St Jean de Losne to Macon

We set off from St Jean de Losne with a set of several moorings places in mind as we travelled down the Saône.

The first, at Ecluse Ecuelles, was as we suspected, completely impossible, as was the second at Seurre. Before the next, at Verdun sur le Doubs, were a couple of obsolete locks upriver of the town and as we passed them we thought, ‘Oh well, they might do’. We turned up the old river Doubs but the Port de Plaisance was packed and the only moorings left were impossible for us. We turned back up onto the main river, to look at the old locks but at the approach to the first one we immediately ran aground in the build up of silt, and realised this was going to be impossible as well. Luckily we managed to abort just before we became completely stuck.

We had one more unlikely possibility of a mooring on a pontoon at a place called Gergy, and failing that, it would be another three hours to the Canal du Centre and what was said to be a good spot about 8 kms and one lock up it! By this time we had decided a diversion onto the Canal du Centre would be a good idea anyway and it would also put in a bit of time so we would get to the Canal du Midi after the worst of the bumper boats had gone.

As we rounded the bend in the River Saône above Gergy, we could see the pontoon - and there was only one small boat on it! Halleluiah! Somewhere to moor and it’s still only 3.30 pm. There must be a god after all!

We moored up – plenty of depth – on a good solid pontoon: the other boat was moving off in an hour: it seems to be free. What ‘s the snag? No snag, it appears, apart from early morning fishermen clattering up and down the access ramp at 6.00 am!

One day further down the Saône and the mooring 7kms up the Canal du Centre at Fragnes is excellent – €6.20 per night including the all-important water and electricity and a free wi-fi connection. We decided to stay here for a few days and visit Chalon-sur-Saône by bicycle – a good decision as it turned out, as the moorings were again impossible for us.

The first day we ventured into Chalon at was at the weekend and there was a street festival taking place: hundreds of scruffy fans thronged the streets with their tents lining the banks of the river as far as the grass would allow. Stages were set up in all the squares and any other open space and people were milling about in anticipation. It was a colourful scene, but we had no idea what was going off where and when, and felt we would rather see Chalon when everything had calmed down. We had a drink on the waterfront and people-watched for a bit. This included watching a hotel barge come in to moor – amazing, all 110m of it, and all controlled by the captain standing outside his wheelhouse using a tiny joystick to control his monster.

We were sitting on the back deck having tea when a French couple stopped by to have a chat. Pierre spoke quite good English, Aveline his wife could understand English but not speak it. She did, however, speak French to us very slowly and clearly and we could understand most of what she was saying. They invited us to have a drink at their house and said they would collect us at 11.30 (it was then 10.30). Then Pierre said, ‘You have two hours to learn French”! So we wondered if he or we had the time wrong, but sure enough he arrived to collect us at 11.30 sharp and off we went for Premier Cru wine and nibbles for a couple of hours.

We, of course, invited them back for a return visit the next day and agreed on douze heure (12 o’clock’. Well, 12 o’clock came and went and we had lunch, assuming they had forgotten or something had cropped up. Then at 2 o’clock – deux heure they arrived!! Lost in translation evidently.

We also met a great couple called John and Hilary from the barge ISKRA (Russian for something but unfortunately we can’t remember what it was!). They had bought it as a sailaway and then fitted it out themselves. We had drinks and a meal together and found we had a lot in common. They come from the Nottingham area and of course, wouldn’t you guess – John knew our friend Brian Holdsworth who together with his wife Jill are the only people we know in Nottingham!

ISKRA and Riccall left Fragnes to cruise up the Canal du Centre to Chagny separately, we leaving a bit before them. We had decided to take two days to get there, stopping en-route. As we passed under the motorway bridge, Alex noticed that there was about 4" to spare above the height marker at the front of the boat. But as the boat travelled under the bridge he could see that the gap was reducing – the bridge was cambered. He knocked the boat into reverse to slow down, but knew it wouldn’t be possible to stop completely before the wheelhouse roof reached the lowest part of the bridge, so it was ram it into full ahead (which digs the stern in) and duck!

The front edge of the PV panel on the wheelhouse roof just grazed the white salts off the bottom of the concrete lintel of the bridge. No further damage, thank goodness, but it was close. The bridges on that as with every canal are all given a specific height clearance, but this one was lower. We did, of course, remove the roof for the rest of the journey to Chagny and back a couple of days later.

Back in Fragnes a couple from New Zealand Raelene and Malcolm Arthur who are touring France by car, bicycle and tent stopped for a chat. We invited them on board for tea and cakes while the heavens opened for the most tremendous storm. We only hope that their tent, which had been left at their campsite some 5 miles away with the flap open, had survived the tempest!

Our next stop was in the town of Tournus, which Rhonda on SOMEWHERE had said was a lovely town, worth a visit, and she was right. We did the usual town circuit but were quite enchanted by its medieval streets and the truly lovely Eglise Saint Philibert. Napoleon awarded the town the Legion d’Honneur for its success in seeing off the Austrians in 1814!

So it has been a very sociable time this last week or so, with a bit of tourism thrown in for good measure, with more to come. Martha and John from DE GROENE LEEUW (The Green Lion) are hoping to drop by and stay over with us on Friday, and we are now moored up in Macon which is a good place for them to find us and park their car.

And find us they did: we had a fantastic evening with them and were entertained by the Charles Aznavour sound-alike performing on a stage on the quay. Not only that, but we watched the comings and goings of several hotel cruise ships, and we had a ringside view of the 14th century bridge as it was lit up.

The following morning we said goodbye to John and Martha, and started to prepare to leave ourselves. Just a few minutes later, they reappeared in some agitation, to tell us that their car had been towed away. It appeared that it had been parked in a space reserved for the Saturday market which we could now see spreading in every direction on the quayside.

Louise went with them to the Tourist Information Office as a first port of call for help, the Police Station being closed. They were told to take a taxi to the holding compound out of town to pay for it and pick it up. So we waved goodbye again as they left in the taxi and got back to Riccall to resume leaving, which we did.

Alex fired off a quick text to Martha to check progress, and we set off. A few minutes later, we received a reply text to say that the tourist office information was all wrong and they had had to return to town to go to the police station first. Poor John and Martha were in the police station going through endless documentation, along with huge amounts of fines and recovery costs, not to mention all the taxi fares.

Then much later we learnt, to cap it all, that having got away at 11 am, a water hose on the car had blown and they were being towed off the motorway! What a catalogue of disasters for them, poor things. We hope they arrived eventually at their daughter’s rented villa at Cap d’Antibes, but at the time of writing, we haven’t had confirmation of that!