Chemilly (the hole of the soul)

Heading for the weir at Scey-sur-Saône

After a short walk on Thursday morning, we set off from Soing and headed for Traves under grey skies.

Leaving Soing on Thursday morning

I’ve mentioned before about lock cuts and how they provide short cuts across large meanders in rivers.  Flood gates are often found at the upstream entrances to lock cuts and they are closed in times of flood to prevent damage to the man-made lock cuts.  On some rivers, flood locks are sometimes found in place of flood gates.  These work like ordinary locks but don’t have a rise or fall unless the river is running high.  The other difference compared with ordinary locks is that the upper gates are a lot higher than the lower gates as they need to retain the higher water level.  The picture below shows us leaving a flood lock (écluse de garde); the gates we have just come through are higher than those at the bottom.

Écluse de garde at Cubry-lès-Soing

After a while the clouds cleared, and we put up the parasols to keep the sun off the rear deck and Buddy.  About six kilometres from Traves the weather suddenly changed again, the sun disappeared, and the wind really got up.  The wind was so strong that we found it quite a struggle to get the parasols down.  As we approached Traves the wind died down as quickly as it started, and the clouds started clearing once again.

All calm again heading into Traves

The river forms several small lakes around Traves and a holiday park is built around one of them.  Rickety pontoons have been erected so that the holidaymakers can hire small motorboats and take them around the lakes and onto the river.  If there’s room, visiting pleasure boats can also moor up for €8 a night although there’s an extra charge for water and electricity but we didn’t find out how much that was.  There was just room for us and after mooring up we went for a look around.

Moored at Traves

We had a walk to the next village which was called Bucey-lès-Traves.  We went up a hill overlooking the river where there were some lovely summer houses built to take in the views along the valley.  The village had the usual mairie, lavoir and church but no shops or bars.  We walked back along the side of the river thus completing a circular walk.

On Thursday we cruised 13 miles up three locks.

An eight-kilometre walk was advertised on the information board in the holiday home park and as it was highly recommended, we thought we’d take it before setting off for Scey-sur-Saône on Friday.  According to the leaflet there were two attractions of the three villages of Bucey-lès-Traves, Aroz and Traves.  These attractions were a couple of stones dating from the Neolithic period and a lavoir in each village.  We find that trails are either extremely well signposted in France or very poorly marked: well signposted routes being the most usual.  This one was at the worst extreme as we only came across two signposts, so we were glad we’d taken a picture of the route.

The stones were difficult to find as they were both in crop fields with no path leading to them.  We knew that the first stone was to the left of the farm track we were following, 50 metres or so before it reached a T-junction.  All of a sudden, we were at the T-junction even though we’d not see the stone.  Karen spotted it first between a pea field and a wheat field.  We'd been walking alongside the pea field for a while and had been admiring dozens of butterflies, including many long tailed blues whose larvae feed on several different species of legumes. 

The first stone, outside Scey-sur-Saône

The stone was the only one left of what had been a Neolithic single chambered megalithic tomb.  Historians specializing in that period believe the body was passed through the hole (the hole of the soul) for a moment of spirituality.  The next stone was outside the village of Aroz and was easier to spot, but this time the fields around it were all fenced off.

The second stone, outside Aroz

The lavoirs at both Aroz and Traves were both impressive, full of flowing fresh water which always provides a welcome drink for Buddy.  The one at Aroz also had a flowing water trough (abreuvoir around three sides.

Aroz and Traves lavoirs

The church at Aroz

When we got back to the boat we set off for Scey-sur-Saône.  The rain from two days previously had swelled the river somewhat and we could feel the extra flow, especially as we were heading upstream.

Leaving the holiday park at Traves

There was a lock cut outside Scey-sur-Saône that went through a tunnel after going up the lock.  The tunnel was one way and the channel leading up to the entrance seemed so bendy that we couldn’t believe that 39-metre barges used to ply their trade along this route until a few years ago.

