Le Canal entre Champagne et Bourgogne: Saint-Dizier, Chevillon, Dongeux/Rouvroy, Viéville/Vraincourt, Chaumont, Foulain, Rolampont, Heuilly-Cotton, Cusey, Fontaine Francaise/Saint Seine, Revène

French lessons, service with a sourire, semi-villages, famine country, Chaumont and the Holy Grail, French Style Police, heroic Henri IV fountain

In case you (like our son Carl) have been wondering exactly where we are – and I know the feeling well! – here are are a couple of maps, boldly nicked from the internet. The red squiggle in the centre of the map of France (left) shows Le Canal entre Champagne et Bourgogne, whose 114 locks we’ve just completed, heading from north to south.

My previous blog ends with us spending a couple of night at Orconte, where Fred, the Piper engineer, came to fix a couple of things that had gone wrong.

After that, our first stop of note  was Saint-Dizier, where we had dinner at L’Indus, the even more highly rated L’Arquestrate being inexplicably  closed just for that night.  L’Indus was in the main town square, full of friendly locals – and, if I’d known of the food famine ahead, I’d have insisted on dessert after my osso buco. (More to follow on that… much more.)

Uphill Going

Suddenly I feel I’m travelling: walking around Chevillon revealed a totally differently landscape to what we’ve seen so far. It’s fairly hilly, for one thing, and has almost an alpine feeling.

Part of Chevillon seems to be one or two hundred years old; but the older part feels positively medieval. Different architecture too; none of that half-timbering that has distinguished the older villages and towns we’ve been travelling through.

French Lessons

During the seven locks and six lift-bridges between Saint Dizier and Chevillon (about 5.5 hours), we learnt a lot today – some of it humiliating, but all useful. For example:

Useful:  There’s no point arriving at a manual lift bridge before 9am, which is when the gardien du pont comes on duty; and you’re safer to make that 9.15am if it’s a Sunday. Those today were activated either by perche (a rod suspended from a sort of gallows over the canal) or by télécommande (remote control).

Humiliating: Automatic locks are not activated by pointing and clicking your remote control in the direction of the canal-side sign that says “Ici, Here, Hier”. There is no magic interface between that sign and the lock. The sign merely indicates that you’re probably now close enough to point and click your remote in the direction of the lock itself, where there’s a box or little hut equipped with an antenna.

This was explained in pitying (French) tones by the éclusier responsible for the stretch of locks we did today. He must have wondered how we’d made it so far alive into the hinterland. Touchingly, he followed us all the way from the first lock of the day until we moored at the grassy halte nautique just before Chevillon lock.

Useful: I learnt that to throw a coiled rope over a bollard, you’ve got actually let it go (with both hands). Apparently, I was holding on to most of it. (Some sort of Freudian repression, no doubt. We’re slowly working through it.)

By the end of the day, three weeks from Calais, we’d done 102 locks. Only 236 to go.

Bravo, VNF! 

Apart from the fantastic service we’ve received from Piper boats so far,  we’re also hugely impressed by the staff of VNF (Voies Navigables de France) – the people who maintain and run the waterway services. Neither left us stranded for a minute longer than humanly possible.

For the stretch of manual locks along the CeCB, which took us around two days, we had a different travelling VNF éclusier accompanying us to smooth the way. It really was a treat.  They zip ahead on their bike or in their little VNF car to open the locks before you get there; they wait on the side of the lock to catch the rope you chuck them, loop it around your chosen bollard and drop it back down to you. Then they wind the gates closed, activate the lock-filling/emptying mechanism, let you out and wind the gates closed again behind you.

Each lock was also a good opportunity to practise my French with a captive audience of one. Anaïs (above), our éclusiere from Chaumont to Foulain, is a physiotherapy student who’s been doing this for a month and loves it; she’s going back to her studies soon. Bonne chance, Anaïs!

Guillaume – “William” in English, as he pointed out – looked after us for the seven locks between Foulain and Rolamport. He’s just finished three years’ studying history, he tells me, and now wants to go into tourism – French heritage is his passion.

Semi-villages?

If you wondered about the double names in my intro paragraph – Rouvroy/Dongeux, for example – they refer to separate villages on different sides of the canal.

