Abergement-la-Ronce (under a snake's gaze)

THURSDAY 8 MAY

A common but poignant street name in France - this was in Lamarche

We left Pontailler-sur-Saône straight after breakfast for a six km cruise to the next place on the river, Lamarche.  The mooring was shared with motorhomes and campervans and amongst them were the first British plated ones we’ve seen over here this year.

Arriving at Lamarche

We were just too late for the ceremony at the war memorial and saw those gathered disappearing into the village hall.

Grand looking mairie

After completing our walk, which included a good but fruitless search for lavoirs, we returned to the boat and continued our journey to the next town which was called Auxonne.

The river was getting wider as we got further downstream

Auxonne was yet another new town to us although we’d heard it spoken about by boaters as there’s a large port there where people overwinter their boats.  By the time we reached the town the clouds had started rolling in but at least it was still warm.  The following picture shows us moored in front of the apartments on a pontoon with another boat a bit closer.  The port can be seen in the background on the right. 

We had a good look around Auxonne and were most impressed with the range of old buildings and how smart everywhere looked.  As it was a public holiday very few places were open, not even the tourist office, and even many bars and restaurants were closed.  This hadn’t stopped the tourists though as there were plenty around keeping the market traders busy. 

We’d wanted to climb the 169 steps to the top of the main church in town but that was only allowed on Tuesdays.   The town has been heavily fortified over the centuries and much of the current fortifications that remain were designed by Vauban, the well-known defence architect of the 17^th century.  We’ve often come across works by Vauban and I must admit I couldn’t name another French war architect.

Louis XI château (right) inside the fortifications

Part of Vauban’s barracks built in 1688

Interestingly, work began on dismantling the fortifications in the early 1900s but the outbreak of WWI put a stop to the project, fortunately leaving much of them still standing.  Two of the gateways still remain even though the walls had been removed either side of them.

Porte de Comté

Hôtel de ville

War memorial

Market halls

The grand looking station

We’d been on the look out for a trailing geranium and found one in the market and one of our first jobs when we returned to the boat was to pot it up.

On Thursday we cruised 18 km down one lock and saw eight boats on the move, split equally between private and hire.

FRIDAY 9 MAY  

We’ve been back on the boat for three weeks now and have never travelled so far in the same length of time: 350 km through 144 locks.  Mind you we’ve been on a mission to get somewhere new which we’ve now achieved.  We started to the east of Nancy and travelled south to Auxonne shown by the purple line on the map below and are now 50 km south of Dijon.

The plan for Friday was to get to St-Jean-de-Losne before turning off onto the canal du Rhône au Rhin.  Before setting off for the day Karen went for a run and I had another walk around Auxonne and some of the fortifications we missed the day before.  By a section of the old moat I spotted a kingfisher.  I watched it for quite a while and it was so motionless for so long that I began to think it wasn’t real. 

Spot the kingfisher

Of course, being on a river we’re seeing a lot more kingfishers than we do when cruising on canals.  We’re still hearing cuckoos practically all the time too and it’s amazing that we can even hear them above the noise of the engine but then sound does travel well across water.

Leaving Auxonne we went into a lock cut and immediately passed a stanking plank store.  In the UK stanking (or stop) planks do as they say on the tin by forming a stank (or dam).  At the ends of all locks and under most bridge holes, grooves can be seen cut into the stone sides.  The planks are slid in one by one until they are the height of the water.  The water can then be drained and maintenance carried out.  Over here the planks are made of metal or reformed plastic as can be seen here:

Karen had completely missed what I was looking at as her focus was on the healthy looking walnut tree to the left of the store.  After a few hours we were heading into St-Jean-de-Losne which used to be a great inland hub for boating and now attracts far more pleasure boaters than commercial craft.  

Nowadays the banks are lined with many péniches converted to liveaboards although there seemed to be one working boatyard that had three non-motorized 50 metre barges.  These are attached to tugboats called pushers to transport goods.  The locks downstream from the town, at 185 metres in length, are to a larger standard than those we’ve been on to get here.  Because of the extra length a pusher will often have two barges for efficiency.

