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.