Also, if I recall correctly, we skipped dinner!
La Ferte & Chateau-Thierry: Thursday August 3rd and Friday August 4th.:
After a one night stop-over in Meaux, where we met up with a few people who are also travelling the same route along the Marne, we pushed on to Germigny-l'Eveque where there is an excellent restaurant called "Gonfalon". We visited it last year with Ross and we were all keen to see if it would be as good again as it was in 2005. The mooring is not an easy one, but with Ross onboard we had an extra hand and we managed to moor up quite easily and were soon ashore and at the restaurant.
It was! We had a great afternoon there - almost a 4 hour lunch. We weren't the first to arrive, but we were the last to leave.
I post below a selection of their courses, with a recommendation from all three of us for the restaurant if you're ever in the area. We had the degustation menu - the chef's speciality dishes, and if I recall correctly there were 11 dishes in all.
Also, if I recall correctly, we skipped dinner!
La Ferte & Chateau-Thierry: Thursday August 3rd and Friday August 4th.:
We did another overnight stop in La Ferte, this time at the port (new to us - we weren't aware we could get into it last year when we stopped in La Ferte). Here we met up again with Tom and Trish on "Elizabeth". We walked the town, bought some bread and wine, and had a quiet dinner aboard.
Our main destination however was Chateau Thierry. It is really the start of the Champagne Region and Ross wanted to visit the Pannier Champagne house again. He had some particular gifts in mind for people back home and we both wanted to get a few bottles of their champagne to hold us until we got to Epernay (the heart of the Champagne Region).
When we arrived, in mid-afternoon, we found that there was scarce little mooring there. Consequently we had to moor up next to one of those signs they sometimes put up when they're reserving a mooring site for Australians.
After returning from Pannier we met up with Steve Pope who runs a couple of hotel barges in France (Steve and his wife were very kind to us two years ago when we had generator problems in Montargis - they helped us get local electricians and the like until we had the problem fixed). He invited us for dinner aboard "Bon Ami", showed Ross around the barge, and then cooked us all a slap-up meal. We had a very enjoyable evening.
(The normal tariff for a guest on one of the top end hotel-barge, and "Bon Ami certainly is one of these, is over US$10,000 per couple for the week - give or take a thousand or two. I think Ross enjoyed the night, right up to the point where we threatened to present him with a similar account for his two weeks with us ... )
Damery: Saturday August 5th.:
We arrived at Damery today at about 2:00pm, quite surprised to find the mooring empty. It's another one of those moorings, often provided by the town or village which has free electricity and water. The mooring is in a village which has a number of excellent boutique Champagne houses. In addition it is also in a pretty part of the Champagne Region, and consequently it is not unusual for people to stay there for a few days. As I said, we were surprised it was empty when we arrived.
A little after we arrived Tom & Trish arrived on "Elizabeth" and moored on the outside of us. We all went into town to visit a couple of Champagne houses and stock up. On return we had a drink or two on Elizabeth (and Ross and Tom played some Cribbage), before going out to dinner.
Epernay: Sunday August 6th.& Monday August 7th:
Epernay, and arguably also Reims, is considered the heart of the Champagne Region. We booked two days in the port here. It's a nice port with a very friendly Port Captain (though grossly over-priced at €45/night). We spent the Sunday in Epernay, visiting a Champagne house for a tour and tasting (Moet & Chandon), having lunch in town, and just relaxing over a glass or two in the port. Here Ross tried his first dish of snails - which were declared a success.
On Monday hired a car and toured the area. It was then that Ross discovered what it means to be in France in August. August is the French vacation month, which means everyone takes a holiday. It matters not a jot that they may be in the tourist trade and that August could potentially be their most profitable month. It's holiday time, so they go on holidays! Consequently the first car hire place we visited was "ferme pour conges", that is, loosely translated, "closed for holidays".
