Once he’s got going, my husband does not like to stop unnecessarily (if at all) en route – but he must perforce stop for fuel. When the aire (layby) he was aiming for turned out to be more about hiking and picnicking than petrol, we clicked on “Places of Interest” and then “Fuel” on the Garmin, which took us on an enjoyable sortie along narrow country lanes to a single-pump affair where a smart lady in lavender suit with matching jewellery pumped gas for us.
From there it was foot-flat through the wide, expansive but otherwise rather featureless countryside between Chalons-en-Champagne to Migennes, a generally uninspiring small town whose main attraction, really, is the Evans Marine boatyard, run by Simon Evans, where we’ll be sending our Dutch barge Karanja next summer. He has the necessary crane to hoik her off the lorry and into the river Yonne.
It was weird to recognise one of the Piper boats, Grizzled Skipper, undergoing maintenance in the Evans Marine yard – though we knew her name, it took time to remember that her owners, the Molls, had shown us pictures of her at the Piper rally the previous week.
Far Canal!
The first French lock I’ve seen – apart from the one at Moissac (on the Tarne, near Toulouse), where we did our boating course three years ago, Roy reminds me – Migennes is where the Canal de Bourgogne joins the River Yonne. It’s a depot for Le Boat hire company, which probably runs the port’s capitainerie, we decided.
Fortuitously for us, if not for her owners, a little barge, Snor (Afrikaans or Dutch for “moustache”), flying a British flag, entered the lock during lunchtime in the absence of the lock-keeper. French locks are much deeper than those on the Thames, and I watched with trepidation as the not-so-young mate nimbled up the narrow ladder to loop two long ropes from the vessel around a large and pass them back down to her beardy skipper, himself no chicken. Then, presumably, they waited for the post-prandial return of M. Éclusier; these are not locks you can operate yourself.
Speaking of lunchtime, Roy gets irritable when he’s hungry, and we hadn’t had breakfast. As the Restaurant du Canal was full, and a couple of other potential venues proved full of sozzled men and empty of food, we headed back on the highway in hopes of spotting a source of sustenance. Just as I was about to get the emergency Ryvita out, Roy (brave hunter, forager and chauffeur) spotted a bakery – and, what’s more, actually pulled in and stopped the car!!* There we bought a fresh baguette to feast on in the car park – perfect with butter, boiled eggs and our last-remaining avo.
* Note the rare double exclamation mark
