Reading (back in isolation)

Both our Swiss and English overnight neighbours at Montureux-lès-Baulay left before eight on Friday morning.  Karen went for a run before it got too hot while I waited for the post office to open so I could ask for the water to be turned on.  As the lady saw me walking up the path from the river, she guessed what I wanted when I went in and she immediately turned the water on for me.  I used the hose which was provided by the mairie and was very good quality, more than long enough and with a large bore.  I went back to the post office when I’d finished and was shown that I’d taken on 510 litres and at €0.005/litre that came to a whopping €2.55 😉 

We’ve booked into the marina at Corre for when we go back to the UK next week so that was our target for the weekend.  It felt unusual calling it a marina as generally they're called ports in France.  When we first came over here, we found it odd using the word port as we've always used marina in the UK.  We set out in the middle of the afternoon with the idea that we’d moor up for the day at Ormoy, about seven kilometres short of Corre, and the only place on the way where there were moorings.   Things were obviously back to normal now the backlog of boats caused by the floods had cleared as we saw none during the cruise which was hot and sultry under high broken cloud.

Cendrecourt was the only village we passed through on the way and the lawns of the lock cottage must be a right pain to mow:

The gnomes and other ornaments stretched out to the left and the right

Coming out of the lock we could see Cendrecourt up on a small rise:

Nearing the end of the navigable river meant it was now a lot narrower, the scenery had changed too.  The rain of a week or so ago had also benefited the grass and undergrowth as everywhere looked lovely and green rather than the parched yellow and browns of previously.  The banks of the river were generally lower and with the flood plain not being so wide, the wooded hills weren't so far away.

As we passed pk 400 it brought home how long the navigation is; it’s 407 kilometres (253 miles) from Corre down to its confluence with the Rhône at Lyon.  We joined the river at pk 253 when we left the Canal entre Champagne et Bourgogne on 11^th June so have travelled just over 150 kilometres in the last six weeks.

Pk 400

It was nearly six when we reached the lock cut at Ormoy and we decided we would definitely moor up there and not continue the last seven kilometres to Corre.  That could wait until later on over the weekend.  The lock was the last we would be going up on the river and when we reach these first and last milestones, we always have mixed feelings.  The sadness of leaving a particular waterway coupled with the happy memories spent cruising it.  Of course, there’s also the excitement of having a new waterway to travel with its unknown cruising idiosyncrasies: how will we manage the locks, will there be places to moor, etc.?

Approaching our last lock on the Petite Saône

Lock cottage built later than many of the others on the river

The lock cut through Ormoy had plenty of places to moor but pins were required as there were no rings or bollards. 

Moored on pins at Ormoy

There were plenty of butterflies on the wing and we also saw a hummingbird hawk moth.  These are so called as they take nectar from flowers while hovering in the air like a hummingbird.  It’s amazing that such large bodies can be kept in the air by such small wings.  I hadn’t realised until I read up later that these are not resident in the UK; all the ones seen over there are spring/summer migrants from Europe.

The proboscis can be seen in the flower head

We also found a cryptic wood white.  In the British Isles, cryptic wood whites only occur in Ireland; however, its close cousin, the wood white, is found in both England and Ireland.  They are one of the species of butterfly that never rest with their wings open but this does not hide how delicate they are – they are really one of the daintiest of butterflies with their slow fluttering flight.

Cryptic wood white

On Friday we cruised 11 miles up two locks.

Saturday dawned partly cloudy and with rain showers possible in the afternoon we set off for Corre straight after breakfast.  It didn’t take long, and we were soon approaching the visitors’ pontoon outside the marina.  There were already a few boats there but there were two spots free, and we took the one behind Tony & Caroline on Imagine who were moored with us at Montureux-lès-Baulay.  The pontoon wasn’t the best surface for Buddy, so he appreciated having his bed to lie on.

