Xures (No longer naked)

WEDNESDAY 19 OCTOBER

After our mid-morning coffee, we set off from Parroy for a small village called Xures.  Earlier, Karen had used her morning run as an opportunity to move the car and left it by a nearby lock.  While Karen was away, I topped up the water tank and checked the engine over as we hadn’t used it since I serviced it last week and then got the boat ready for cruising so we could set off when she returned.  Considering there was very little sun during the journey it was still mild and with the leaves beginning to fall and the colours changing it was beginning to look quite autumnal.

Autumn colours are arriving

When we arrived in Xures we stopped for lunch at the port de plaisance where there were half a dozen boats moored up.  The boats looked like they were all shut up for winter and there was no sign of life anywhere.  Fortunately, there was room on the pontoon for us to tie up for our lunch stop.

Plenty of log piles at our lunch stop in Xures

When Karen had taken the car up to Xures in the morning, she’d checked out the port de plaisance and also the lock a kilometre further on.  Arriving at the lock she realised it made a much better spot to stay at so, after lunch, we moved on and made ourselves secure just below the lock.  It was indeed very quiet just like it had been at Parroy with just the sound of the occasional tractor passing over the bridge at the lock.  Now the tourist season's over, the towpath which doubles as the Paris-Strasbourg-Prague pan-European cycleway, is no longer frequented by serious cyclists and those on more leisurely, walking or cycle-camping trips.  With no towns of any appreciable size between Nancy and Strasbourg the cycleway isn’t even used by commuters so the only human life we tend to see is the odd fisherman who’s driven out to spend the day at their favourite secluded location.

Moored below écluse 15 - Xures 

You’ll notice the wide towpath in the picture above, which reminds me how different the French towpaths are compared with those in the UK.  Unless the canal is running through a town, the UK paths tend to be narrow and grassy making them very attractive compared with the French ones.  The trouble with the traditional UK paths is that cyclists use them nowadays which results in winding up many boaters.  To be fair, it is difficult for walkers and cyclists to share a UK towpath unless someone gives way and that’s where the problem starts.  Clearly, the faster mover should give way to the slowest, but it seems more and more cyclists are becoming selfish and refusing to give way, hence the increase in the anti-cyclist brigade amongst boaters.  French towpaths, especially those in the north and east are generally a lot wider, especially as they used to house rail tracks for the barge towing locos.  Nowadays most are tarmacked which, although not aesthetically pleasing like the grassy UK ones, does mean walkers and cyclists happily coexist.

It’s been good to see that many butterflies are still on the wing taking advantage of the sunny days.  Those we’ve seen this week include clouded yellows, small coppers, speckled woods, holly blues, several species of white and the common autumnal vanessids such as peacocks, red admirals and small tortoiseshells as well as several others that were flying too fast to be identified.

On Wednesday we cruised six kilometres up one lock.

THURSDAY 20 OCTOBER

It was food shopping day for Karen, and she had a 30-minute drive to the nearest supermarket which was at a place called Vergaville while I carried on with some more painting.  After lunch we went for a walk taking in the village of Xures where we were moored.  The current population is a little over 150 so it wasn’t surprising to find that there was just one street of houses and we saw no traffic all the while we were there.

Looking west in Xures

The centre of town

The eastern end

The current church was erected in 1918 after being destroyed during WWI.  At the far end of the village stood the war memorial and we were surprised to see very fresh wreaths laid at its base even though we were a few weeks away from Armistice Day.  We were further surprised, and also saddened, to see 25 names inscribed on the memorial, as at the beginning of WWII there were only 115 inhabitants and the inscription indicated that the dead had been deported.

Researching the memorial later we found out that the entire village had been deported to Hanover in 1944 and that’s where the 25 people died.  The village had been ransacked by the time the Red Cross was able to repatriate the survivors.  Since then, Xures has a day of commemoration every 18^th October which explained the laying of the wreaths.

Now we know we won’t be travelling on any more new waterways this year, I’ve updated our 2022 cruising map to show where we've travelled this year covering just over 1,000 km through 334 locks.

2022 travels

We started at the green arrow on the canal latéral à la Marne and headed west onto the river Marne for a while to revisit the Champagne villages that feel like home to us.  We then turned around and travelled the length of the canal latéral à la Marne down to Vitry-le-François where we joined the canal de la Marne au Rhin ouest and followed it to its end at Nancy for a few days on the river Moselle with a brief spell up and down the canal de la Jonction.  After Nancy we travelled the length of the canal de la Marne au Rhin est to Strasbourg followed by a return trip south on the canal de la Rhône au Rhin nord.  Next we went north up the river Sarre which we followed downstream through Germany to its confluence with the Moselle.  We then went upstream on the Moselle through Luxembourg and back into France, re-joining the canal de la Marne au Rhin est at Nancy thus completing the large loop.  We are now at Xures, indicated by the blue arrow, and the following map shows our travels in France since 2019:

Our French travels

FRIDAY 21 OCTOBER

With rain forecast all day we expected to spend most of it indoors.  We awoke to a very wet morning, and it really looked like it was set in for the day, but it stopped around 11.00am and was replaced by warm sunshine but with a strong wind.  Of course, this meant I could get on with yet more painting and managed to finish the port side.  During the first lockdown we repainted the roof, last year the rear deck area and this year both sides have been repainted.  All that’s left now are the bows, the stern and between the rubbing strake and waterline. 

