Encore France: Day 8 - Amiens to Long

From the journal:

 

What is there to say? This was a really lovely day’s cruise, with superb scenery all the way. We just had to ignore the smells emanating from the potato alcohol factory and the sewerage plant.

Oh, and a bit of excitement: as we cruised slowly along enjoying the colours and the beautiful autumn sunshine, we came across an inflatable vessel belonging to the fire department, and they were practising diving into that dark, silent water, I guess training for emergencies. They all called out “Bonjour” and waved as we passed.

Amazing hydro-electric plant by the canal, over 100 years old
and in use for many years.

Another thing I should mention here is the sounds of gunfire. Yes, that’s right: gunfire, the noise of men who need to show their superiority by firing weapons at unarmed creatures. While last Sunday was the worst for it – after all, what could there possibly be better to do on God’s day that kill some of his loveliest animals – this was a really popular day for hunting obviously, and the sounds of gunfire, I guess mainly from shotguns, echoed all around us. Those decoy ducks looked so phoney to us, sort of like an avian version of a blow-up dolly, that you really have to wonder how dumb ducks would be to sashay on down for a chat when they see a few of them lined up in perfect formation on a lake. But obviously it works, because the hunters were out in full force. Do I need to add that we beat a hasty retreat to the interior of the boat? Hm, no desire to become the victim of a stray bullet.



Beautiful scenes coming into Long, grounds of the
chateau on the right.

Bertrand had stressed upon us, when chatting in Cappy, the necessity of visiting Long to glimpse its chateau. Well, coming into Long with the chateau’s grounds on the right is indeed really beautiful and definitely not to be missed.

The roof of Long's hotel de ville visible through the trees.

The grounds, on the greenest of green rolling hillsides, look just like a movie set with lakes and fountains and follies and statuary dotted here there and everywhere. And wandering in amongst all this are the most dazzling white geese, geese of such a size that from a distance we took them to be sheep. Oh, and just to add to the idyllic scene: pure white horses contributing their own elegance to it all. And the chateau? Well, could it look anything other than splendid? Of course it couldn’t.

Bummer, we're shut out of the chateau.

Fascinating as well to discover that when the chateau was being built, the owner had the river/canal re-aligned so that it flowed right by his property, just for aesthetic purposes. Ah, the power of money, and, ah, how wise of him to do so.



And I think this is the stables! Life is good for a horse
in such an estate.

It all boded so well for a lovely place to stay, didn’t it, with such beautiful countryside, the magnificent chateau, an hotel de ville to rival those found in large cities, and an awesome cathedral overlooking everything? Wrong!

Very speccy looking hotel de ville overlooking
the canal.

The tie-up point, which is just before the lock and very close to the Somme Canal authority’s premises, is by an abandoned building and opposite a couple of very creepy derelict houses, one of which had a huge and rather scary dummy in the window. This was right out of the sort of movie which ends up with numbers in the name, you know, “If You Go Down to the Canal Today 8”. Added to this, while most of the windows in the building you tie up next to were already smashed, this didn’t stop a bunch of local kids – one of whom was carrying a boomerang, for goodness’ sake – from coming along and throwing stones in an attempt to break those still remaining. Even knowing that we were on deck watching them, only a few feet away, didn’t deter them in the slightest.  Thankfully, we soon heard the sound of mothers’ voices calling their sweet little darlings home for dinner and so they wandered off. Amazing!

Now, despite our misgivings, despite the derelict building, the horrible kids, the creepy houses, I have to say that it was the loveliest, quietest night and we slept like logs. 

 Catch you tomorrow when we visit a town of unforgettable houses.

PS. I have to say, that tie-up point at Long is probably quite, quite different now. I am sure the derelict building has either been renovated or demolished. The actual services were excellent, and the location could certainly be fantastic.  

 

France: Canal Boat Trip, Day 5, Herry to Ménétréole-sous-Sancerre

9 May 

From the travel journal:

“After breakfast I sent off an SMS to check on how the pussycats are faring at Blue Ice. Got a reply back pretty quickly saying they are just fine and not to worry. Great to have such a top place to leave them when we’re away, but really missing those little girls. Goodness knows how people with children manage when they’re away from their kids – don’t think I could do that.

