Damery (a sunless day)

Our plan for Monday was to cruise to Épernay to top up with fuel, do a supermarket shop then moor up at Cumières, one of our favourite moorings on the River Marne.

Leaving on Monday morning cruise

Épernay is at the extreme eastern end of the navigable River Marne and about five kilometres before the town, the main navigation continues eastwards along the Canal latéral à la Marne.  This means the leg down to Épernay is a cul-de-sac as far as boats are concerned, so most boats go straight onto the canal ignoring the dead-end leg. 

The dead-end in the middle.  The green areas are vineyards

15 kilometres or so along the Canal latéral à la Marne, the Canal de l’Aisne à la Marne heads north to join routes to Belgium, Luxembourg and Germany.  This route is open all year around but is currently closed for three weeks for some maintenance on a lock flight.  It was reopening today but has been delayed until Wednesday.  This has caused a bit of a blockage as boats, including us and the girls on Puddle Duck who are waiting for the reopening are hogging the mooring spots at this end of the river.

After ascending one lock, we passed the moorings at Cumières.  The moorings were full and occupied with a couple of boats we recognised and knew were waiting for the canal to open so they could head north.  We carried on to Épernay thinking that maybe one of the boats may have moved on a bit by the time we came back.

Over the top champagne house (Champagne de Castellane) in the middle of Épernay

After lunch we headed back to Cumières only to find yet another boat had breasted up against one of the two already there, so Karen rang Nikki to check our spot in Damery was still free.  It was so we carried on back down the lock to where we started, six hours, two locks and 21 kilometres earlier!

The trip boat at Cumières

You can see from our pictures that we had had a very grey day, but we were lucky in that we had no rain and we had a pleasant evening of sunshine back at Damery.  Saying that we did get rain during Monday night and it felt like it rained off and on all day on Tuesday.

We spent a lot of Tuesday morning planning where we’re going to go in the UK when we go back for December.  We’ve got free electricity at this morning and with no chance of the solar panels helping out much, Karen also prepared a meal for the slow cooker to take advantage of the free power.

After lunch we put on our wet weather gear and went for a walk.  Gorete joined us with their dog Bailey and we managed to harvest more walnuts.

It must have been the first day we haven’t seen any sun at all; on other grey days, at least the clouds have cleared in the evening and the sun has come out to make the last hour or so of daylight a bit more pleasant.

The weather was like this all day

We'll leave it until Wednesday morning to see if we'll stay another day at Damery or have a cruise.

Damery (centre of the riots)

With Saturday set fair it was up early to carry on with the next phase of the painting of the port side.  Having spent the last few days sanding down the paint chips and then treating the exposed bare metal with an anti-rust solution it was time to get the first coat of primer on.  It may not look attractive to have red spotted paintwork, but this always feels good when it’s done as the metal is no longer exposed to the elements.

With Reuil only three kilometres upstream we set off to have a late lunch there and then continued on to Damery afterwards.  Even though it’s no longer the height of summer, the French still gather at the picnic tables in the villages to have lunch accompanied, of course, by champagne.  It’s lovely seeing tablecloths and the spreads they put on them but we still can’t get used to seeing litter bins full of upturned empty champagne bottles.

The lock before Damery was still not responding to our télécommande so it was over to the radio to call the éclusier to see us through.  He came out of his house immediately but jumped in his van making us wonder if the radio conversation really went as well as we had thought.  He sped off but stopped at the far end of the lock, jumped out, set the controls to close the top gates and then got back into his van.  For the second time, we thought we had misunderstood things, but he reversed back to the bottom gates and set the controls to open the paddles and the gates for us.

Once we were in, he closed the gates and then drove to the far end again to continue the operation.  He was very agile between the controls and his van, so he was either being lazy or in a hurry to get us through as he had a hot date 😉 

When we arrived at Damery, Puddleduck was moored on the pontoon with just enough room left for us to fit snugly in front of them.  The girls appeared to be out, so we thought we would settle in to watch the England game on catch up.  The girls came back from a bike ride just as we were going indoors and invited us around for drinks (and to marvel at their walnut haul), which we duly did once the match had finished.

