May Day a National Holiday

The écluses are all closed for May Day. While they are rioting in Paris Julie and I decide to bicycle to Semur-en-Auxois to see if anything is open. This trip we are leaving from Marigny-le-Cahouët and using the bicycle route. Wonderful road that is nearly flat and the last few kilometers into town are on a dedicated bicycle trail that parallels the road, just as it get busy.

Why I never get tired of cycling in France. This is the road we took to and from Semur and this is about how many cars you'd ever see at a time. No pot-holes, no chipseal, just smooth riding.

Semur-en-Auxois had many businesses open so we were able to window shop and then use the map we had received when Joan and I toured the town to show Julie the sights. Semur became the stronghold of the duchy in the 14C when the citadel was reinforced by ramparts and 18 towers. Today there are still four towers and much of the old ramparts left to explore. While the towers are closed the town is still like stepping back in time.

Collégiale Notre-Dame

The show piece of the town is the Collégiale Notre-Dame a church that was started in the 11C and rebuilt and remodeled and added to throughout the years. There are still parts that go back to the 13C. Like so many places in France there is a chapel in the Notre-Dame dedicated to the US soldiers of the 310^th infantry that gave their lives to help preserve the freedom of France in the Great War. We often forget how much we are appreciated for what we have contributed to the world. It’s always a touching reminder to see how much our sacrifices continue to mean to others.

Semur-en-Auxois from the river - tower and some of town ramparts visible

Chapel dedicated In Memory of US troops of the 310 Infantry in WWI that died protecting France

Our ride back took a little detour to explore Lac Pont which turned out to be one of the feeder reservoirs for the canal de Bourgogne, as well as a lake for general recreation.

A copy of our chart showing just how close the locks are together for this stretch

Wednesday we continued our climb with 13 more écluse to the port of Pont Royal. Good fortune was with us when our eclusier chose to keep working when 12:00 came around to allow us to complete our day before he took lunch.

Entrance to Saint Thibault - doors and entrance from 14C

13C St. Thibault

We’d seen the town of of Thibault in our chart book but then checked our Michelin guide and found the church there had quite a history. Jumped on our bikes for a quick 5Km to see this 12C church that has been the resting place for Saint Thibault’s relics since the 1200s and rebuilt and reconditioned many times over the centuries.

The canal as it looks from this part of our voyage.

On Our Way Back – As Slow as Possible

Having decided to return Juniper to her home port of Saint Jean de Losne to have her winter repairs, repaired. Since we are no longer behind schedule we are now taking the time to fully smell the roses, even if they are soaking wet.

Our first day we returned to Venarey les Laumes, a nice port with power and water. The power is really important since the temperatures have dropped back into the 30s at night and only making the high 40s to low 50s during the day. With power, we can run our heater.

14th Century - Château Bussy-Rabutin. From medieval residence to Renaissance château

Antechamber - walls covered  with damask (the red & gold fabric covering the walls) and decorated with furniture from the Régence Period

The Hall of the Great Warriors - featuring 65 portraits of French and foreign military figures. Many of the rooms were similarly covered with paintings, just different topics.

Julie in the garden maze

With rain scheduled for the afternoon we set off on our bikes by 9:00 to bicycle to Château Bussy-Rabutin a beautiful building started in the 1300s. The Château as it looks today is probably representative of how it looked in the 1800s. After touring the Château we set out to explore the gardens and maze. While outside the predicted rain began and we decided a nice warm cup of coffee or food sounded better than getting soaked. As the ride was primarily uphill going to, it was a much faster ride back to town.

In town we had, of all things, a hamburger with of course pom frits. Then it was off to the MuséoParc  Alésia. The museum was inside, warm, dry and a perfect place to learn about the battle between Julius Caeser and the tribal Gauls united by the leader Vercingétorix. Even with the arrival of a rescue army of over 250,000 the Roman defeat of the Gauls in this important battle allowed the Romans to include Gaul in the Roman Empire. The museum covered the story as well the archeological work that has been done to verify what really happened.

Recreations of the Roman battlements built to siege the Gaul's fortified hilltop

Very wet bikers

Even after stalling all day, the rain outlasted us and we ended up riding back to the boat, including a super marché stop, in very wet weather.

