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| At Lac de la Liez for Wednesday night |
With the hot weather, Buddy's started getting up a couple of hours earlier just so he can go outside and carry on sleeping.
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| Buddy at 7.30am |
Here he is at 7.30pm - two hours after his normal bedtime:
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| Buddy ay 7.30pm |
Sunday was a scouting day for us, and I promise that I’m not about to flood you with pictures of the many lavoirs we stumbled across during the day. I will, however, show you just one picture as it encompasses the subjects that would normally be covered by several. This means that not only do you avoid lots of lavoir pictures, you also only have one that usually takes several - you win on two counts. So, here’s the lavoir in Balesmes-sur-Marne that’s been converted into a mairie and post office and not only that, the church is in view too!
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| The lavoir, mairie, post office and church of Balesmes-sur-Marne all in one |
The next leg of our journey is to go through the five kilometre tunnel on the summit and 75 kilometres down the other side to join the river Saône. We’d heard various stories about the other side having no facilities as it is so remote so thought we’d better check it out. In the end what was going to be a three- or four-hour trip turned into being all day. The main thing was to check where there was a decent internet signal for Karen to work. In the end we didn’t find anywhere suitable until a couple of kilometres from the far end.
Not only was the internet poor or non-existent there were no
water points either so that's two reasons why we can't keep up our current slow pace. The three places marked as having water were
all at lock cottages. Sure enough there
were outside taps present but all were labelled up as ‘non potable’. Karen checked with the éclusiers at the lock at
Renève and they confirmed the water was no longer drinkable. They did offer to fill up her water bottle as
it was such a warm day.
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| Karen waiting for her bottle to be filled |
Our first stop was at the final lock before the tunnel just to make sure we could leave the car there. As usual, there was plenty of space for a car, but we were intrigued to see the power to the lock cottage was held up by some makeshift woodwork.
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| Karen said it was my sort of bodge job |
As we were near the source of the river Marne, we made that our next stop and it also gave us and Buddy a chance to have a bit of a walk. It was very poorly signposted, but we knew it was somewhere above the tunnel and made our way up a track on what looked like the highest hill around. After a while we found a stream crossing the path and followed it uphill through the woods. It wasn’t long before we came to a grating covering the point where the Marne escaped as a spring through the limestone.
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| The grating and surrounding structure were installed in 1877 |
There was an information board at the site explaining that in Gallo-Roman times rivers and springs were venerated and excavations around the area have unearthed the foundations of several buildings around 2000 years old including those of a spa.
At 525 kilometres (326 miles) the Marne is the longest
tributary river in France joining the Seine in the southern suburbs of Paris. That makes it half as long again as the River Severn,
the longest river in the UK. The Marne
is navigable over the first 183
kilometres (113 miles) and is canalised for a further 154 kilometres (90
miles). Over the last three years we've cruised the entire 200+ miles, some sections more than once, and we've
enjoyed every bit of it. We would
recommend visiting places along the way from the built-up area down in Paris, through
the Marne battlefields and villages of Champagne to the canalised section in
the south as it passes through the upper Marne valley where we've been cruising recently.
Here we were joining the Marne after leaving the centre of Paris on an uncharacteristic cloudy day during the long hot summer of 2019.
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| Seine-Marne confluence (Marne to the left) |
Anyway, back to the scouting trip: it wasn’t until we reached Maxilly-sur-Saône which is nearly at the end of the canal that we found somewhere suitable that had both water and an internet signal. Electricity was also available but that’s not on our list of requirements, especially now summer seems to be here. A helpful sign explained that tokens for the bornes were available from the mairie and three shops in the village. Upon investigation we found the mairie was only open on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, the hairdressers on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays and the other two shops had closed down.
When we thought about it, getting tokens didn’t really matter as we
would fill up the tank when we leave Langres and as we were getting to Maxilly-sur-Saône in
four days, we wouldn’t need any more for a further ten days or so after that. The signal was the important thing so we
could stay there for a good few days while exploring the area and it means Karen can get on with some work too.
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| Out of date, multi-lingual welcome sign |
We’d come to the realisation that we would need to get down to Maxilly-sur-Saône over three days of a long weekend travelling around 25 kilometres through 16 or so locks each day. That’s a lot compared with what we’ve been used to this year, but we were both rather excited about the prospect. Moving the car down there at the same time will be fun as there are no trains or buses to help but at least we’re going downhill so one of us can sort out the car while the other brings the boat down the locks on their own. The current thoughts are that we will go down this coming weekend as we’ll both have had our second jabs in Chaumont and there’s nothing else to stop us moving on.
