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| Karen said, 'I'm not doing flowers this year'! |
It was very cloudy when we awoke on Saturday morning and it felt it would be like that all day.
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| Saturday morning at Corre |
I went down to where Yakov was moored to check he still wanted to cruise with us all day and he looked almost upset I’d asked. As we went into the last lock we had to hand in our télécommandes as we would be joining the river Saône which uses twisty poles to operate the locks. Whilst doing this I introduced him to Karen, and he corrected me to say his name was Egor. To me that’s more a Russian name so I thought I would quiz him more about it later in the day.
We joined the river Saône at its highest navigable point,
407 km from its confluence with the Rhône in Lyon.
For the first 200 km or so it has Freycinet size locks like
those on the most canals in France. From
St-Jean-de-Losne down to Lyon the locks are the much larger 185 metre locks
built to the Grand Gaberit standard like those we encountered on rivers like
the Seine and Moselle. We are only
travelling down to St-Jean-de-Losne where we will be turning off onto the canal
du Rhône au Rhin to head east along the Doubs valley to Basel. Over the last week or so we'd travelled quickly on the canal des Vosges as we’d been on it before and we'll be doing the same on the Saône as we’ve also travelled
on most of that before. Once we’re
somewhere new then our plan allows us to slow down to a more leisurely pace and enjoy some sightseeing.
Like many rivers, the Saône has lock cuts to take out some
of the large meanders in the natural river.
Each lock cut has flood gates at the upstream end and a lock at
the other end. The flood gates are
closed when the river is in flood to stop the flood water eroding the banks of
the manmade lock cuts. The locks at the downstream ends are
needed to cater for the drop in levels arising from cutting out a meander.
Two lock cuts can be seen in the map above, the one on the left also goes through a short tunnel. The kilometre markers like pk 407 shown further up mark the distances along the natural river so having lock cuts means the distances travelled are not so easy to work out.
Going
through the lock cut in Ormoy we saw a lavoir set back from the bank and lower
than the cut itself:
When we walked around the village previously, we’d seen other
lavoirs including two small lengths of the cut that had washing stones set in
the side. One of these can be seen in
the picture above.
As I mentioned at the beginning of this entry the locks on
the river are summoned by twisting a pole hanging over the lock cut:
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| Twisty pole hanging over the cut |
Approaching the lock at Conflandey brought back memories of when we were stuck there for a week, four nights of which were in the lock. Unexpected heavy summer rain for a few days had meant the river levels had risen quickly. The river had to be closed and we had to stay where we were, moored just outside the lock. The river continued rising so VNF said we must go into the lock for safety and helped us get in. By this time the weather was lovely and, apart from worrying about the levels, we had a pleasant time in the lock where Buddy was free to wander around. VNF also supplied us with water and electricity from the control hut by the lock
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| The weir when we went through today |
The next picture is when we first had to go into the lock back in 2021. The water is nearly level each side of the weir and a day later the water was flowing undisturbed straight over the top.
Our destination for the day was Port-sur-Saône and we remembered
it as quite a dreary town because a main road ran straight through it but a bypass was being built which would clearly
improve things. Approaching the town we
went under a road bridge which carried the new bypass. We saw traffic was using the bridge so knew
the bypass must be open.
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| Moored in the lock cut in Port-sur-Saône |
After mooring up a guy came out from his house to chat with us. He said he remembered us from previously and it was a shame his family weren’t in as they spoke English. I then went along to speak with Egor who’d moored up between us and Nilaya, a small hotel boat that we’d met up with a couple of times in Nancy and Strasbourg.
During the day Karen and I wondered if many Russians abroad
actually say they’re Ukrainians in certain circumstances. Speaking with Egor I found out that he did in
fact speak Russian and he came from the far east of the Ukraine and left when his
town was invaded. He managed to get to
Germany where he worked for a couple of years as a builder’s labourer and then
was able to buy his motor yacht in Amsterdam.
He has slowly made his way south and hopes to work for a few months in
Lyon before continuing on.
He is managing it all without any river guides or waterways maps
so we let him take pictures of pages of the guidebook we were currently
using. We also gave him the guide for
the river Rhône as he would be needing it before we plan on going down south,
if we ever do.
Karen and I then went for walk through town to see how
things had changed. It was definitely a
lot quieter but still needed a clean-up but no doubt it will slowly happen. Many lavoirs in the middle of most large towns
were removed for development before the state supported saving them for
heritage purposes. It seemed incongruous
that two lavoirs still stood in the high street hemmed in between other
buildings.