Plenty of room on the quay for us

The outside tables at the quayside restaurants were packed with lunching tourists so our mooring procedure had to be perfect under so much scrutiny.  We moored behind a boat flying a Polish flag and chatted to the couple on board for a while, they were indeed Polish but live in Switzerland and spend most of the summer on their boat.

In 2019 we visited the town, but we’d arrived from the opposite direction having travelled north on the Saône up from Châlon-sur-Saône and then turned off onto the canal de Bourgogne.  Although we’d been to the town before we went for a good walk and were pleased to find the mariners’ museum open as it was closed last time we came.  There were lots of interesting exhibits laid out in rooms across two floors, mainly of French boating history.

A display of old photographs of men working on needle dams was fascinating as I’ve always had an interest in this type of dam of which there are very few left now in France.

Pretty roof on the church

Mairie

We popped into the tourist office to see if they had a self-guided tour but were a little disappointed as we’d already seen all the places of interest during our walk.  We also went into the chandlery at the large port in the town.  It’s rare to find a chandlery in France so we took the opportunity to replace some of our ropes.

Part of the port

According to the boat museum, a boat called Aster is the last remaining French wooden péniche and it was being restored in the port.

Aster under cover

On the way back to the boat someone stopped us to say hello and it took us a minute to recognise that it was Don whom we’d first met with his late wife Cathy back in 2019.  Having had many years splitting their lives between California and on Old Timer in France, Don has now decided to sell the boat in St-Jean-de-Losne and move onto a new stage of life.  It was good to have a catch up and discuss our recent lives and mutual boating friends.

A pleasant evening back on board

On Friday we cruised 18 km down one lock and saw a lot of boats on the move.

SATURDAY 10 MAY 

Having mentioned constantly hearing cuckoos we thought we would be clear of them moored in a town.  As it was, we could hear them calling from Losne on the other side of the river when laying in bed on Saturday morning.

Sun rising on Losne, the village opposite our mooring

While looking at how to get to the closest supermarket Karen had spotted a road called rue du Remparts.  As we hadn’t come across any fortifications on our walks around St-Jean-de-Losne we thought we would take a slight detour to the street on the way to do the food shopping.  We were a little disappointed to say the least as the street contained nothing but old houses in various states of repair and no sign of any town walls.

Reminder that we were in a famous boating town

The supermarket was in a place called Saint-Usage which is practically joined to St-Jean-de-Losne but is obviously a different commune as it had its own mairie and war memorial, coincidentally in a square called Place du 8 Mai 1945.

After visiting the supermarket, we made a circular walk of our trip and went back via the canal de Bourgogne and the large basin just before the last lock that drops onto the Saône.  It was as we remembered, lots of smart and not so smart pleasure boats and barges for sale on one side and mainly péniches in various stages of conversion in the boatyards on the other.

We’d found St-Jean-de-Losne a lot more attractive and inviting than when we visited previously and were glad we’d stayed overnight.  We did wonder if we were biased last time as we’d had a most traumatic journey up the Saône in a rainstorm with very strong winds coupled with the fact that we’d had to look out for the very big boys on that stretch. It was the only time we’d made Buddy stay inside the boat as we were so worried that the wind would blow him overboard.  Poor boy was terrified at being inside on his own but it was the safest option.  We really shouldn’t have set out that day.

After lunch we were going to set off for the canal du Rhône au Rhin but needed to fill up with water and fuel first.  The water at the quay was 2€ for 30 minutes but the machine to take the payment wasn’t working. The machine was managed by the tourist office who, of course, were closed for lunch when I called them. Annoyingly it was only just gone noon and we would have to wait a couple of hours.  By the time I got to talk to someone who then said they would come and help it was about 2.30.  Half an hour later a friendly lady arrived, opened up the machine, rebooted the router inside and then it was a further wait of about 10 minutes before the machine was ready to take my payment. 

Time took its toll and after filling up with water we decided that by the time we got to the fuel stop and taken on the diesel we needed it really would be getting a bit late.  This was especially considering we would be going onto canal new to us where we weren’t sure how easy it would be to moor.  Instead, we went for a walk across to the other side of the river to see what Losne was like.

