River Sâone, Part One: Far canal stats, Roy “The Knife” in Poncey lock, feasting on frogs’ legs in Pontailler, cycling around Auxonne

Here are the stats for our journey so far, according to the Ancient Mariner:

• From Calais to the River Sâone, 654km over 31 days
• 195 locks,  so an average of six locks a day
• Average distance, 21km per day
• Total engine running time, 136 hours.
• And we’ve come 41.4 percent of the way. Far canal!

River Wide

It’s fabulous to be on the wide, beautiful River Sâone, which we have mainly to ourselves. You get an inkling of what a big country France is – and that there’s often not very much in between the towns.

Orientation (for Carl, who likes to know)

We’ve come south to Pontailler down Le Canal entre Champagne et Bourgogne – here, if you can read the tiny light-blue script, it’s called by its old name, Canal de la Marne à la Sâone.

Roy “The Knife”

It wasn’t all quite this peaceful, though. At our only lock today, at Poncey, at the end of a short canal deviation from the Sâone, that very dangerous thing that everyone warns you about happened: Roy’s mooring rope got caught and the boat started to “hang”.

Quick as a flash, he sprang into action! Leaping across the wheelhouse, he got the knife that had been sitting in its box waiting for this very thing to happen, and cut the rope with a loud twang. Cleverly, he cut it near the eye, so we wouldn’t lose the whole rope. All he has to do now, he says, is to “splice another eye*”.

(*Everyone should have one or more things they are totally incapable of doing, lest they find themselves uncomfortably indispensable. Mine used to be answering switchboards; to that, I’ve now added splicing eyes in ropes.)

Pontailler-sur-Sâone

We loved our two nights at Pontailler’s conveniently located Canalous Port. (Canalous, by the way, is the name of a boat hire company, and very nice they look, too.)

In the middle of another heatwave, cooking was out of the question, and so we ate our dinner two nights running at the excellent Les Marronniers restaurant – named for the nearby grove of horse-chestnut trees.

Like most countries, I suppose, France has its share of mediocre eateries; this is not one of them. We had foie gras salad, oefs-en-meurettes and tartiflette pizza on the first night; on the second, chicken supreme for Roy and frogs’ legs in parsley butter for me.

Auxonnes

Having been ushered to the far end of the visitors’ pontoon by Aussie John the port captain, we were about as far as it was possible to be from the pretty centre ville.

But it’s better to be away from the row of families closer to shore, moored side-by-side and close enough to smell one another’s farts.

Our bikes came in handy at Auxonne, as we rode them to the big and beautiful Intermarché and its neighbouring Brico – a sort of DIY chain, like the UK’s Horrible Homebase or Oz’s Boring Bunnings*.

(*These are places I avoid in the normal course of events; but I unfortunately managed to drop the action-end of the deck broom into the canal a couple of days ago, and part of my just punishment is sourcing its replacement.)

And later, we cycled back to town for dinner at Le Corbeau, said to be the best restaurant in town; and though the food was fine (Roy’s duck breast with mash was excellent; I had the faux filet with frites, a bit dull), I thought the best thing about the place was the waiter. So precious! – I dared not photograph him.