Sunday was a short day, only ten écluse and a distance of about 5km. Once again it was time to get the bikes down for a ride to a nearby medieval city, this time Flavigny-sur-Ozerain home of les Anis de Flavigny the aniseed sweets that have been made at the old abbey for over 100 years. The building itself many years older yet. The ride to  Flavigny had a 3km long climb to the ridge and we were bucking a strong headwind to help us burn a few more calories.

Fields line the road to Flavigny-sur-Ozerain

The medieval walled town to Flavigny-sur-Ozerain.

You might recognize this logo
for the anis flavored candy.

Monday was our work day – the beginning of our staircase. Today was 17 écluse in 6km. We showed up at our appointed 9am time only to find an empty écluse. 9:15, still empty, finally about 9:30 our first èclusier arrived and we got underway. A couple of locks later our second èclusier arrived and it was game on. We were averaging about 10 minutes per écluse, including the time to move from one to another. The two young keepers were opening the valves to the locks all the way, right from the start, giving us quite a ride and filling the chamber in record time. We’d no sooner leave a lock and they would be zooming past us and have the next one ready. Before our lines were on the lower doors were shut and sometimes the water would be entering. To go along with this hurried pace we had a 20mph wind blowing – this meant coming into each écluse fairly fast to maintain steerage and at quite an angle, straightening out and slowing down once you were partially in the chamber and somewhat protected from the wind. Julie got real good at snagging the first bollard as we motored  past it, still slowing down.

Arriving back in Marigny-le-Cahouët (the town we found the lovely château on our way out) we spent the afternoon again walking to the château then walked through the outskirts of this very old village.

Crew Change in Montbard

Crew Change in Montbard.

Joan and I arrived in Montbard in time to visit L’Abbaye de Fontenay, clean the boat and re-provision before her sister arrived. Luckily there was a super marche, boulangerie and on Friday a market all within a couple of blocks of our moorage.

With the work out of the way we bicycled to L’ Abbaye de Fontenay, one of the oldest Cistercian abbeys in the world (built between 1139 and 1147) and now a World Heritage Site. At its height over 200 monks lived and worked on this beautiful campus.

Abbaye church and dormitory

Dormitory where up to 200 monks slept on their pallets with only a screen between each of them.

Cloisters - The current owners have done an amazing job restoring this piece of history. After the revolution it had been converted to a paper factory for a number of years.

Trip hammer, powered by a water wheel and developed at Abbaye de Fontenay

We knew that Julie had left Seattle, and had all of her flight and hotel info but as time passed we heard nothing from her and began to worry. We finally called her hotel in Basel (train strike required her to spend a near the airport before she could continue). Julie had checked in but we had no luck connecting with her. A few hours later in the afternoon, still no call. We called again and our call to her room was disconnected. We called again and finally got a very sleepy Julie. She had heard the phone ring and assumed it was her wake up call for the next morning, it took a while to convince her that it was still the day she arrived.

 

Julie and Joan biking back to Juniper after visiting Abbaye de Fontenay

Julie arrived the next day, as planned. In the meantime, we were still struggling with boat issues. A letter was sent to the partners with a few options, one of which was we would cut our trip short and return Juniper to St. Jean de Losne to have this year’s repair work completed. In the end that was the group decision, so we got 14 days of cruising in, out of this year’s 54 and are now headed back early. At least the area we traveled through was beautiful and will be, even a second time.

Since we are turning around I won’t bother to write about Joan’s and my trip through the last few days but will cover it both directions as Julie and I head back. The Abbaye was the first thing we saw a second time biking back out with Julie. The next morning Joan had to leave three days early for Basel (because of train strikes) where she is staying at an airbnb.

 

Seeing Joan off at Gare Montbard

After seeing Joan off, Julie and I hit the market for some shopping then started her education on line handling for our 1:00 first écluse appointment. It looks like we will have Juniper back a week or two early. Thinking we might rent a car and explore Bourgogne that way, while using Juniper as a Gite.

Julie practicing lassoing a post, in preparation for doing the same with a bollard in the écluse.

And here she is with the real thing.

