Chaumont (buttering up the locals)

We’ve had a strange few days, weather-wise; there were hailstones during a lunchtime walk on Wednesday followed by a glorious afternoon and then it rained practically all day on Thursday. Needless to say, Buddy’s walks were few and short on Thursday.

Thursday in the rain by the lock above our Riaucourt mooring

Thursday was car move day as we were going to cruise to Chaumont during Friday.  Karen drove to the halfway point which was at a place called Condes, parked the car by a tunnel there and ran back.  She was most fortunate and picked a time when the rain had stopped long enough for her run back to the boat.

Our friends Paul & Sue who are still moored at Châlons-en-Champagne rang to discuss their route north and possibly into Belgium.  Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to offer much help as the route planner on the VNF site was down.  In fact, the French navigation authority’s site suffered a cyber-attack on 27^th April and it’s still out of operation as stronger security is being developed before it goes back online.  This meant that the email alert service of unexpected stoppages like infrastructure damage or breaches was also out of action.  To give them their due they did get a temporary email alert service back up and running from different servers in a couple of days and different services are slowly coming back on lne.

The chimes from the church clock in the village are unusual in that they ring throughout the night whereas most chimes are usually supressed from 10 or 11pm until 7 or 8am.  We like the sound of chimes, so it doesn’t bother us, but we found them intriguing because after the four quarter chimes there’s a gap of around three minutes before the hour chimes start.  A bit disconcerting as it makes us lie awake listening to make sure the hour chimes start.

My big admin task recently has been completing our French tax returns.  As French residents, we have to declare our worldwide income in France even though the tax may be paid to different jurisdictions.  For example, our UK rental income is taxed over there so we get a credit for the tax amount in France, but most UK pension income is taxed in France so HMRC have to authorise the pension providers to make pension payments gross of income tax.  Treatment of investment income is more complicated but needless to say, with the French love of bureaucratic detail, details of each financial account has to be included in the return.  In a similar vein, details of all maintenance and repairs to rental properties have to be itemised whereas HMRC are happy to accept the total value.

Friday was a much better day weather-wise and Buddy spent most of the morning sunning himself outside the boat:

We set off for Chaumont after lunch and immediately ran into problems at the first lock.  We got in OK, and Karen reached up and looped the front line over a bollard to secure us.  Our télécommande refused to be recognised and so the gates wouldn’t close behind us.  It was probably because the lock was four metres deep, so we were too low for the signal to be picked up.  This meant we had to get the boat over to the other side of the lock where we could use the manual controls. 

You may wonder why we weren’t that side anyway but that’s because the bollards on that side were for commercials and therefore too large for us to loop a line over.  Karen finds that a depth of four metres is about the limit for getting a line over a bollard so certainly wouldn’t have felt safe trying to negotiate a fat bollard.  Of course, the front was tied up, so we had to go across at an angle with Karen adjusting the line at the so I could move forwards as well as sideways.  Once the back was positioned by the control rods I set the lock going and we then had to quickly get back into position before the water started rising.

Moving across to the manual controls on the right

We had four more locks to go up before reaching Chaumont but they were all trouble-free.  An older couple had stood and watched us at the first one and engaged me in conversation once we were nearing the top.  They’d been visiting her mother in the village and were having a stroll before driving home.  Clearly, the current situation regarding UK tourists being banned from travel hadn’t reached them as they assumed we were ‘en vacance’ until I explained we lived on the boat.  They were also keen to understand how and where we were getting our vaccinations.  For some reason I was particularly perceptive and understood the conversation; sometimes I leave a conversation having understood hardly anything and just wing it by nodding and grunting at apposite points.

Leaving Riaucourt after our week’s stay there

The canal was still following the river Marne and became increasingly windy (as in bendy) which made a pleasant change from the long straights we encountered when we first joined it.  There was a lift bridge immediately before the lock at Brethenay and all it served was an old waterwheel driven forge that’s been converted to small industrial units.  I did wonder how that cost justification worked when the canal was built.

Waiting to go into the lock at Brethenay

After five kilometres we were approaching Condes where Karen had left the car the previous day and where we had to go through a short tunnel.

The north portal of the tunnel de Condes

At just over 11 metres wide at water level the tunnel operates in two-way mode for Freycinet sized commercials which have a beam of just over five metres.  As is the case for nearly all the tunnels we’ve encountered in France, the inside was lit and there were towpaths on both sides:

After another hour, we were approaching Chaumont which, even though it’s a large hill town, we couldn’t really see much of it because of the trees.

Approaching Chaumont

Chaumont has a port with water and electricity points shared with camper vans.  Now travel has been allowed in France since last Monday, there were quite a few camper vans already in situ.  As we didn’t need water and electricity, we stopped just short of the port which meant there was no charge to pay.  We’d looked at the mooring previously when we’d driven to the town to get our jabs and noticed it was very popular with fishermen.  When we arrived, there were no fishermen to be seen and we soon settled in.     

Moored just outside the port

We walked back to Condes to get the car and did the weekly food shop on the way back to the boat.  Being a large town, Chaumont has an Amazon locker at one of the fuel stations, so when we got home, we ordered a few items that we’ve been needing for a while.  One of these was a replacement charger for my laptop as the current one has been intermittently failing to charge and no doubt it wouldn’t be long before it failed completely.

We were up early on Saturday morning and there were already fishermen sitting by the boat.  When I popped outside to move the solar panels to catch the rising sun we had a brief conversation and found out that they’d arrived at 5.30am.  Karen jokingly asked if I’d challenged them for being out before the curfew finished!  They loved Buddy so I left him outside while I made them some coffee.  I had an ulterior motive in supplying them with coffee as it would mean they would stand up for us when other fishermen arrived and were put off because their patch had been taken over by a narrowboat.

They didn’t seem to be too serious on fishing and most of their time seemed to be taken up with a constant stream of acquaintances turning up to pass the time of day and all was quiet by mid-afternoon.

As the shops are closed on Sunday, we will probably take advantage of the quiet streets and explore the old town.  The port is in the valley and we will find one of the old cart tracks that run up the hillside into the town.  Chaumont is famous for its massive (in length and height) railway viaduct which is over on the opposite side of the hill to us so we will take a walk over there too.  With temperatures in the mid-20s over the weekend it’s going to be a shock when Monday arrives as they are due to drop back down to the mid-teens.