Visitors' moorings at Corre

There are three sections to the marina; two on the River Saône and one up the first lock on the Canal des Vosges.  As were leaving the boat for a month we had decided to go into one of the river section as the moorings were secure and private whereas the finger pontoons on the canal were open to the public.  You may think us mad leaving the boat for a month on the river after last week’s escapades but all the moorings are on flood pontoons so it would be totally safe.

The smaller of the two river sections of the marina

When I’d rung up to make the booking I’d been told to moor in the visitors’ area and then find the capitaine who would explain where we should moor in the marina.  As it was, we couldn’t find the capitaine and as we rather liked being on the pontoon outside the marina, we left it until later in the afternoon before going on the search again.

After lunch we walked to the local supermarket to get a few things and came back with a stray looking dog that we couldn’t get rid of.  It was most embarrassing as it had no traffic sense and kept dashing across the road.  Fortunately, it wasn’t busy but there was one close shave.  It followed us all the way back to the marina where we popped into the office to find the capitaine.  This time she was there and agreed we could stay where we were, and she would show us to our spot on Sunday.  I explained about the stray dog, and she said it often followed people around as it lived near the marina!

As expected, we had a couple of rain showers later in the afternoon and were rather glad to have an excuse to stay on the boat planning what to do on our trip back.  It seems we’ve filled up a month already and that’s just with seeing all the children and our parents.

On Saturday we cruised four miles through no locks.

Apart from a couple of walks around Corre and along the start of the Canal des Vosges we spent Sunday packing up and messing around on the boat.  Although we’re only a couple of hundred metres from the start of the canal it felt strange that we wouldn’t be venturing on it until the beginning of September.  I went to see the capitaine and she showed me where they wanted us to leave the boat in the larger basin.  As it was rather pleasant being on the moorings outside compared with having neighbours down either side, we decided to put off moving until last thing on Monday ready for setting off to Metz on Tuesday morning.

Monday was ‘get Buddy ready for going to the UK’ day involving an early morning visit to the vets.  As responsible dog owners, we give him anti-tapeworm tablets every month but part of the bureaucracy surrounding getting back into the UK means we have to visit a vet who then gives him the identical tablets.  The difference being that the vet has to make a confirming entry in Buddy’s passport.  Fortunately, vet bills, like bread and property, are cheap in France and they don’t take advantage of charging an extortionate price for doing this like they would in the UK.  The vet also gave Buddy a rabies booster that will last for three years and stamped the passport accordingly.  I’m not sure whether we could get that done in the UK now as there’s probably some regulation about UK vets not being allowed to enter details in French passports.

On the journey back I stopped at a village called Betaucourt where I’d read there was a lavoir with an inscription over the door saying the equivalent of, “Windbags’ hotel”.  Although I found three impressive lavoirs in the village I couldn’t find the inscription on any of them, but I had two surprises.  One of the basins had been sealed and had goldfish swimming in it:

The other surprise was a link to another passion: and was just inside the entrance to another lavoir:

That yellow box in the far corner was a post box.  I know its not Victorian, which are the ones we like to find, but it was still unusual to find a post box in a lavoir and it was use still:

Reading about the village later I found that I’d missed two more lavoirs, the Windbags’ hotel and the other one, now in private hands had been converted to a summerhouse.  The village has a population of 150 nowadays and even if it were three times as large in the 1850s, that’s an amazing number of lavoirs so the villagers must have had the cleanest clothes in France.  Also, being such a small village I found it amazing that I’d missed the other two lavoirs.

Karen was working so Buddy and I had a good long walk up the Canal des Vosges which has a decent cycle path all the way along.  This was good as it will make hopping with the car and boat a lot easier than it was when we were on the river.  Once we reach Épinal we will be able to leave the car for a few weeks as we will be back on a railway line.  The next village up from Corre was Demangevelle which had a firewood and wood pellet producing plant.  Of course, the timber piles around the factory were on a completely different scale to the domestic ones we see all over the place.   

