Dole (a town of multiple trails)

MONDAY 12 MAY 

Freshly emerged heath fritillary

Karen went for a run first thing going back down the canal and then branching off to a village called Samerey to see if there were any lavoirs.  She wasn’t successful so took a symmetrically looking picture of the church and war memorial instead.

As you can see in the picture above it looked like we’d lost the sun and according to the forecast there was chance of some rain during the day.  We hadn’t planned on moving from Abergement-la-Fonce anyway as we wanted to recharge our batteries (body not boat) by having a lazy day.

Moored at Abergement-la-Fonce

There was light rain on and off for a couple of hours in the morning but it brightened up so we went for a walk in the afternoon.  It turned out to be a good walk butterfly-wise and we saw several that had freshly emerged including a heath fritillary as shown at the top of this entry.  Heath fritillaries are also found in the UK but only in a few sites in the west country and in a wood in Kent.

Underside of the heath fritillary

We also saw a few freshly emerged common blues which, as the name implies, is widespread in the UK and can be seen on the wing at the moment.

Freshly emerged male common blue

Interestingly female common blues are brown on their uppersides – here is a faded one that we also saw:

Tatty female common blue

Other species of note that we saw were dingy skipper and map.  Monday really ended up as a lazy day interspersed with butterflying, jobs and admin.

TUESDAY 13 MAY 

It was misty first thing but had cleared by the time we wanted to leave.  We were going to the next mooring which was at a place called Choisey.  To get there the canal cuts through a large chemical production complex run by Solvay.  Because of the chemicals that are produced, mooring is not allowed along a three km section and also use of the towpath is banned and strictly enforced.  As we cruised through the area a security car was patrolling up and down the towpath.

Passing part of the complex

The first three locks on the canal leading off the Saône had had lock cottages that were of a particularly cottagey style.  The ones at the locks since then have been quite a different style, standing right against the side of the locks.  Iron handrails have been built into the side of the houses for boaters to hold onto as the lockside is so narrow.  These cottages are constructed with the same handsome Jura limestone that is seen in many of the villages in this part of the Jura.   

Handrail can just be seen running the length of the house wall

Some of the locks still have the original lock information plates on the side of the cottages showing the lock number and distance from the start at the Saône.  They also show the height above sea level of the downstream end and upstream end, something that we’ve never seen before and also we don't know the reason for showing this information.

CRR = Canal du Rhône au Rhin

A schematic of the canal is shown at some locks and it looked illogical to me as the canal at its western end is on the right and the eastern end is on the left.

In real life Dole is west of Mulhouse

There was a long pontoon to moor on at Choisey and when we arrived a restaurant/hotel boat was moored on half of it.  To be fair they were hanging off the end to leave plenty of space and we did the same thing by hanging off the other end.

Our mooring at Choisey

After lunch we walked into Choisey itself and found it was really charming, quiet and clean but sadly the only outlet appeared to be a hairdresser – pretty standard in many French villages these days.  Even though it wasn’t a large village a trail had been put together that was one of the best we’ve come across apart from the fact it fell short of 10,000 steps by 2,000.  Each item of interest had an information board that contained the same number on the route map that was also shown on each board.  It certainly made it easy to follow the route.  The only dubious item was the view of an autoroute which passes to the west of the village.

Some of the large houses in Choisey:

In front of one of the large houses we saw some black redstarts which, according to birder friend Tony, are pretty rare in the UK.

There were four stone crosses around the village constructed between 200 and 500 years ago:

The mairie was very grand and of course built using Jura limestone...

...as was the school and church

School

Looking over the village

We spent a pleasant evening back on board watching and listening to the birds and frogs.  A kingfisher was using our stretch of the canal to do flypasts and had a perch on a large wayfarer bush directly opposite our open side hatch.

On Tuesday we cruised eight km up four locks and saw no boats.

WEDNESDAY 14 MAY  

Our mooring at Choisey was in a particularly ‘froggy’ place.  They started calling to each other at 4.00am but for some reason went quiet an hour later until 6.00am when they woke us up again.  After giving it 15 minutes we gave up trying to get back to sleep and just lay there enjoying listening to them.   

Karen incorporated Dole into her run in the morning as she wanted to check out the mooring situation there. She found that a quay with high sloping sides and rings seemed the only option unless we wanted to pay a daily rate in the hire boat base but it looked like the pontoons there were too short for us but the main reason would be that the views from the boat wouldn't be as stunning as those from the quayside.  Unlike on the previous run Karen did find a lavoir; this one was on the outskirts of Dole.

We wanted to move on to Dole as we needed somewhere with easy access to a train station.  We have to pop back to the UK in a couple of weekends time and after a lot of research felt that the best solution would be to drive back rather than fly or take trains.  When we’d started cruising this year, we’d left our car at Port Sainte-Marie which is a three-hour car journey to the north.  Port Sainte-Marie is such a remote place that the best way to get there to pick up the car would be to get a train to Dijon where we would hire a car to drive to our car.  We would then both drive back to Dijon to drop off the hire car and then make our way back to Dole together.  After Karen returned from her run, we had mid-morning coffee and then set off for Dole.  After the first lock we joined the river Doubs:

Approaching Dole we turned off the main river and, after going up a second lock, were in a lock cut in the centre of town.  We moored up opposite the hire boat base which didn’t seem to have many boats out on hire.  We had a good view over the old part of town and had to close the blinds and curtains on the towpath side as there were so many tourists peering in while taking pictures of us with the church behind!