While we were with Nikki & Gorete, another Brit boat turned up and moored on the quay that was only suitable for large boats.  It was Serenity that we had met up with in Château Thierry; a lovely couple called Clare but, not uncommonly, I can’t remember her partner’s name.  We can’t begin to imagine what it must be like having a boat the size of theirs just for two people; we think Puddleduck is enormous for two people 😊

Puts it all in perspective, moored between Puddleduck and Serenity

On Sunday morning, Serenity left early, and we had a quick chat as they passed, arranging to meet up at Sillery during the week.

Nikki & Gorete came around during the morning and we had a good laugh over coffee and Karen’s latest cake.  During the afternoon we explored Damery and walked through the vineyards surrounding the village.

Judging by the large number of grapes left on the vines these vineyards had clearly overproduced compared to some we have seen this year.  I probably mentioned before that there is a strict cap on the amount of champagne that can be produced per hectare, so it does seem an awful waste of the fruit.

In the early years of the 1900s there were several disastrous harvests on the trot.  This led to the more unscrupulous champagne houses importing grapes from places such as the Loire valley which, of course, is completely against the rules.  Such was the feeling against these ‘faux’ champagne producers there were riots in the area during 1910 and 1911.

During these riots, carts carrying grapes being brought into the area were overturned, champagne houses were set alight and bottles and barrels of champagne were taken and poured away.  Damery was one of the villages particularly badly hit and the bridge above our mooring has a plaque commemorating the throwing of 2,000 bottles of the fake champagne into the River Marne below.

The Révolte Champenoise plaque on the Pont de Damery 

We’re still being lucky with the weather, but it does look like we have some wet days ahead this coming week so will be picking and choosing when we move.

Sunday evening view

Monday we'll be off to Épernay for some shopping and then we'll probably end up mooring at Cumiéres,

Port-à-Binson (Come on you reds & whites)

Leaving écluse 3 on the déviation de Vendières

It was very misty on Thursday morning and not only that, it was cold as well.  In fact, there was a chill on the boat, so we popped the heating on for 30 minutes for the first time since last winter.  It didn’t take long before it was feeling warm and cosy, and, looking at the forecast it was only a temporary dip in temperatures (we hope 😉).  We hardly ever use the heating on this boat, preferring to light the stove; it’s not stove weather yet but it probably won’t be long. 

It reminded us of our first boat which, when we bought it, had no stove, no insulation and an antiquated central heating system.  The heater was so inefficient it felt like it would take a bottle of gas every few days and, not only that, it didn’t really warm up the boat.  It wasn’t long before we ripped out the boiler and radiators and put in a stove.

For our morning walk we went through the vineyards and up to the village of Vincelles.  Judging by the lack of dereliction and the number of champagne houses it was clearly a wealthy place.  The other thing we noticed was the strong smell of champagne, in common with other places we have visited since the vendanges.  We spotted a stream running along one of the streets and searched for a lavoir.  We couldn’t find one but there were several stone troughs that the stream ran through.

Trough outside a champagne house

Of course, the village had the usual old grape press on show…

…and a church

We had nearly finished walking around the village having just decided not to investigate the road leading up the hill when we noticed the name of the road was Rue du Lavoir.  We hadn’t been going up the road because it looked like it just led to half a dozen modern bungalows.  Assuming the lavoir had been demolished for development of the bungalows we half-heartedly walked up the road.  To our surprise, and now looking quite out of place in the modern setting, we found a lavoir.

This one was open to the public and was unusual in that the roof was on a single plane with a hole in the middle to capture rainwater.  Normally, compluvium style roofs slope into the centre on four planes.

Lavoir de Vincelles

The blog page with more information and pictures can be found by clicking here.

When we got back, we set off for an island that we had seen on our way down.  It had a pontoon for mooring and looked ideal for getting on with the next stage of painting.

Heron looking at home on a water ski jump

Passing the village of Vincelles that we had walked to earlier

We arrived at the island mooring and spun the boat around to get the right (correct) side against the pontoon for painting.  The pontoon was on a lock cut, the déviation de Vandières, the main flow being on the other side of the island, so it wasn’t a problem facing the wrong way around.  As soon as we moored, we realised it would be useless for painting the boat, so we had lunch and moved on.

You can see why it wouldn’t have worked

We went up the lock that was closing for maintenance on Sunday and could see plenty of signs of preparatory work including some large metal stanking planks hanging over the edge of the sloping sided lock.  These will be used to form a dam the other side of the lock gates so the water can be drained and the gates removed, to be replaced by new ones which were laying behind the stanking planks. 