Looking back at St-Jean-de-Losne

There wasn’t much to Losne at all other than a bar and a restaurant neither of which were inviting as they weren't in the sun.  It did, of course have a mairie and church but neither were particularly eye catching.

Back at the boat we sat outside for most of the rest of the afternoon relearning how to have a quiet drink without catching the eyes of the passing tourists.  So many want to stop and talk about the boat and how we got it here.  Chatting to the occasional passerby is fine but it can become a pain when it feels incessant – one of the reasons we normally avoid towns.  We’re amazed at how often people ask to look inside the boat not realising it’s someone’s home.  We nearly gave in to a gran-père who brought his petite-fille down from their restaurant table to have a look around.  We had to say no as there was a French couple behind them with two young children who were clearly waiting to do the same.

We couldn’t ignore one very friendly French lady as she was quite effusive and full of why she was in St-Jean-de-Losne for a few days.  She was involved in a national junior pistol shooting competition that had been held locally and was so pleased that her young team from Dole had done so well.

Coach Steph

Later in the evening, hotel boat Danièle arrived and moored up in the area reserved for those boats.

SUNDAY 11 MAY 

When I got up to make our morning tea and coffee I could hear animated talking outside.  Pulling up the blinds I saw a group of Chinese tourists with a guide and interpreter and immediately realised they were guests on the hotel boat having an early morning town tour before setting off for the day.  Karen, who was in bed at the end of the boat where they were gathered, could hear the conversation.  The girl speaking English was explaining about narrowboats in a knowledgeable way demonstrating the improvisational adaptability required to be a good tour guide.

Before heading back upstream the four km to the junction where we’d be joining the canal du Rhône au Rhin we continued downstream a few hundred metres to the junction with the canal de Bourgogne.  There was a boat fuel filling station at the junction so we wanted to take advantage of an easy fill rather than trolleying jerry cans back and forth to a fuel station. I have to admit that it was an expensive way of paying for the luxury of waterside filling.  Our last top up in Nancy was 0.25€ a litre cheaper.

Once the tank and spare jerry cans were full we turned around and went upstream to find the canal du Rhône au Rhin.  Apart from the first one the locks on the canal are automatic therefore not requiring éclusiers to be present.  The first lock, which leads off the river, is manned and we arrived five minutes before the lunch break but the éclusier saw us through.

Unless we’re in the large commercial river locks we only use one line to secure the boat when ascending locks.  The local regulations dictated that two lines should be used so I explained that we only needed one.  He understood but asked that as we (and he) were on camera we would need to use two lines.   When we reached the top he told us a bit about the canal and handed over a box containing the télécommande we would need to operate the remaining locks.  It was the same style as I had used on the canal de la Sarre last year when I took the boat to the dry dock in Wittring to black it. 

The canal du Rhône au Rhin would be better named the canal de la Saône au Rhin as it links those two rivers.  It does ultimately link to the Rhône but only when the Saône flows into it further south at Lyon.   We’ll be travelling the length of the 273 km long canal that has 152 locks in order to reach the Rhin.  Much of the journey will be through the Jura and we’re quite excited by the prospect as many boaters rave about the scenery for much of the journey. 

All canals have their own characteristics such as the design of lock cottages and those we saw at the three locks we went through before mooring up for the day seemed quite pretty.

We moored up at Abergement-la-Ronce and went for a quick scout around the village.

There were very few old buildings so it felt a very modern place.  Work was going on to widen the pavements thus narrowing the main street which in turn slows the traffic down.

A circular cycle route around the Jura département runs through the village which explains why there was a solar powered electric bike charger in a small park.

Much of the evening was spent studying two western whip snakes that kept going for excursions around the quay which retained the heat of the sun.  The first one was about two metres long and the one that seemed more inquisitive was shorter at 1.5 metres.  We went inside to eat dinner next to our open hatches and the shorter snake kept coming up and looking through as if it wanted us to feed it! 

On Sunday we cruised 11 km up three locks and saw two private and three hire boats on the move.