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| One of the incongruous lavoirs |
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| The church with Burgundian roof |
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| The mairie |
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| Back on board with a welcome glass! |
Back in Corre we'd bought some pickled wild garlic flower buds as we'd never had them before. Having now tried some I have to report that they're delicious. They taste like other parts of the wild garlic plant but sweeter and with a grainy texture which I assume is from the forming petals.
On Saturday we cruised 40 km down four locks and saw five boats on the move, three private and two hired.
SUNDAY 4 MAY
One thing we’d forgotten about Port-sur-Saône was that there
are statues of fishermen dotted about the town on bridges and quaysides. We were reminded about them as we passed one
when we left on Sunday morning.
Although the sun was out when we first got up, the clouds rolled in while we were having breakfast and, apart for a couple of hours sunshine in the middle of the day, it was a grey day but at least it didn’t rain. Once again, Egor followed us for the entire journey.
One of the lock cuts incorporated a short tunnel and the
stonework on the far side was having extensive refurbishment. The job was nearly finished and must have
cost a fortune with all the stonework involved.
It had also taken a long time as work was starting on it when we went through
four years ago.
As with yesterday we felt that the river was getting busier
as again we saw five boats on the move.
Two of the lock cuts had flood locks as opposed to flood gates which I’d
mentioned above. Flood locks have a set
of gates at each end and both sets are normally left open. When the river level rises then both sets of
gates are closed and it operates as a normal lock with the upstream end being
higher than the downstream side. For
some reason, even though the water levels were the same on either side of the lock,
the gates were closed on both locks.
This meant we had to treat them like normal locks even though there was
no rise and fall once inside.
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| Going into one of the flood locks |
We moored for the day in a lock cut near a place called Savoyeux. A short pontoon and a couple of dolphins were placed on the approach to a tunnel. We got our back end onto one end of the pontoon and utilised one of the dolphins for the front leaving just enough room for Egor on the short pontoon.
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| Overnight mooring at Savoyeux |
MONDAY 5 MAY
The weather on Monday was a bit of a shock to the system as it
was quite a bit cooler with no sign of any sun but at least it didn’t rain. We continued travelling with Egor leaving our
overnight mooring in the Savoyeux lock cut at 9am. There was a short 640-metre-long one-way tunnel
at the end of the lock cut, and I felt the entrance was nicely symmetrical.
On emerging from the tunnel we went straight into Savoyeux
lock, one of four for the day, none of which presented any issues. In fact, we haven’t had any problems with the
locks on the river so far. Karen got off
before I went down the lock so she could run the 10 km down to the next lock
and made it there about 10 minutes before I arrived.
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| Leaving Savoyeux lock |
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| VNF workboat at the lock where Karen was waiting for me |
As with the last couple of days on the river we travelled through open countryside with hardly any signs of human habitation, just the odd riverside weekend retreat.
Without any waiting at the locks we made good time reaching Gray by mid-afternoon. When we saw the main bridge ahead we knew we were in the centre of Gray and would be mooring up just beyond the town lock
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| Approaching the town bridge and lock |
With several hundred metres of quay available we had plenty of choice for mooring. The only issue was that the depth was only around a metre so Egor had to tie up alongside us because, with his keel, he needed a depth of at least 1.6 metres.
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| Moored in a grey looking Gray |
As expected, there were quite a few hire boats moored up as Gray is a large town and when the weather is right, the riverside and town is thronged with tourists. We had a quick trip to the tourist office to see if anything had changed on the self-guided town trail since we last followed it. As our luck had it, the office was closed for exceptional circumstances. We decided to spend the rest of the day back at the boat and take a day off on Tuesday to do some sightseeing. We walked back to the boat through the riverside park to check up on the lavoir that we knew was there:
On Monday we cruised 30 km down four locks and passed three boats, all hire boats, although several more hire and private boats came past us or moored up during the rest of the day.
TUESDAY 6 MAY
As we were staying at Gray for a rest day and it wasn’t long
before we went on different waterways anyway, Egor left at seven in the morning
before the sun was up behind the buildings on the opposite bank of the
river. He thanked us profusely for
helping him and keeping him company over the last six days and we felt quite
sad as we waved him off.
Many boats had come in to moor in Gray the previous evening and
one of them was the first we’ve seen flying a Japanese flag. After saying goodbye to Egor I saw the
Japanese couple were outside washing their boat down so went to have a quick
chat. They do indeed live in Japan and
spend six months of the year there and six months of the year on their boat in
France, just like many Aussies and Kiwis do.
We had a good chat and even talked about when Karen and I ran a business
with a friend in our previous village and how much of our income stream arose
from Japanese clients.