Reinforcement work was being carried out on the cutting at the far side of the tunnel although there was no sign of any actual physical activity, a bit like roadworks on British motorways.

The light at the end of the tunnel is a boat following us

Reaching the end of the second lock cut of the day we re-joined the river and turned downstream to find the mooring at Scey-sur-Saône.  We’d read that the mooring was just before a weir at the town bridge and as the river was running higher than it had been lately we were both a bit concerned about mooring up.  We would have to turn before mooring so that we were facing upstream; the boat is a lot easier to control if heading against the current.  We hadn’t realised how close to the weir we would have to go in order to turn around and I have to admit that my heart was in my mouth, especially as I just managed to avoid a moored boat during the manoeuvre.

This picture is as we headed for the weir which runs across in front of the island.  It looks tranquil and you can hardly tell where it is but that’s not how we felt as we approached it:

French weirs don’t tend to have barriers across the river

During the afternoon, the other three boats on the mooring left so we were on our own in the centre.  Rather than being bang in the middle which is rather selfish, we thought we’d move to one end.  We did this together as we were on a flowing river, and I put a chain on at the front just in case any mischievousness happened overnight – we didn’t want to wake up teetering on a weir.  Once we were safe and secure again, a woman came over and told me that we were on a reserved mooring and needed to move back five metres.  She pointed to a sign at water level that can only be seen when arriving by boat.  I apologised and we set about moving back to the next set of rings.

Scey-sur-Saône was a town rather than a village and had a 7/11 (actually 8/8) store so Karen popped in to get a few bits and then we walked around the town.  A lot of effort had gone into putting up placards of old postcards on various streets.  They were positioned so that it was easy to see ‘then and now’ views which we found most interesting. 

We came across one lavoir near the church and this one was built over a fast-flowing stream, so Buddy was straight into it to cool down.

Buddy having a cool down in the water (he still won't swim)

We were joined by another boat later in the evening which was flying a red ensign so we thought they were Brits.  It turned out they were Dutch and had borrowed the boat from British friends.

On Friday we cruised eight miles up two locks.

As much as we love hearing running water during the night when lying in bed, we found the noise of the weir next to us louder than any of the weirs or lock overflows that we’ve heard before.  This meant we were up early even though it was a Saturday.

Sun coming up on Saturday morning in Scey-sur-Saône

Karen went for a run first thing while Buddy and I went to the local campsite to pay our €4 overnight mooring charge.  We then had a walk around Scey-sur-Saône to take in the parts of the town that Karen and I hadn’t covered on Friday and found many houses had towers built as part of the structure or in their grounds.

This was one of the old forges

...and here is one of the towers in someone’s back garden

The mairie was very pretty in pink and still had the inscriptions ‘ECOLE DES GARCONS’ and ‘ECOLE DES FILLES’ on the front walls of the two wings:

The imposing costume museum…

…and the war memorial

Karen came back from her run rather pleased with herself as she'd found a pump-fed lavoir in the little hamlet of St-Albin.  It's now being used as a flower bed and she was extra pleased as she'd spotted the sloping washing stones around the outside.

The repurposed lavoir at St-Albin

It reminded me that I'd come across a couple more during my walk around town:

A basic riverside one and another built over a stream

After a mid-morning coffee, we set off in brilliant sunshine on the short journey to Chemilly where we were hoping a short pontoon was free.  As we cruised out of Scey-sur-Saône, men were busy tidying the gardens in the summerhouses along the riverbank.  No doubt they were readying them for the upcoming summer holidays.  When we arrived at Chemilly we were in luck as the mooring was empty and we soon moored up in an idyllic spot next to the rear grounds of a château.

Moored at Chemilly

The village was so small that it didn’t even have a church, but it did boast a mairie of course.

Since returning from Barcelona we've taken advantage of Karen having a week off work by travelling and exploring each day.  Sitting outside, reflecting on our week, we both felt like we're having a second holiday. 

On Saturday we cruised four miles through no locks.