By the tie-up point in Herry

We then secured the boat and walked up into the village, which is quite a charmer with some wonderful buildings and an old, old church.

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By the tie-up point in Herry



Now, here’s the funny thing with the church – the position of the clock on one side. Wondered if it was one of those “Confuse the devil” things like that famous clock in Italy (think it is). Anyway, on the other side the clock is centred, as you expect it to be, but our first glance made us go “What the?”

See what I mean about that clock?

 Herry is a fabulous village to wander around in, and, like Nevers and Cours-les-Barres, we really wished we had more time to spend here. Got a few photographs, though, of the place, including the delightful Marie (town hall).

Lovely Marie in Herry

Before going back to the boat we sought out – of course – the patisserie and picked up a baguette, a superb quiche, and a couple of those to-die-for Paris Brest cakes. Yum!

Is this charming, or what?

 Set off from Herry up the canal on our way to Ménétréole-sous-Sancerre. Passed through some fabulous scenery on the way. We are so glad that we took the advice of French Travel Connections and did this waterway because the scenery is just exactly what we were hoping to see. 

Great scenes

Coming in to Ménétréole-sous-Sancerre is great, the town looks lovely. We planned to tie up there because it’s got really good power and water facilities, and of course there is no way you can miss out on visiting Sancerre while you’re so close – you can see it, up on top of the hill, from the canal.

Approaching Ménétréole-sous-Sancerre

However, when we got to the dock area, there was a HUGE passenger barge, the “Anna-Maria IV”, tied up and she took up most of the tie-up area. Then there was another canal boat tied up behind her.  Because of this, there was no way we could reach either the power or the water, even with the really long extension cable that the master of the barge kindly offered to lend us. 



The canal-side bars/bistros

We really wanted to see a bit of this town, though, so we tied up anyway and set off for a bit of a walk, and hopefully to find a pharmacie where we could pick up some good strong cold and flu tablets as we were both quite sick by now despite our pleasure of just being here. Strangely, for what seems like a good sized town, we couldn’t find anything at all retail-wise other than a couple of bistros or bars opposite the canal! 



A town so worth exploring

What a display!

Disappointed, we headed back to the boat. Now, to make matters worse, the water level was so high that I couldn’t get back on the vessel except by sort of pulling myself up backwards so that I parked my bum on the edge of the boat and then swung my legs on the deck. So, here we are, in a town we were so looking forward to visiting, and the reality was: (a) we couldn’t even buy milk, (b) we couldn’t get some much-needed throat lozenges and cold tablets, (c) I had a real problem getting on and off the vessel. Add that to the fact that we couldn’t get power or water because of the length of the barge plus the smaller canal boat, we realised, sadly, that we simply couldn’t stay here and had to forget our visit to Sancerre and carry on. 



Ho, ho, ho! We cruised up to St Satur, where we could see there was a large Champion supermarket, but the tie-up points here were just a repeat of Chapelle, ie anything but inviting. So, we then turned into a little side canal with the intention of tying up at St-Thibault. Now, this place looked great, and we were quite happy at the prospect of spending the night here. Fate was against us today: the marina at St-Thibault was absolutely chockers and there was no way we could get in there.  This was getting to be one very frustrating day. 



We think it's inhabited. How ancient is this building.
Wow, we are definitely not in Kansas now, Toto.

Bottom line: we are now back in Ménétréole-sous-Sancerre. The good news is that the other canal boat which had been tied up behind the “Anna-Marie IV” had now left, and so we were able to get power and water. And, hey, there are those two bars and a boulangerie – very important – so we will be fine here for breakfast, and in the morning we’ll be able to get a taxi up the hill to Sancerre. Meanwhile, we can hunker down, drink wine, have a nice meal and stay warm.

 

AND THE SUN CAME OUT!!!!”

 

Check back later when I’ll post about our visit to Sancerre – a place never to be missed. Thank God we were able to get back to Ménétréole-sous-Sancerre.