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| A little less grey in Gray on Tuesday morning |
For many years we have bought my everyday French red wine from Aldi supermarkets. When having a bottle for a special occasion like a weekend then I’ll try and go for a wine produced in the area we’re staying in. Sadly, this year we have been unable to find the everyday wine and had noticed fewer and fewer Aldi stores were stocking it last year. This has meant purchasing a range of similar wines from different supermarkets over the last few weeks to find another staple. It seems that the best easily quaffable one so far is stocked at Lidl so one of our first jobs was to take the shopping trolly to the local Lidl and buy a couple of dozen bottles.
Crossing the town bridge we could see that nearly all the
overnight hire boats had moved on and there were just a few of us left on the
very long quay on the other bank of the river. It was so long that you
can’t really see us down at the far end.
On the way we passed a shop selling just the sort of flowers we like on the boat and, even though we weren’t going to have flowers this year, we couldn’t resist it and bought a few. After storing the wine around the boat when we returned, we got on with potting up the plants and also the tomatoes we’d brought over from England. We didn’t have enough compost on the boat so I took our sack barrow to the closest outlet that sold bags of compost. It happened to be an Intermarché and I have to admit that I felt a bit self-conscious as I walked around the supermarket with the sack barrow. We'll leave the plants on the back deck for a while to harden off before exposing them on the roof.
We were going to clean the cratch cover after finishing the
plants but felt too knackered and decided to wait until we’re on the Doubs. We rested up for a while then went for a
wander around Gray even though the sun had disappeared. We’d been on the self-guided tour on our last
visit and covered it extensively in the blog entry of the time so weren’t
planning on taking lots of pictures.
Decorations were being put up along many of the streets:
While taking pictures of the decorations we unintentionally snapped corbelled towers on the corners
of two of the houses.
The final photo is of the picturesque marie, well it would be better if it was a traffic-free square.
WEDNESDAY 7 MAY
It was a run day for Karen so she ran from Gray as it was 10
km to the lock in Mantoche where I would be able to pick her up. Several overnight boats left at the same time
but they were all heading upstream in the opposite direction to me. At the end of the long mooring quay I went
under the newer of the two road bridges in Gray.
The marine symbols shown on the bridge above can be
confusing when you first come across them.
The red and white signs on the two outside arches are the widely recognised signs for no entry. In this case they are no entry because boats coming upstream are allowed to use those arches. The
double diamonds where I was going mean one-way traffic only so there would be a
no entry sign on the other side. Conversely (or confusingly) a single diamond
means two-way traffic and there would be a single diamond displayed on both
sides of the arch.
After an hour or so I was passing Mantoche which is one of
our favourite mooring spots on this river.
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| Moorings at Mantoche |
I picked Karen up as planned and continued downstream until just before 12 French time. We were in with a chance of getting tickets for the England vs Samoa ladies World Cup Rugby game at Northampton. Having always said how good data signals are in France however remote we are, we found that neither our French nor English phones had a decent signal. Fortunately, just before noon Karen got a decent signal on one of the phones and she was lucky enough to buy two tickets.
The next point of interest for us was the junction with the
canal Champagne et Bourgogne:
We’d travelled the length of that canal in 2021 to join the
river and make our way up it and then the canal des Vosges in the opposite
direction to that we have been doing over the last couple of weeks or so. We went straight past the junction continuing
on downstream and were therefore in waters new to us marking the point at which
we should start slowing down and taking time to explore.
The first town we came to was Pontailler-sur-Saône which has
a port as well as a riverside mooring. Rather
than go into the port we chose to use the riverside quay which we shared with a
French cruiser.
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| Wednesday night mooring at |
After mooring up we went for a walk around the town. Sadly, the tourist office was closed all week because of staff holidays so we had to make up our own guided tour. The road running through town was fairly busy and was also used by HGVs so it rather detracted from what were some lovely old, if rundown, buildings along the main street. Here are the obligatory pictures of the mairie, the war memorial and the church:
We found two lavoirs, both on the Vielle Saône and both were
unusual because they had floors that could be raised and lowered depending upon
the river level. The first one was closed to the public as it was being restored and I had to climb out
onto a tree over the water to get anything like a decent picture.
The second one had been recently restored and we spotted it
first from the other side of the river.
We made our way across and were pleased to find it was open so could have a good look at the mechanism that adjusted the floor level.
The sun had disappeared when we started our walk and it remained that way for the rest of the day.
On Wednesday we cruised 29 km down two locks and saw about a
dozen boats.