As we approached, what was a sharp bend for a river, a hotel boat came around the corner.  It was one we had met several times previously.  We did see another boat during the cruise and that too was a hotel boat we had also met several times before.

Coming around the corner quite fast

I know it’s not in accordance with our current cruising plan, but we ended up mooring somewhere we had moored previously, Port-à-Binson.  It did give us a chance to have a walk back to the WWI cemetery for French soldiers and investigate the different grave types.  We found plenty of crosses indicating graves of Christians but only one type of headstone. 

The WWI cemetery at Le Clos de la Noue

We had been led to believe that there were three types of headstones indicating those who were Muslims, Jews or free thinkers.  We then realised that that is something the British Commonwealth Wargraves Commission do and of course these were all French soldiers.  Mind you, all the headstones we looked at seemed to be for Senegalese soldiers.

Headstone of a Muslim soldier with a cross of a Christian buried the other side (a body not the cross)

Researching the grave number later we found that the guy was only 24 which rather put life in perspective for us.

As we were ahead of schedule, we had a rethink about the next few weeks cruising and Karen had the bright idea of going back up to Reims and then continuing on to explore new areas by heading for Soissons.  This would also mean new waterways for us: the Canal latéral à l’Aisne and the River Aisne.

Karen followed that up with another bright idea: let’s go and see Reims playing for my birthday treat at the end of October.  We now have tickets for their Ligue 1 game against Nimes on 26^th October so we will have to be moored back in Reims by that weekend - hence the title of this entry.  At least it means we probably won’t change our plans again for a few more weeks 😉

On Thursday we cruised 11 kilometres up one lock.

Our morning view on Friday

Friday was a boat maintenance day and with a warm and sunny forecast we had no excuse but carry on with touching up the paintwork outside.

On one of our breaks we thought we’d have a look at what the journey is going to be like to Soissons over the next few weeks.  It was then that we realised that we didn’t have the waterway guide for the Picardie area.  I got in touch with a few boaters who we know are around the area to see if we could take pictures of the necessary pages while Karen set about finding where we could source a book at somewhere like Reims.

I was in luck, Nikki said they had a copy we could borrow which was ideal as we will be meeting them this weekend.  Unfortunately, she rang back later, well it wasn’t unfortunate that she rang it was what she had to say.  She had had a look for the book but realised they didn’t have it after all.

Karen struck lucky though and was told of a website we could visit where you can purchase pdfs of individual pages.  So, it was onto the internet to work out the pages we needed, purchase them and then download them ready for printing later.

We had a walk in the afternoon with not a lot to report other than the usual quiet villages and empty vineyards, not even a lavoir today ☹

The water tap by our pontoon hasn’t been working on the three occasions we have been here, but Karen still checks it every time we leave and return to the boat.  She checked it on our return from the walk and, surprisingly, found it working.  This of course gave me an extra job of filling the tank and water containers before we spent the rest of the day relaxing.

Our mooring for the last couple of days at Port-à-Binson

We plan on moving further upstream over the weekend to spend some time with the girls on Puddleduck.  They have been pootling backwards and forwards between Damery and Cumières over the last week or so.  They, like us, are waiting for the Canal de l’Aisne à la Marne to reopen after a three-week stoppage for repairs so they can go up to Reims and maybe even beyond like we are.

Dormans (battery, what battery?)

Our mooring for Wednesday night

After three days in Château Thierry we fancied moving on on Tuesday morning.  Even though there wasn’t a lot of sun it was a fairly warm day, so we had a pleasant cruise.  We are still on the River Marne trying to stay at and visit places we haven’t been to before.  We have until Sunday to get through a lock at Vandières which is closing for a few weeks for maintenance.  

Once through the lock it is only 18 kilometres to the end of the navigable river where we will join the Canal latéral à la Marne.  Our current plan is to stay at the far end of the river until well into October so we can finish off touching up the paintwork.  We know of three pontoons that are low in the water so we will have easy access to the sides of the boat.

We went up the lock at Mont-St-Père and moored up so we could fill up our water carriers  It was only noon when we finished so we carried on to Jaulgonne where we moored up for the day.