As Karen had reported back after her run, the bank was indeed sloping so we had to make sure the rear of the boat was positioned against steps so we could get off.  We still had to use a gangplank as shown in the picture below:

We went to have a quick look at the river Doubs as we’d heard about several bridges that have been destroyed in the town over the centuries.  The picture below shows the one arch that remains of a 14^th century bridge...

...and the one remaining arch of a bridge that was heavily bombed in WWII:

It had been a hot morning and cruise, so we decided to leave sightseeing until another day.  We did, however, walk to the train station to see how long it would take in the morning and to make sure we knew the way.  As is often the case, the station was quite imposing.

There were also examples of houses with Burgundian roofs.

We’d had to walk through the old part of town to get to the station, so we also popped into the tourist office to pick up leaflets containing self-guided tours of Dole.  There were three different self-guided tours which was most promising as usually most towns have just the one.

There seemed to be lots of waterways running through town, many lined with restaurants and thronged with tourists. 

As we were not sightseeing, we stopped for drinks at one of the bars. 

There were metal railings next to our table and looking over you can imagine our surprise when we saw a lavoir some metres below.

When we got back to the boat a girl from a nearby village asked if she could take pictures, especially of our butterfly decals.  She explained that she takes pictures of anything with butterflies on so of course we said yes.  I took the opportunity so show her some of the pictures I’d taken of local butterflies and she was absolutely fascinated at the variety we had seen including some she’d never been lucky enough to see.

On Wednesday we cruised four km up two locks and saw no boats.

THURSDAY 15 MAY 

We left Dole on the 7.30am train bound for Dijon arriving before 8.00am as scheduled.  Other than when Karen used to take the Eurostar on business it was the first time either of us had used rush hour trains in France.  It was just like the UK when trains are packed, nobody speaks, whereas on off-peak trains, everyone exchanges a bonjour in the section of seats they’re travelling in.  One difference we did notice though was when we joined the commuter crowds leaving Dijon station, there was no rushing, everyone was walking at a leisurely pace unlike at London stations. 

We picked up our hire car at the rental desk in the station and were soon on our way to Port Sainte-Marie.  It was autoroute all the way up to Nancy where we stopped for breakfast and then continued on until we reached the boat some 3 ½ hours after leaving Dijon.  Although we’d only left our EV for four weeks, we were a little concerned whether it would start ok or not and as we drew up next to it Karen pressed our key fob to open the doors.  They opened instantly so we knew everything would be OK.  We drove back in convoy, stopping at Nancy again, this time for lunch and to charge the car.   Charging stations at services on the autoroutes are adopting similar signage to those used at fuel stations:

Whilst we had lunch we’d parked next to each other and when we got ready to set off I could see Karen getting frustrated.  It transpired that the Apple Play was playing some unknown music in her car and she couldn’t get her music to play.  She then realised that her car was linked to my phone by mistake so I got going and everything soon sorted itself out.

We rarely use the service stations to charge, preferring to use Tesla charging stations.  For some reason they are quite a bit cheaper, as they are in the UK too, maybe they are trying to corner the market.  Not only that we’ve found them the easiest to use.  We were back in Dijon by 5.00pm to drop the hire car off and give our car a final top up of the battery and were back on board the boat by 6.30pm.  Walking back to the boat from the car park we were pleased to see that the local council had started planting up the dozens of flower baskets and window boxes lining the streets and bridges in the town.  Even with lots of hot sunny days it never really feels summery until the flowers start blooming.

FRIDAY 16 MAY 

Karen moved the car 10 km upstream first thing and then ran back to the boat while I went for a walk in the opposite direction alongside the Doubs.  Karen was fortunate to find two nice looking canal-side lavoirs, the first at Audelange and the second at Brévans:

This sign alongside one of them was obviously installed long after the lavoir was built:

The main tasks for the day were to do the self-guided tours we’d picked up at the tourist office and to get fruit and veg from the market.  Amongst other things, Dole was famous for its tanneries and that was the first part of town we investigated.

The tanneries as they were

The tanneries nowadays

Louis Pasteur was born in Dole to parents who were tanners and this was their home in a street now called rue Pasteur:

Looking at the frontage of the house it’s hard to believe it backed onto the canal.  As with the other houses on the street the basement was where the tanning process was carried out because there was direct access to water.  The basement of the Pasteur’s house is now a museum explaining the process:

In the museum we read that Pasteur invented pasteurization and the vaccine against rabies.  We both immediately thought that there was a mistake in the translation and that they meant he invented penicillin - it’s funny we both forgot it was Alexander Fleming.  The town were clearly proud of Pasteur as there seemed to be busts and statues of him all over the place:

He even appears top left of this mural which also depicts many other people born in the town:

Several buildings started life as convents or monasteries and are now used for other purposes, for example this was a convent and is now used as the equivalent of a county hall:

This corbelled tower and archway caught our eyes:

The town itself had many alleyways and narrow streets and even the main shopping area didn’t feel spoilt by modern buildings even if some of the shopfronts were a bit garish:

We were certainly most impressed with Dole and what it had to offer and that’s not just the countless restaurants and bars.  As you may have noticed in the previous pictures nearly every building was built using Jura limestone which is such a clean coloured stone.  Before retiring to the boat we remembered to call in at the market to buy the fresh produce we needed. 

As we've been in Dole for a few days, we plan on moving on over the weekend to somewhere new.