France: Canal Boat Trip, Day 3 - Nevers to Cours-les-Barre

7 May

From the travel journal:

“The day started beautifully with a delightful Welshman speaking to us as we walked through the carpark towards the steps, ready to walk into town to do our shopping. He and his wife, Hazel, are retired and now spend nine or so months of the year living on their charming boat, and the other three months back in Wales. They just cruise around all over the European waterways, but Nevers is their “home base”. We asked him for directions to the nearest store, but he said that he and his wife had noticed my bad limp and so he offered to drive us to a good sized supermarket so that we could do a big shop. This was an absolute God-send as my ankle was really painful. It was just lovely to find such unexpected kindness; it really restores your faith in humanity.

I really wish I’d caught his name, but it was one of those situations where you know you have been told but don’t like to ask again. Anyway, he – lovely man – drove us to a large supermarket where we were able to really stock up, including buying a couple of thick jumpers. The weather had been so warm, verging on hot, in Paris that we assumed it would be like that down here in Burgundy and not brought enough warm gear with us.

Heading back to the main canal.

When we got back from the shops we realised that we didn’t really have time to explore the city, and I wasn’t really in a position to do so, and so we filled up the water tanks, thanked those kind boating neighbours, and set off. We couldn’t really hang around, because tomorrow is the 8^th of May, which of course is a holiday in France to celebrate the end of WW2, and even the harbourmaster – a very helpful chap – at Nevers couldn’t tell us whether or not the locks would be operating, so we couldn’t take the risk of being stuck somewhere and not getting to the end of our cruise on time. It’s a shame really, because this place seems so interesting, and the port facilities here are really excellent. Ah, we’ll be back another time, I’m sure.

Lovely canal-side houses

Because we had set off so late, and because there was a really slow, rather long boat in front of us, we didn’t make it through the second automatic lock out of Nevers before the lunchtime closure, and so we tied up to a little jetty and enjoyed the warm sunshine and a delicious, simple lunch – our favourite, Paris ham, cheese, tomatoes, baguette, and of course wine.

Wonderful scenery.

After leaving the Nevers area we came in due course to the absolutely amazing Pont-Canal du Guetin, a “canal bridge”, or pont, high up over the Allier River. 

Approaching the Pont-Canal du Guetin

This pont-canal is not only really beautiful – classic, elegant design – but quite an amazing experience, sailing slowly along that ribbon of water and looking down over the side of the pont to the river far, far below. The pont-canal leads to an incredible, and quite challenging double lock, which drops you, in two stages, under the main road of this incredibly pretty village of Guetin.

And across we go. Fantastic!

As with so many locks, locals and passers-by stop to watch the boat go through the lock. It sort of makes you try that little bit harder to get the ropes secured properly and to actually look as if you know what you’re doing. It’s really fantastic, though, being on a boat going through a lock and having an interested audience smiling and waving at you from a bridge or a canalside. It’s a great chance to call out a friendly “Bonjour”, and to hear back “Bon voyage” as you depart the lock – really a lovely aspect of a canal trip.

We then had one rather small lock to pass through on the way to our destination, Cours-les-Barres. Going through this lock, which of course would seem small anyway after the huge drop of the double one we had passed through, provided a great little bit of entertainment as there was another vessel there, crewed by two elderly couples, one French and one Italian. They had, I think, had quite a bit more vino than us to drink and were very merry. We called to each other, chatting in our variety of languages and accents, hand-signalling when communication was difficult. When they realised that we were all the way from Australia, they started kangaroo hopping around the back deck – the ladies immaculately groomed and sporting enough jewellery to sink a smaller boat, the men looking a bit dapper, all doing Skippy impersonations. 

By the tie-up point at Cours-les-Barres

After passing more stunning scenery, and catching glimpses of chateaux on hillsides, we pulled up to the quay at the absolutely picture book pretty village of Cours-les-Barres for the night.  

What a beautiful spot - invites a walk.

Once the boat was secured, we were off and wandering. What a lovely place, and what a perfect spot to spend the evening.”

Catch you later.