Rouvroy seemed to have its heart in the right place, but was a bit neglected; bins hadn’t been emptied for some time. Our neighbours were a Belgian couple in a swish camper-van, and a couple of young guys with a large dog living out of a small and grimy car. As evening fell, an even shabbier young man – also with a large hound – shambled down to do so some sort of deal with them (the young guys, not the Belgians), shortly whereafter an aromatic herbal fragrance wafted across on the gentle breeze.

Famine Country

A couple of days after we’d quitted the CeCB, the Auxonne H2O port captain John (an Aussie) – laughingly referred to that canal as “famine country”. “You’d better be well stocked!” he said. Luckily, we had been.

Donjeux’s Auberge de Lion D’Or (below right) – much vaunted by the map book and the signs at the halte nautique, looked as though it had been closed down 15 years ago for health and safety reasons; its Café de la Gare (below left) as though it might done a brisk trade during the last World War (Café de la Guerre?); and as for Rouvroy’s Le P’tit Bonheur – bar tabac, depot de pain and coiffeuse mixte – well, it was a Monday.

Next night, moored 600m from Viéville and 700m from Vraincourt, I went to find the sole épicerie/restaurant, but they closed at 2pm on a Tuesday. (It was Tuesday. It was 2.20pm.)

Chaumont and the Holy Grail

Chaumont’s lovely Port de la Maladière is surrounded by greenery, and particularly popular with the (largely German and Dutch) camper-van community. But, true to form, there’s no viable restaurant in the area – and it’s inconveniently remote from the centre ville.

Nevertheless, off I set up the hilly motorway, guided by my iPhone map app and motivated by my current holy grail – an Orange boutique where I could top up the data SIM card.

 

Ninety minutes later and I was back, ready to head off with Roy on the bikes to the E. Leclerc hypermarket situated a convenient 10 minutes away down the canal path.

With the two purpose-made Brompton shopping baskets, my small backpack and Roy elegantly balancing one of those big Sainsbury shoppers over his handlebars, we came back with a sizeable haul.

Style Police

Not everyone is particularly friendly in these villages, but no doubt I stick out like a sore thumb. Not only am I the sole idiot  marching up the narrow verges of busy motorways, but I suspect that my shiny rose-gold Sperry boat-shoes and shocking pink Dry-Tec rain-jacket may not be quite the thing.

To be fair, I’d be in serious trouble if the French Style Police monitored the canals. Standard chilly or wet-day garb pairs navy elasticated Uniqlo pants with a small yacht print, and a navy-and-cream-striped T (from Max in NZ) or my grey mélange M&S pullover with navy anchor print. If Roy is Boaty McBoatface, I’m Ropy McRopeface.

And my hands! – ring-less, nails boy-short with daily layers of Revitanail strengthener to keep them intact, fingers prune-wrinkly from soggy rope-handling gloves.

Downhill All the Way to the End of the CeCB

Once through the nightmare of the 5km Blesmes tunnel – the wheelhouse fogged up for the first ten minutes and Roy could not see a thing – it was going to be downhill all the way from Heuilly-Cotton, lock No. 1 on the avalant stretch of the Canal entre Champagne et Bourgogne.

Even so, we’d never have dreamt that we’d go 22 locks in a day – over double our previous highest total – except that an Australian couple we met at the same lock the day before, coming upstream, said they’d done it without a problem.

No heroics required of me anymore – no manual opening of the exiting lock gate, no throwing up of a wet and heavy line to someone above – as we were now avalant (going down, much easier) and used the single rope on the bollard in line with the wheelhouse doors. And Roy looked after that line, except for the occasional call of nature.

Fontaine Française 

On my morning run – today was a short day on the canal, to get over yesterday’s 22 locks – I was delighted to stumble across the Henri IV fountain on my way to Fontaine Française.

It marks the spot where, in 1595, the monarch spent the night after cunningly defeating Ferdinand despite having a small fraction of the Spaniard’s troops.

On the other side of the canal, here’s Saint Seine‘s impressive chateau.

A few more images from Le Canal entre Champagne et Bourgogne