The village seemed to mainly consist of ten blocks of terraced houses which was really unusual.  I tried to find out more about them but ended up assuming they were originally mill workers’ cottagers as the wood plant had been built on site of an old textile mill.  It would be fascinating to find out more about these houses especially as the blocks were identified by the letters A to J on the front and only a couple were still inhabited.

Block ‘H’

The Canal des Vosges is not the original name for the canal, like the Canal entre Champagne et Bourgogne it had a name change (in 2003) for touristic purposes.  The northern end of the 250-mile-long canal was renamed the Canal de la Meuse and the southern end, where we are starting from, the Canal des Vosges.  The original name was the Canal de l’Est, the southern end joined the Saône to the Moselle up near Nancy being the Branche Sud and the Branche Nord carried on up to the border with Belgium.  I mention all this now as we passed some of the original milestones on the walk that have ‘Canal de l’Est - Branche Sud’ inscribed on them.

When Karen finished work for the day, we moved the boat around to the marina.  It wasn’t until we moved into the basin that we saw that it was a lot larger than we originally thought and was at least twice the size.

Karen has got the art of moving between France and England down to a T, so we hardly have to pack anything when we move backwards and forwards.  This time we were stopping over in Metz with friends Maureen & Garry for a couple of nights on our way back to Calais which impacted the packing routine.

Moored in Corre for a few weeks

We left for Metz soon after nine on Tuesday morning and drove up the Côney valley following the route of the Canal des Vosges to Épinal where it joins the Moselle.  It took an hour to reach Épinal where we had our covid PCR tests ready for travelling on Thursday.  The booking system had worked perfectly, and we were in and out in no time and, as expected, didn’t have to pay as we presented our cartes vitale.  We had a look around the port in the centre of the town and were rather pleased we’d left the boat in Corre.  Épinal had been one of our options but it would have been alongside a public quay and after a week or two it would have become obvious the boat had been left unattended.

After another couple of hours or so we arrived at Maureen & Garry’s who were flying their hot air balloon at the biennial Chambley balloon festival, and we hoped the weather would be good enough for us to go up with them on one of the mornings or evenings we were there.  The event is held on an old American airfield and normally attracts around 500 balloons but this year the numbers were down by about 40% as most British and other non-European balloonists couldn’t make it because of the travel restrictions.  

We went to the site in the evening, but, due to increasing winds, the display was called off during the pilots’ briefing.  The conditions weren’t right for it to go ahead on Wednesday morning either, but the forecast was more hopeful for the evening.   During the day we visited an American WWI war memorial and a local village for some wine tasting and then went back to the airfield for six.  Garry came out of the pilots’ briefing saying there was a small chance of the winds dropping at eight although it didn’t sound that hopeful.  Although most crews gave up for the day, we along with about a hundred other cars and balloon trailers, drove out onto the runway to wait for the all-clear.  Unfortunately, it never came but at least we got to see the place and there’ll be another opportunity in two years, and it had been great catching up with our friends.

We set off for the tunnel early on Thursday morning and got through all the formalities very quickly, catching a train two hours earlier than the one we'd booked.  The systems have obviously been greatly improved since our last trip as it seemed the covid test results, forms for isolation, proof of bookings for day two and eight tests etc. had all been checked after we loaded them online rather than the laborious manual checks performed at check-in previously.

Friday was our first day of isolation and we’ve booked test to release appointments on day five to make the most of our month’s trip.  Our day two and eight mandatory tests hadn’t arrived and if they don’t arrive on Saturday, test & trace will send us replacements.  It seems a ludicrous set up as the tests have to be booked and paid for before returning to the UK.  The tests are sent by courier to the address where isolation is to take place.  For most people, like us, the isolation address is empty as the occupants are abroad, so the tests cannot be delivered.  It transpired that after several unsuccessful attempts our tests have been returned to the sender!

There may not be another blog update for a while as we now have a whirlwind tour of the country catching up with all our children.