May 6 - Again

Starting the downhill portion of the Canal du Centre

We’d hoped for another early start but arrived at our first and it hadn’t been activated by VNF. Joan tried phoning again and didn’t think we had gotten through what we wanted, so had turned around to see if anyone was at the VNF base we’d spent the night at. No sooner turned around and a VNF truck drove by headed for the écluse and signaled us to follow him. Not sure if the lightening strike last night affected the écluse or this section could not be controlled by the central office. We were finally on our way downhill before 10h00. Almost all the rest of our écluse worked perfect, till we got to the last one. It wasn’t working, Joan called and we found out that one écluse on the system closes for lunch. So we took a lunch break and were tied up in Montceau les Mines by 13h30. Walked a bit of town, had a café au latte at the town square and made a shopping trip to a not so nearby store before settling in for the night.

May 7 - Montceau les Mines

One of the many sister-city groups marching

It’s Market Day, and it’s a huge one. Spent an hour or so wandering the stalls, till we got distracted by drumming one street away from the quad. Turns out there was a parade in honor of all the cities Montceau-les-Mines was in a sister city relationship with. Great native dress, dancing and of course the drumming. We worked our way back and forth between the twin events till lunchtime, found some good str
eet food then rode our bikes to the nearby town of Blanzy and its incredible museum of mining. This whole area of France developed around coal mining that lasted until the turn of the century. Although the tour was done in French, we had a written guide in English and were able to at least understand what it was we were seeing. The museum uses the buildings and some of the tunnels of one of the last mines. They also had the examples of the equipment that had been used from the early days, till the end of mining at that location.

By the end of the parade,
some of the younger groups were looking a bit tired

One of the mines at Musée de la Mine in Blanzy