As we’d reached the Saône valley we decided to scout upriver for a
while before heading home. Gray was the
first major town we came to and the riverbanks in the centre were lined with mooring
rings and water points without a boat in sight.
After visiting a couple more spots we realised there were plenty of places to moor on the
river so turned and headed north back to the boat.
The blue line on the map below shows where we’ve cruised so far this year. The red takes us down to the Saône and then
continues into the Canal des Vosges up to Nancy where we’ll turn right onto the Canal du
Marne au Rhin to make for Strasbourg.
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| The up to date, current, latest plan (we think) |
Much of the day we’d been travelling through two new départements. Côte d’Or and Haute-Saône. We’d noticed the style of lavoirs had become grander and more palatial like this example at Oyrières.
When we got back to Langres, Karen popped into a supermarket for a
couple of things and at the checkout was presented with a rose for mothers’ day
which she found rather touching.
On Monday morning we drove back to Chaumont so I could have my
second jab, receive my final vaccination certificate and electronic covid
passport. Technically it was my third
jab as I’d had my first in the UK but as it was the Oxford vaccine I couldn’t
get a second one in France so restarted the process with Pfizer six weeks ago, the interval followed in France.
During a walk later in the afternoon we came across several butterfly
species that were clearly just emerging for the first time this year. We also saw grizzled and dingy skippers – two
great, incongruous names that really belie the beauty of the insects.
Tuesday was a workday for Karen and as I needed to post some documents, I took the opportunity to have another look around Langres. The gate I chose to walk through to get into the town had wooden doors; the first gate we’ve seen in Langres that seemed to have working doors.
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| Porte de l’hôtel de ville |
What’s good about a walled town is that it’s difficult to get lost as you just need to walk in a straight line, and you’ll reach the walls. Its then a matter of walking around them until you get to the point you entered.
I took my first ever solo selfie, sitting on Diderot’s bench…
…and I also thought I should include a picture of the mairie that
was built in 1774 after the total destruction of the previous building
following a fire.
I felt a bit fazed from the previous day’s jab so didn’t do a lot else
for the rest of the day other than have a short walk. I was fortunate to find a female mazarine
blue that appeared to be egg laying judging by the position she was holding her
abdomen. It’s a shame this species has
been extinct in the UK since the late 1800s and I suppose we will never find
out the reason. Over-collecting is often cited as a reason for declines or
total eradication of the population of some species, but changes in farming
practices can have a large impact as well as the industrial revolution.
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| Ooops - a bit too close |
It's the male mazarine blue that has the lovely blue colour giving rise to its name but you can just see a light dusting of blue on this female.
On Wednesday morning Karen took the car up to the tunnel and ran back ready for our departure in the afternoon. During the week, a notice had gone up on the port noticeboard indicating that from 1st June charges will apply to overnight moorers which meant that we would have to pay for one night. When I went to settle up, I was presented with a bill for €8,44 which included €0,44 for tourist tax. The €8 was the overnight charge for boats less than 10 metres long, although we’re 17 metres so I don’t think much of their measuring stick.
Over the next few days it will continue to be hot, but there’s a
risk of thunderstorms which no doubt will happen when we’re cruising especially
as we’ve got three long days ahead. We’d
arranged with VNF to leave at 4.00pm but as we were ready before 3.00pm I gave
them a quick call to rearrange the time.
It was beginning to get busy at the port in Langres as three French
motor yachts had turned up over the last couple of days. The
latest one to arrive left at the same time as us but in the opposite direction as
they were off to Le Harve and then into the Channel, but I couldn’t understand
where they were heading after that.
It had got quite breezy with the odd cloud, but we avoided any rain. I hope the same happens over the next three days when we have our push down to Maxilly-sur-Saône although it’s always nice and refreshing to have a thunderstorm when the weather’s hot.
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| Wispy clouds at our one and only lock of the day |
We moored up by the Lac de la Liez that we visited the other day and were rather glad of the tall trees giving shade later in the evening after being quite exposed at Langres for the last seven days.
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| Our own dinner table at Lac de la Liez by an accommodation bridge |
On Wednesday we cruised just over a mile up one lock.
To finish, here are some of the lavoirs we came across on Sunday. More details can be found by clicking here or on the Lavoir link on the right hand menu.
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