May 3 & 4 Cycling and back on the Canal du Centre

 May 3 - La Voie des Vignes

We’d heard from a few people how beautiful the La Voie des Vignes was. This is a bicycle/walking route that uses paved farm roads to take you from Beaune to Santenay and beyond. You are either riding through the vineyards or going through a wine growing villages for the entire route. We decided to go by bicycle from Beaune back the Changny via Santenay.

Our start was a little auspicious as to how the rest of our day might go. We biked to the Gare de Chagny to catch a local train to Beaune. First we forgot to compostage our train tickets ( that is to put them in a machine that marks them to show they were validated). Next the train arrived sooner than we expected and Joan had forgotten her mask. Masks are required for train travel. We went to the car marked for bicycles ( two only) there was already one bike, but by the time we realized this the train was ready to leave so we stayed with our two bikes in the bike compartment for the 10 or 12 minute ride to Beaune. Fortunately all went smooth, in spite of our errors.

Once in Beaune we walked and rode our bikes through the beautiful old town before taking off on La Voie des Vignes. The road/trail took us through miles and miles of vineyards where the crews were busy weeding, pruning, planting, laying out new fields and burning the branches that had been pruned. Looking at the amount of hand labor that goes into growing the grapes, it’s amazing how inexpensive wine can be.

Joan cycling La Voie des Vignes - We've just left Beaune

Vineyards as far as the eye can see, in all directions.
With a wine village every few kilometers

Pruned vines being burned to keep any diseases
from spreading to new growth and a symbolization of
death and rebirth by fire

New growth - introducing the grapes of 2022

Hard work - the tractor/cultivator tills the earth in the center
while pulling two plows that are maneuvered by hand
to till between the vines

I think I've found the way

The Hotel de Ville in Meursault
with the traditional Burgundian roof tiles. This was
the view from our picnic in the park lunch

May 4 - Chagny to Saint-Léger-sur-Dheune

Time to fire up the engine and put a few kilometers under the keel. Leaving Chagny we were in wine country, with fields reaching from the bottom of the valley to the tops of the hills. Not too long after passing Santenay that all changed. The canal began to follow the valley of the River Dheune and the use of the bottom land along this portion of the canal changed from grapes to cattle and beautiful yellow fields of rapeseed (for the production of cooking oils)

Wonder Woman
to our rescue

We arrived at our destination of Saint-Léger-sur-Dheune in time for a late lunch. We had a pump diaphragm that needed to be replaced in one of our heads. However, the new diaphragm needed a much larger hole for the handle attachment than the replacement had. We had been trying to come up with a way of punching a perfectly round 20mm hole through thick rubber with no luck. Right next to where we were tied up there was a Locaboat charter boat base. We talked to their mechanic and she came up with the same solution we had come up with, but she had the tools. She took a piece of tubing (the proper diameter) and used it as a punch. Perfectly round hole, right where we needed it.

After getting our repair part fixed we rode our bikes to see the Château Couches. Both our chart guide and Google assured us it was open, and Google even let us know it was a mostly flat ride. Both were wrong on all counts. After riding a 4 km uphill grade on a busy highway,

Château Couches - Ferme

with no shoulder, we arrived at a closed château. Taking a quick look at Google maps on our phone we did find a beautiful backroad route back to the boat. Most of the route was flat, and the villages we went through were spectacular.

We had been talking with two touring cyclists, one who's grandmother
lived in the house behind the group. When their entire group
showed up, they serenaded Joan. Great end to a good day.