Tuesday mooring at Jaulgonne

I know it’s off at a tangent but when Karen was cooking later and needed a few cloves of garlic we were reminded once again that we have never bought garlic over here that fits in our English garlic jar 😊

After lunch we took a walk to the village of Varennes which turned out to not have a lot to offer other than a few farms, a mairie, a couple of champagne houses and a lavoir.

Unfortunately, for us, the lavoir had a solid door which was padlocked shut and also there were no windows.  This meant we couldn’t see inside until Karen noticed that the door was a sliding one and she was able to pull it back a couple of inches so we could see inside.

It was clearly used to store community items, but it was interesting to us as it had three wash pools.  This was the first we have come across with multiple pools.  Not only that, the pools were raised so the women had to stand to wash their clothes.  This was also unusual and is only the second one we have seen of that type.

The three wash pools of the Lavoir de Varennes

As usual, more information and pictures can be found by clicking here.

Whilst reading the notices outside the mairie it was interesting to see they suffer from the same invasive plants as we do.  There were warning posters about Himalayan Balsam and also Japanese Knotweed.

On the mairie noticeboard

When we returned to Jaulgonne we had a quick look around but there wasn’t really anything there.  They seemed to be proud that several of the vineyards around the village are owned by Moet & Chandon as was the same in Varennes earlier.

As it was the first of the month, we checked the smoke and carbon monoxide alarms.  The fire alarm near the kitchen goes off fairly often when we create steam through cooking but we had noticed that it hasn’t happened over the last few days.  When testing it we found it didn’t work and upon opening the back we found there was no battery in there! 

This completely flummoxed us as we wouldn’t remove a battery without replacing it with a new one.  All we could think was that it was taken out during a particularly steamy cooking session with the intention of putting it back.  Then maybe it got mixed up and lost in the recycling pile, which is directly under the alarm, and then moved, unbeknownst, to the recycling bag in the cratch later. 

Anyway, all the other alarms were fine 😊

Our evening view at Jaulgonne

On Tuesday we cruised 14 kilometres up one lock.

While Karen was out on her run on Wednesday, she passed some stone kilometre markers.  We haven't seen many on this river and they have all been set a fair way back from the riverbank.  In the horse drawn days the markers would have been easily seen by a person walking the horse(s) or from the boat but nowadays, trees are allowed to grow so they end up hidden away.

Pk40 – 40 kilometres to the end of the navigable river at Dizy

Reading up about the history of the River Marne later I was surprised to learn that men also towed boats right up to the end of the 1800s.  They could pull a Freycinet sized barge, 38 metres long weighing 250+tonnes, up to 800 metres an hour.  This was compared to a pair of horses who could operate at over 2kph.  Of course, horses had to be fed and housed so were more expensive compared with a bargee towing his own barge.

We set off at mid-morning and even though it was a lovely sunny day there was a stiff breeze.  This made it ideal to dry the washing as we cruised along 😊

Fortunately, those black clouds missed us!

We did drop the whirligig down going through locks to ensure we didn’t catch it on anything.

We stopped for lunch when we reached Dormans and ended up staying there for the rest of the day.  On a walk later, we went through the town to top up with fruit from the greengrocer that we rather liked when we visited previously.

Moored at Dormans – ideal for paint prepping

As the sun was still out and no rain was forecast, we got on with prepping the left hand (port) side of the boat.  For some reason this side has very few paint chips compared with the other side and we’re not sure why that is.

We'd managed to avoid hearing the result of the French rugby match during the day so had a tense evening watching it on catch up.  Yet another game that had us on the edge of our seats but at least the French came through in the end.  Sorry Kiwis, but we're rationing our viewing of games to the UK home nations and the French until we get to the knockout stages.

On Wednesday we covered nine kilometres and went up one lock.

Château Thierry (Egyptian interloper)

Rue de Général de Gaulle in Château Thierry

We went for a good walk down the River Marne on Sunday morning and on the way we detoured into the village of Essômes-sur-Marne.  Rather than having an information board with a map of the village, the side of the bar was painted with items of interest.

The information board at Essômes-sur-Marne

The places of interest included the mairie, vineyards, a church, gargoyles and a fountain, but of biggest interest to us was a lavoir 😊

This was our first lavoir for five weeks and not only that, it was one of the ones displaying a Jean de la Fontaine fable: "The wolf, the goat and the kid".  As is our recent practice I have only put one picture in this blog entry but if you want to see and read more details please click here.

