if some sort of outlet type limit had kicked in to say the amount was too large for a fuel transaction as it was over €100.

I explained that my wife was in the store and she would have the means to pay.  The girl wouldn’t lift the barrier for me (understandably) so I had to reverse back to find somewhere to park on the forecourt.  Of course, there was now a line of cars behind me and as soon as I started reversing the guy behind panicked and started honking his horn.  Once he realised what I was doing he did the same and got the same reaction from the guy behind him.  It worked out alright in the end and I managed to park up OK and went to find Karen.

The same thing happened to her when she came to pay but a UK card worked.  We found out later that the bank we were using was having problems authorising transactions that afternoon.  Another thing we found out later was that the nearest Auchan where we could exchange the gas bottle was 75 miles away.  It looks like I’ll be searching for somewhere that’s not so concerned about the origins of the bottle, in other words not a supermarket fuel station but a simple private one. 

We went on one of the town’s heritage trails on Thursday.  This was a 7 ½ mile walk to the west of Châlons taking in a couple of villages, a disused canal and the canal we’re currently on.  Considering the length of the walk it was surprising there were only nine points of interest shown on the map/leaflet.

Unusual sculpture in St-Martin-sur-le-Pré

We started off along our canal, the dead straight Canal latéral à la Marne until we arrived at Recy.  This was a small village with a few modern houses and an interesting public garden (not mentioned in the guide).

Crossing the Canal latéral à la Marne at Recy

The garden was well kept and had a poetry theme; there were a dozen or so sections enclosed in beech hedging.  Each section contained a few laminated poems with seemingly unlinked and diverse subjects such as water birds, comets and recipes.

One of the poetry corners

The church at Recy (in the guide)

Recy was the furthest point away from Châlons and the walk continued in a circular direction to bring us to St-Martin-sur-le-Pré.  This village contained predominantly modern buildings but was still nice and quiet and well looked after.

At the entrance to the village, large bicycles had been erected in the flower beds but with no explanations as to why they were there and, again, not mentioned in the guide.  Each was taller than us and here are three of them with Karen to provide some scale.

The mairie at St-Martin-sur-le-Pré (in the guide)

As we left the village, we met up with the now disused Canal St-Martin.  This canal used to join the River Marne to the canalised rivers that run through the centre of Châlons-en-Champagne.  It was made redundant when the Canal latéral à la Marne linked Châlons to the River Marne 30 kilometres further west at Épernay.  This bypassed even more of the river that was difficult to navigate this far upstream.  Even though the Canal St-Martin is now disused it looked ideal for a narrowboat 😊

The Canal St-Martin on the outskirts of Châlon

The junction with the canalised River Mau

We have to admit that, considering the walk was longer than 12 kilometres, the nine points of interest weren’t necessarily ones we would have picked.  We would have also included others as it was a tourist trail but at least we had had a good walk and Buddy was able to be off the lead most of the way.

As we walked back through town we passed the war memorial which had been decorated during the parade on Monday.

In the afternoon I borrowed a battery driven pump from Ardon to top up the diesel tank from the cans I had filled up on Wednesday.  I had seen Guy using it to fill his heating tank the other day and he said I could borrow it.  I was really impressed as it was much easier than using a manual syphon or pouring the fuel straight into the tank via a funnel. Not only was it easier, it was quicker and there were no spillages.  I have added it to the list of things to look for when we next visit a bricolage.

Letting the battery pump get on with it

I’ve not mentioned the weather because it’s been the same for the last few days, mainly grey, some rain at night and the only the odd glimpse of sunshine. It doesn’t feel like it’ll be long before we get our first frost too.