In the car we were able to visit the village of Hautvillers, though the restaurant I'd hoped we would eat at was "ferme pour conges". Hautvillers was the home of Dom Perignon, famous for his contribution in perfecting the Champagne process. We visited Ay, where we had lunch, and then drove to Reims where we took in the famous Reims Cathedral (where nearly all of the French kings were crowned).
Tours-sur-Marne: Tuesday August 8th:
We made an overnight stop here and caught up with Martin & Barbara on "l'Escapade", who were already there when we arrived.
Chalons-en-Champagne: Wednesday August 9th & Thursday August 10th:
We moored up in Chalons at about noon and headed into town for some sight-seeing and a little shopping. It is a pleasant little town and has some lovely old buildings around the centre square.
Chalons is where, unfortunately, Ross left us to return home to Melbourne, and since it was Ross' last day with us we also made sure we had a couple of glasses of "Shampoo" (as he calls it) while relaxing on deck in the sun.
We selected four restaurants from which to choose the right place for our last dinner together. Unfortunately, three of them were "ferme pour conges", so our choice was made easy.
Finally Ross got away by train for Paris, late in the afternoon. Too short a visit!
(As an interesting aside, Ross rang us when he got to Paris to tell us that the hotel for which he had a confirmed booking, which he specifically selected because it was close to the "Gare du Nord" train station (where he was to catch the train to the airport the following day), was in fact "ferme pour conges". He was now in another hotel near the "Arc de Triomphe", miles from the "Gare du Nord" train station ... Paris in August!)
Vitry-le-Francois & St. Dizier: Friday August 11th to Sunday August 13th:
Since leaving Chalons we have put in two big days of travel - 10 hours each day. Partly because we want to move along a bit in this canal (the "Canal de la Marne a la Saone"), and partly because the weather has been "god-damn-awful". A low pressure system has set in - the barometer has dropped from 1024 mmHg to 1001 mmHg in two days - and it has pissed down non-stop!
As I write this we are "holed-up" and "battened-down" in St. Dizier - on a very very wet Sunday afternoon!!!
We have now entered into a very picturesque part of the "Canal de la Marne a la Saone". Apart from the towns of Chaumont and Langres, there are only a few large villages along this stretch of waterway - mainly at this end of the canal. Once we reach the summit in about a weeks time, where we will have to go through a 5 km tunnel, many of the stops are only hamlets in size. It is therefore necessary in the next few days to stock up with any special foods we might want.
The canal from here to the Saone now runs through some of the prettiest parts of rural France.
Our first stop is at Joinville. It is a pretty little village and has all the essential facilities in order to stock up on refreshments; a boulangerie, a grocery store with a good bottle-shop, various other stores and of course the ubiquitous village church (for those requiring "spiritual refreshment" - unfortunately for us there was a wedding on there at the time we were there so we couldn't go in - terribly disappointing to us all!).
It seems to me that for a country which, after the Revolution, supposedly disbanded the Catholic Church they did a god-awful job. You can't scratch yourself ... Every village has one, sometimes two! Larger towns have from several to many!, even perhaps a cathedral sized one. There are in fact so many that there are not enough priests to man them all. Each church posts a schedule outside its door stating on which days there will be a priest in attendance for the Mass. This might be as little as once a fortnight. (We never seem to be lucky enough to catch the right date ... disappointment again!).
Froncles: Tuesday August 15th:
While yesterday's weather was good, today's has reverted to rain, yet again. It has been a strange year; weather-wise. May was very wet and then we had a heat wave that lasted through the whole of June and July. Now in August (which should be the height of summer) we've had buckets of rain. Pete & I had considered returning from Paris this year via "Les Canaux du Centre", but because we know that the VNF are prone to close the final canal in that sequence of canals when the water levels are low, we decided to stick to "Plan A" and return via the Champagne Region. Given the amount of rain we've had this month I don't think it would matter which way we go home - there's heaps of water, everywhere!
Fortunately the fore-deck crew doesn't seem to mind the rain.
