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.