We ended up staying in and around the boat most of the day and realised just how remote this part of the canal is as we only saw one person, a dogwalker, pass along the towpath opposite.  We did see one other person, an éclusier, who visited the lock to do the daily checks such as removing any weed that has built up by the gates.  Before he left for his next lock he walked down to see us and find out what our plans were.  He was concerned that we may not have known the canal was closing for winter works 16 km further upstream in 10 days.

Sunset below écluse 15 

SATURDAY 22 OCTOBER

Regular readers will know that we take a keen interest in lavoirs and are always on the look out for them during our travels.  The French are very keen on preserving these buildings of sociohistorical interest but apparently there isn’t a central register of sites.  Most départements are collating their own registers so hopefully one day they will all be recorded.  It is thought that there are upwards of 30,000 lavoirs in France making the 250 we have found rather pale into insignificance.  Even with finding such a small number we can see distinct differences between départements.  For example, last year when we spent a lot of time in Haute-Saône we found 150 whereas this year, which has mainly been in Moselle and Meurthe-et-Moselle we have only come across 25.  Were the population of Haute-Saône more hygienically aware or is the modern population keener on preserving their heritage?  Also, those in Haute-Saône tend to be a lot grander than those in other départements so maybe that’s another factor leading to the disparity.  Click here for the lavoirs we have seen.

We usually make it a rule that we won’t do any work at the weekend but we broke that rule during the morning.  Firstly, a puddle of water had collected on the bedroom floor during some overnight rain so we clearly needed to sort that out.  Secondly, we were acutely aware that the name and butterflies on the side of the boat still needed putting on, so we wanted to get one side done while the weather was still good.  We also needed to move above our lock as the lower bank there would make it easier to do the jobs, so soon after breakfast we moved up.  As we were moored at the lock itself, Karen had to walk back with the clicker (télécommande) to find the radio receiver in order to set the lock in operation.  Once up the lock, we spun around and settled in.  Moored just in front of us was an old cruiser, looking very sorry for itself and I doubt it had moved for a few years.

Moored above écluse 15 after our 200 metre cruise 

The rainwater leak was the first thing to sort out and we soon found the drain holes in one of our bedroom portholes were completely blocked.  It didn’t take much to unblock them and we checked all the drainplugs in the other windows to make sure we weren’t building up the same problem to occur elsewhere.  After what we thought was a well-earned coffee break, we applied the name and butterflies onto the side of the boat that was bankside.  It didn’t take long, and we spun the boat around again so we would be able to finish the other side before we next moved off.

No longer naked

We went for a good long walk during the afternoon through a real mixture of farm and woodland with some amazing views from the tops of the hills.  Most of the walk followed cart tracks so was easy to follow but through one wood the path petered out.  We decided to persevere and made our way through to the other side, albeit a bit scratched and with Buddy on high alert as we disturbed deer on more than one occasion.  It clearly answered a question Karen had had as she was wondering how many people went on the walk.

Looking east to the Black Forest

In one wood we took a short detour to find the remains of WWI German machine gun emplacements and accompanying command centre.  The pictures on the web were obviously taken many years ago as, when we found the area, the structures were so covered in undergrowth and surrounded by trees that we could hardly see anything.  We also found some trenches but again these were so overgrown that they could hardly be seen.

One of the four machinegun emplacements

The command centre looked like what we would call a pill box and there was a rough inscription over the door indicating that the 1^st Bavarian field artillery battalion were stationed there:

The walk took us through a place called Mouacourt which we found was even smaller than Xures, the village where we were moored.  Even though it only has 70-odd inhabitants Mouacourt boasted both a mairie and a church.

The only street in Mouacourt

Mouacourt mairie, open for two hours every Friday

Leaving Mouacourt

Most of the remaining part of the walk was alongside the river Sânon until it reached an old mill just outside Xures.   As we were on the south side of the river and Xures lay to the north, we’d been wondering how we were going to cross to the other side.  We couldn’t believe it when the path took us across an old iron footbridge in the middle of nowhere and wondered why it had originally been put there.

Old footbridge across the Sânon

On Saturday we cruised 200 metres up one lock.

 SUNDAY 22 OCTOBER

Sunrise above the lock at Xures

As winds were forecast for the afternoon and we fancied another good walk we decided to set off during the morning.  This time we went south of Xures and with a lot more woodland but far gentler inclines it was a somewhat different and easier walk than Saturday’s.  This time there were foresters’ tracks through the woods, so we didn’t have to be intrepid.  Although there are still a few butterflies around, the woodland rides would be great places to visit in the spring and summer.

Camouflaged and faded speckled wood

At one point we came out into open fields and on top of a hill we could see the woods that we had to clamber through yesterday.

Pathless woods at the top of the hill on the right

In a clearing we came across a large maison forestier that looked like it was no longer in use but would make a brilliant and remote home.  Traditionally, families of more than one forester would share these houses but nowadays many remain empty or have been sold off by the Office National des Fôrets.

The usual habitat for spindle trees is in hedges and on the edges of woods and we saw several during the walk, easily identifiable from their pink and strange looking poisonous fruit.  Spindle trees are so called as the wood is used for making spindles for spinning wool.  

The wind certainly did get up in the afternoon so, even though it remained dry, we were glad we had had our walk in the morning.  

Where we walked over the weekend

We’ll probably move on tomorrow and find more places to discover.