Chaumont: Wednesday August 16th & Thursday August 17th:
We arrived today at Chaumont, with the aid of our "itinerant eclusier", that is, our "travelling lock-keeper". Once upon a time every lock had a "resident eclusier" ("resident lock-keeper") who lived in the lock-keeper's house situated right on the lock. Today most of these houses are either sold off or rented out, and the duties of the lock-keeper are assigned to a travelling lock-keeper, who manages a stretch of the canal - perhaps 10 locks. These guys and girls travel with you, opening the lock gates ready for your arrival and after you exit the lock they then speed off to the next one to have it ready for you. This is obviously a much cheaper method of providing the locking services to the boats that travel on the canal, but to me it doesn't seem to have the same charm that it once had (when we first travelled on the Canal du Nivernais, back in 1989). On the other hand, for a fee of only about €450 that we pay annually to the VNF, what can you expect? The VNF provides a great and inexpensive service (not to mention all the costs incurred in maintaining the canals, dredging them, and servicing all the boats & lock equipment involved).
We spent two days in Chaumont, catching up with Bill & Nancy (on "Eclaircie") who arrived just hours after we moored up. We had dinner with them on both Wednesday & Thursday nights - in a local restaurant and then onboard "Histoire d'eau".
We have really enjoyed this canal so far - it is pretty and very quiet. Possibly because the stretch of canal ahead is a little sparse in regard to villages and shopping, it is not as attractive to the hire-boat companies. There are no hire-boat bases along the canal (that I know of). This of course is a bonus for us; we don't have to share the canal with anyone, apart from the odd commercial or the odd lost Dutchman.
Rolampont: Friday August 18th:
Rolampont is a quiet village with only a bread shop at it commercial centre and a cluster of houses in it's "suburbs". Even so, the village provides free of charge a nice little mooring station, with both electricity and water. I recently did a calculation and came up with the following statistics with regard to our moorings this year.
We have decided to take two days here at Langres. Last year we rushed through a bit and didn't get to see the town. Langres is a hill-top town with Roman origins, that was a major fortification in medieval France. It still has it's curtain wall and it's battlements, from where you have a panoramic view of the surrounding countryside. We had lunch there on Saturday. Self-righteous after the long and very steep walk up to the town centre from the port, we enjoyed both the local red wine and the famous local cheese (Langres). Fortunately the weather has behaved, and while it has not been hot, it has been sunny and fairly dry.
Perhaps summer is returning?
2006: Monday August 21st to Sunday August 27th.
Piépape: Monday August 21st:
Having left Langres at about 8:00am we were now at the summit of the canal "De la Marne a la Saone"; that is to say we have been climbing vertically up (239 metres), through 71 locks, over the past 10 days. As with many of the canals in France, the engineers who built this one opted for a tunnel at the summit, rather than building more locks. This tunnel, called the "Souterrain de Balesmes" (or Balesmes Tunnel), is almost 5 kilometres long (in fact 4,820 metres) and is lit with flourescent lights at about every 10 metres along it's entire length.
It was in this tunnel last year that, when we were about half way through, someone in the control box for the tunnel turned off all the lights. When they do this the tunnel instantly transforms itself into a horizontal mine-shaft of total darkness - unfortunately your vessel is still travelling at 5kms/hr with only a foot or two between each side of the boat and the tunnel walls. If you try to stop, the paddle-wheel effect of the prop when you throw it into reverse causes the boat to skew in the tunnel - a sure fire way to hit the wall! If you keep going it's only a question of time 'til you run into the wall! Your choices are, to say the least, limited. "Why don't you have some lights on the boat", you may well ask (an excellent question!). Well the answer is, we should!. Consequently this year we have put both a 24volt demountable spotlight on, as well as a very bright 240 volt electrical lamp (a real Belts & Braces affair).
Of course, because we were properly prepared this year, we had absolutely no problem in traversing the tunnel. It takes about an hour to get from one end to the other... and is sort of fun!