Up and Over The Hill

Up and Over

We are now coming up on the hard part of the trip, five days in a row of staircase locks. These are a series of écluse that have little more than a passing basin between. Our longest stretch will be over 40 écluse and take us two days of idling between locks with line handling to be done and redone and redone. Fortunately we are one of the first boats out this season so we are usually getting two èclusiers rather than one running between locks.

Our first view of the castle and town of Châteauneuf. One of the more spectacular sites of this trip.

From Pont d’Ouche we climbed 11 écluse in 11km the day was beautiful and in the 70s. It was another 09:00 start so we would hopefully be in Vandenesse-en-Auxois before lunch to allow us plenty of time to bike to Châteauneuf a castle and town that date back to the 1200s.

This Châteauneuf house caught our attention

The castle comes into view kilometers before we arrive at our moorage and we probably took 50 pictures of it as the view continually changed. As soon as we had finished lunch we were on our bikes and ready for the climb. For such a beautiful day there was no traffic heading to this famous French landmark and once in town we realized we would have the place to ourselves. Then we got to the entrance to the castle Ferme le lundi – Closed Mondays. The ancient village was a delight to walk through and we did have it to ourselves. Before riding back to Juniper we enjoyed a beer at an outdoor table to reward us for our climb.

Joan now wants a garden shed like this  modern shed built into a medieval wall.

Stopped for a well deserved beer after our climb to Châteauneuf - Photo proof for our boys.

When we returned to the boat we searched until we found a VNF person and changed our first écluse time till 14:00 – time to make the ride, see the castle and enjoy lunch at an outdoor café.

Joan checking out one of the bedrooms - Luckily the bed was too small, we're staying with our cabin.

The castle had certainly changed with the times and the presentation let you see how and where the changes had occurred. In the earliest days it wasn’t much more than a defensive tower and wall. Later the ownership changed to a buddy of the Duke of Bourgogne with plenty of money. The castle was enlarged to its present size, although still primarily a defensive structure. By the time of the revolution the defensive part wasn’t as necessary and the inside became more elaborate plus well decorated and appointed.

We had a pair of eclusiers that claimed to be family. The younger gentleman made sure to do all the heavy work for his older female "family" member. Here getting her gate started for her, before getting his started.

Returning to Juniper we cast off our lines for an 8 lock staircase to the tunnel that goes through hilltop. Our èclusiers for the trip were a mother and son team that were wonderful to watch. She really raised him right, always polite and helpful, big smile and the consummate gentleman. He was always trying to make his mom’s side of the gate easier for her to open. Since canals are all gravity fed there has to be reservoirs higher than the highest écluse. To make that happen the top usually has a tunnel to allow more area to catch and store water. The Tunnel de Pouilly is 3.35km long and only slightly wider than Juniper the height gave us standing headroom at the upper helm station, but not much more. A number of years ago lighting was added making the passage easier and more pleasant. We did hit one fairly long stretch with no lights and it was eerie.  On top of the dark it was darned cold and we’d just taken all our warm clothes off and left them below.

Pouilly tunnel a 3.5 km Sci-Fi attraction - and it was cold. We fit with about 2 feet to spare on each side. Steering a very straight course, in the dark, for that long wasn't easy.

Arriving in the huge port of Pouilly we found it completely empty, but at least open, with a friendly staff that spent plenty of time helping us with our problems. This was to be a two-night stop to allow for shopping and sight seeing but, we had to figure out how to get Joan back to Basel to catch her plane going home with a train strike in process. So we tried:

Renting a car – we’d have to rent it for at least four days because of weekends and no transportation to the nearest rental agency with the trains not running. We are already over a week behind so this won’t work.

Catching a plane - that is not conflicted with the train strike – cost over $3,000

Blablacar – the only dependable transport in France, wasn’t quite Joan’s cup of tea going by herself.

Leaving the boat 2 days early and sitting in Basel – turned out to be the answer now we just had to figure out how to buy her train ticket in advance since trains often sell out the day before a strike, then find her a place to stay. We found her tickets with trainline.com (great to work with) and found her a room with a German Swiss woman in Basel at a great rate and close to public transportation.