The words to "La loup, la chevre et le chevreau" inside the lavoir

We found the other items of interest and also an old mill and priory that wasn’t depicted on the wall of the bar.

The mill and the priory

The church

Some of the gargoyles

We got home just as it started raining which continued off and on while we had lunch.  We then watched the thrilling Australia v Wales game and as the rain was still holding off we went for another walk in the opposite direction.

When we hit the main street, we saw it was hung with pink umbrellas – see photo at the top.  They weren’t quite as spectacular as the ones we saw in Carcassonne last year but then it was the height of summer.  Karen guessed, correctly it turned out, that it was for breast cancer awareness.

More umbrellas in the square in front of the hôtel de ville

Posters in the square explained that this was the fifth October that the town has ‘celebrated’ breast cancer awareness under the banner of “Octobre Rose à Château Thierry”.

When we got back there were about 40 Canada geese around the boat as well as a dozen or so mallards and a family of mute swans.  As I have said before, waterfowl are nowhere near as common here as they are in the UK where, in towns especially, they congregate because they get fed by the public.

We know it's wrong to dislike animals but Canada geese are not our favourite bird; however, this gaggle had an Egyptian goose in their midst as well as one Canada goose with a white head.  This was the same as the gaggle we had seen last week when we were moored near Mézy-Moulins because the Egyptian goose and the white headed goose were also there.  Unless it was a strange coincidence it means that they had travelled just over ten kilometres.  Other than times of immigration or migration we have never considered birds as having a large 'home' territory range.

When Karen & Buddy returned from their morning run on Monday, we left Buddy on the boat and walked to Carrefour to do the weekly shop.  When we went in the shop the sky was grey and looked like being that way all day but by the time we had finished the sun was out and it turned out being rather a nice day.

After lunch we had a good walk to a village called Blesmes.  The first five kilometres were along the riverbank which had lots of walnut trees but hardly any walnuts on them.  We saw quite a few people out with long poles shaking the higher branches and as Karen said, ‘you can’t really blame the locals for clearing up’.

Another common tree was the spindle which is quite prominent this time of year with its pink fruits.  It’s meant to be a common tree in the UK, but we have never found them so, certainly not in the numbers we saw today.

The pretty pink fruits of the spindle

It was only when reading up on the tree on the Woodland Trust website that I learnt that the wood from the tree was used for making spinning spindles – obvious when you think about it 😉

There were also many specimens of another nut tree that we have so far been unable to identify: can any readers help please?

The unknown nut tree

Other than having a pleasant country walk our other aim was to get to the village of Blesmes.  One of the brochures about the Jean de la Fontain fables that we bought at the tourist office the other day contained details of a fable represented at Blesmes. 

We knew it was at a lavoir which, being in a small village, should be easy to find.  There was a stream running through the village, so we followed it up the hill, guessing it would be the ideal water source for a lavoir.  We came across one pretty quickly, but it clearly wasn’t the one we were looking for.  Sadly, it was quite badly graffitied inside which is something we rarely find.

It was also the most modern we have seen being built, or rebuilt, in 1934 according to the inscription above one of the entrances.  At least the water was running and clear so Buddy could have a drink.

We carried on up the hill and found the lavoir we were looking for in the centre of the oldest part of the village.  Once again, it had graffiti over the walls. 

The lavoir we were looking for

The placards on the walls explaining the fable, the Old Man and the Donkey, were badly defaced too.  As well as being stream-fed it had an impluvium style roof to collect rainwater in the washing pool.

Outside the building was a concrete donkey which, sadly too, had had its head broken off.

The headless donkey

More views of both lavoirs can be found by clicking here.

We did wonder how it worked with two lavoirs using the same water source with the lower one also getting the used water from the higher one.

As we walked back down the hill, we could see the vines on the vineyards on the other side of the valley were just beginning to turn colour.  We are now hoping to catch the vineyards in their full autumn colours over the next few weeks and not miss that like we missed the main fortnight of the vendange.

Looking across the Marne valley

Tomorrow we shall be leaving Château Thierry and heading east as we need to get through a lock that is closing for maintenance on Sunday.

Our last evening in Château Thierry