After the tunnel the vertical fall from the summit to the River Saone is another 156 metres; through another 43 locks. The total length of this canal is 224 metres.
We moored for the night in a very rural country village called Piépape. A nice little mooring; the village has a bread shop and a few houses. (The bread shop is a plus, as many of the villages in this area have precious little by way of shops. We have seen quite a number of white vans which travel the area selling either bread, meat, small goods, etc.)
We even noticed that at one of the locks they had placed a bread-sack on the door of the lock-keeper's house so that the delivery man could make his call and leave the bread in the sack.
Wild-mooring (between Locks 28 & 29):
Tuesday August 22nd:
Having left Piépape we spend a big day, for us, getting to our next mooring (8 hours, 28 kms & 17 locks). There really is not a lot of places to choose from along this part of the canal so we opted for a place where we could find a deep bank and moor wild, as they say.
We ate well that evening, very pleased to have picked up our own supply of bread this morning from the bakery in Piépape.
Maxilly-sur-Saone: Wednesday August 23rd:
Today we reached the end of the "Canal de la Marne a la Saone" and another village without too many services. Maxilly-sur-Saone does have a splendid bread shop and an old bar (The Cowboy Bar!), but the bread shop was closed for three weeks for the holidays ("ferme pour conges"), and the bar simply wasn't open (with no sign to say if or when it might be!).
One thing we did notice while travelling along the canal into Maxilly-sur-Saone was the number of mushrooms growing along the banks. Considering this is late August, supposedly the hot and dry month in the height of summer, this indicates how much rain we've had this year in August. As I think I said in an earlier posting; May was wet, June and July were very very hot, and now August has regressed back to wet conditions again - a strange year weather-wise.
Auxonne: Thursday August 24th to Sunday August 27th:
We are now back on the river Saone ("La Saone") and our first port of call is Auxonne. We will wait here for a few days until Ewen & Rosemary arrive. They are touring with us for a few days and we plan to cruise the local Burgundian area.
Auxonne is a larger and old town with heaps of facilities; good shops, an under-cover market on Fridays, two supermarkets, hardware stores, restaurants, multiple bread shops and cafes... It also has an Army training school so you often see guys here walking around town smartly dressed in their uniforms. In the main square next to the church there is a statue of a very young looking Napoleon, who was stationed here in the less exalted period of his career - before the revolution and before he subsequently became "Emperor of France".
There is also a "Napoleonic Museum" which we intend to visit in the next day or so.
We have found a great little restaurant that has a terrace facing onto the old church in the square. It has a "Terroir Menu" (a "Local Specialties" menu) for €20 per head (about A$32). We had a great lunch there. We also met up with an English couple there, Michelle & Adam (who were having some problems with their credit card, with which we were able to give a little assistance). They were on holidays on a hire boat and were also enjoying the restaurant. We caught up with them again later, and had a great dinner with them aboard "Histoire d'eau".
Adam & Michelle left the following day and their spot on the pontoon was later taken by an English guy and his wife - Graham & Louise, who are emigrating to Australia next year. Graham had done up his cruiser in the UK and brought it over to France to cruise the canals here before they emigrate (which, after talking with him and Louise seems not to be an easy exercise - plenty of checks and skills and kids, etc, etc!).
We had drinks aboard their boat that evening along with family visitors who arrived to meet them during the day. While the weather has not been brilliant (sunny patches, followed by showers, sunny patches, ...) we have just the same had a very pleasant stay here and met some nice people.
Yesterday (Saturday) we even had a newly married couple having their wedding photographs taken at the port - with "Histoire d'eau" as a back drop. This is our first wedding!, although we did have a confirmation once. (See Sunday May 15th 2005.)
Looking forward to Ewen & Rosemary arriving on Tuesday.
Please see the September 2006 web page for all the news covering the last few days of August. For reasons I'll explain there this update covers 10 days, rather than the normal week, and consequently it's easier (for me) to keep the update altogether in one place.
You can click here to go directly to the September 2006 web page ...
click here .