In the old days barges were pulled through the tunnel with this electric chain tug. It moved along a chain that ran the length of the tunnel and was powered by overhead trolley wires.

Now we still had our boat problem – got some help from the VNF to purchase the correct coolant for our engine and we were off – only an hour late for our appointment. We didn’t even make it into the town of Pouilly, maybe next time.

Pont Royal - our moorage for the night. Very picturesque - but this was the entire town.

That afternoon was a 12 écluse staircase to Pont Royal (we set our personal record of 7 écluse in less than an hour) and today, Thursday, we started out with a couple of short trips between locks before starting the staircase that will ultimately take us 3 days to complete.

The château we found in the woods at Marigny-le-Cahouët. It's now a private residence, but they let visitors enjoy the land around the building, as long as you are courteous.

We are tied up in the town of Marigny-le-Cahouët. The chart and a sign at the Quay indicate there is a 13^th century château near here. Looking throughout the town we could find no signs to this elusive building, or ruin. Tried google maps, no luck – till we zoomed in and found a square piece of land with a body of water all the way around – zooming closer it was on rue de château. We gave it a shot and found the beautiful building you see in the pictures below. The amazing part is that it is currently being used as a residence.

Dijon to Pont d'Ouche

The Canal de Bourgogne operates from 0900 – 1200 and 1300 – 1900, you must schedule an éclusier to accompany you the day before you plan to travel and give them your destination for the end of the day. Each group of èclusiers is responsible for a certain group of eclusé (usually 10 to 12). When you reach the end of their section they turn you over to a colleague who is always waiting for the hand-off and work through their section to be handed off yet again.

Joan bicycling ahead to help with écluse gates and lines

We had an appointment to be at écluse 75 at 0900 and arrived a few minutes early to find the écluse down and the gates open and ready for us. By the time we were tied up our èclusier arrived and started our day’s first lockage. Today we were trying something new out (for us,) we were putting Joan on a bike to handle both the opening and closing of one écluse gate as well as handling the lines from shore; our hopes were that this would enable us to reach our goal of 22 écluse and village of Pont de Gissey-sur Ouche before we ran out of time.

Michael at the helm, while Joan is ashore doing all the manual labor.

With Joan on her bike and me on the boat we made the distance and the locks as planned. Pont de Gissey-sur Ouche was a beautiful village that probably took all of 20 minutes to walk. Both the canal and the Ouche river flowed through town and the bridges across both made photogenic backdrops for our dinner in the salon. Morning and nights are still cold but days are getting warmer.

A VNF (French inland water authority) building that Joan and I both loved.

From our moorage spot at Pont de Gisset-sur-Ouche - and this would be the pont the town in named for.

Vegetable garden at Château Barirey-sur-Ouche

There is a Château a few kilometers down the canal from where we are so we scheduled a 13:00 start for the next day so we can take a look. Up at 7:00 and we were on the road, without croissants to bike down the canal to the town of Barbirey-sur Ouche. The Château is now a bed and breakfast but the grounds are open to the public. We spent nearly two hours walking through the gardens, across fields and into the woods of Château Barbirey sur Ouche, what a treat. Biked back to the boat via another village that featured lots of people carrying baguettes but our French was not good enough to find the source and returned to the boat empty handed.

Château Barbirey sur Ouche taken from the grounds.

Today was Michael’s turn to ride the bike, and Joan’s to drive. We showed up at the first écluse to find we had two èclusiers for the day, I still rode the bike, but didn’t get to help with any of the manually operated écluse gates. After 5 or 6 écluse I finally joined Joan aboard Juniper.

The view from our salon while eating dinner at Pont d'Ouche - across the canal are miles and miles of rolling farmland.

Arrived at Pont d’Ouche to find that the marina was not yet open for the season, being early has its pluses and minuses. Plus, we had two èclusiers and made wonderful time through the écluse – minus, nothing is open and there are no fellow boaters to meet and socialize with. With nothing open in town it took just a few minutes to check things out (we did get electricity, so we’ll have heat in the morning while it’s still cold) Pont d’Ouche marks the end of where the canal de Bougogne receives water from the Ouche river. Tomorrow we begin the climb to the summit, once we cross the divide rivers will no longer be flowing to the Sâone river but flowing toward the Yonne.

Made it to Dijon

Moutarde on tap at Maille's

Our first day was spent finding our way around, doing the important things: checking with the tourist information office to see what we should see, stopping at a sidewalk café for a café au lait, and just for good measure dropping into an Irish pub for a pint of the good stuff. Plus, being in Dijon, we had to check out moutarde (better known in the US as mustard). We dropped into the Maille moutarde shop and tried several flavors plus a few that were only available on tap at this store. Back at the boat we wrote to the yard that had done the work on Juniper hoping for a reply (remember, we are in France).

Joan café au lait

Dijon Day two – after having to go a day without croissants for breakfast Michael was sent out into the cold morning to search for the nearest boulangerie. As luck would have it the walk was less than 5 minutes. Joan barely had coffee ready by the time I was back. The morning mail asked if we would mind returning to St. Jean de Losne to have the needed repair work done – we politely said we would really prefer not as it was a 20 minute drive for them and a 2 day trip for us that would have us arriving on a weekend (so sit two more days) then a day of work on the boat and finally two days to get back to where we were. A full week of cruising time lost. They agreed and said they would have a mechanic visit us in Dijon.

Being a market day we grabbed our shopping bags and walked to Les Halles in search of local delicacies.  We ended up with escargot, paupiette a couple of new, to us, les fromages and vegetables we hadn’t been able to find in a grocery. All in all a great haul. Another walk back to the boat for lunch before returning to the old city center. By the way that walk is about ¾ of a mile each way.

Escargot - and we're in Bourgogne, how can we pass this up?

Using our phones to translate French to English and visa versa

Chouette trail marker

The rest of the day was spent doing a tourist walk called the Parcours de la Chouette or the owl’s walk. The name comes from a carved owl on the side of Notre-Dame that legend has will grant you a wish that is made when your left hand is touching the carving. The trail is marked by following bronze owl plaques on the sidewalk and guides you through the history of this amazing city, plus most of the museums are free. They say an hour to walk the trail; after a day on our feet we returned to the boat to put our feet up having seen about half the stops. The evening mail also let us know Anthony, our mechanic, would be aboard at nine the next morning. Our dinner entrée was our escargot – and they were good.

Anthony - we finally found the elusive part

Dijon Day three – We were up in time to read the news while enjoying our morning coffee and croissant before Anthony arrived. We had already given them our two cents worth that maybe the boat wasn’t going fully in gear and that was the cause of our problem. It only took a few minutes to determine that was at least a part of the problem, if not the entire problem. Then a couple of hours to actually find the piece that was causing the problem, it was located behind the back wall of one of our cupboards (don’t even ask how many places we took apart to find the correct one). With our mechanical problem fixed it was time for lunch then a walk back to the old city center to finish our walk.

The highlights were visiting the Musée des Beaux Arts located in the Palace of the Dukes of Burgundy from the days when they ruled as an independent region and probably had as much power and wealth as the king of France. The buildings were spectacular and the medieval art and armament on display was interesting and well displayed. In the afternoon we joined a group to climb the stairs to the top of Tour Philippe Le Bon for a great view from the highest point in Dijon. The tower was built to symbolize the prestige and power of the Dukes of Burgundy.

You have to look for art everywhere - this is how corbels are really held in place

Michael making a wish for our grand daughter to be's good life and health

Joan making a wish for our grand daughter to be as well

Musée des beaux arts - tomb of one of the Dukes of Burgundy

Rooftops taken from the top of Tour Philippe Le Bon (Philippe the Good)

Gargoyle at top of Tour Philippe Le Bon

By this time we realized we didn’t have an éclusier scheduled for the next day. A couple of phone calls left us frustrated but no answers. We had the tourist information office call, they also had no luck. So we returned to the boat so that I could try biking back down the canal to a VNF office we had seen coming into Dijon. While I was getting a bike down Joan found another boater that lived aboard in Dijon and knew the secret number to get our trip scheduled. With that accomplished we decided to celebrate with a dinner out for our last night in Dijon. Tomorrow we attempt to do 22 écluse in one day. Some may call it crazy, we call it trying to make up the week we lost.