Clamecy is a lovely little town and was once one of the
assembly points for the gathering of wood to be floated down the river Yonne to
Paris which had run out of local wood for building and burning. There is a picture of Clamecy taken in the
late 1800s, showing the river chock-full of logs so that you could have walked
from one side of the other without getting your feet wet!
The logs were assembled and tied together into log ‘barges’,
then steered down the river by one or two men using the natural flow as their
motive power. The photo attached may
help to explain.
We travelled to the outskirts of the town on our bikes to
the usual Lidl and Leclerc to stock up and on our return found Phil and Terrie
of barge MR PIP waiting to say hello.
They were travelling in their campervan in the area when
they received our last blog and realised we were just ‘round the corner’ from
them. So we had a good catch up with
them before they had to rush off to see to their two new kittens, which they’d
left in the van.
When we looked round the cathedral in Clamecy Alex found one
of the doors to the tower had not been locked. (He always tries every possible
door just in case and usually no luck, but this time - result!) So he climbed to the very top and out onto
the square roof which had a parapet all round.
It was blowing a gale up there and as he shouldn’t have been there
anyway he had to keep his head well down as he squatted around admiring the
views and snapping them from between the balustrades.
Our trip back to Auxerre was now on a known canal/river so
we knew, or thought we did, where most of the shallow bits were and where it
was a ROFF situation. Despite this
previous knowledge though, we managed to go aground twice – once giving a boat
plenty of room to enter a lock and once moving over to allow another boat to
overtake.
On the way we encountered four ‘adventure boats’ on several
occasions, which had been moored at Clamecy, and were now moving slowly along
the Nivernais on an outward-bound-type trip with a million teenagers
aboard! Not a job for the faint-hearted!
We took the Vermenton branch this time and moored up for the
night in Accolay. It wasn’t quite wide enough to turn Riccall round so on leaving
we continued through the second and last lock, turned in the Vermenton basin
and retraced our steps back to the Nivernais and one of our favourite moorings
so far, at Bailly. This time we spent
the afternoon walking right up to the top of the vineyards for a magnificent
view of the Yonne valley. Our friends
Jean and Mike were due to drop in again on their way north so this was the
perfect spot, as they now knew where we’d be, having stayed there with us on
their way south. We had another lovely
evening with them and they agreed if they could leave some of their luggage for
us to bring back to the UK shortly, there was room in the car for Alex to be
given a lift to Seneffe to collect our own car.
It would only add about half an hour to their journey to Zeebrugge for
their ferry, and thanks very much Mike and Jean for that. Alex got back with our car late in the
evening.
We spent the next night on the shallow moorings upstream of
Auxerre as we knew the following day was going to be tricky and Alex cycled the
10kms back to Bailly to collect the car and parked it in Auxerre.
Next day we lowered the roof before setting off, so the Paul
Bert bridge in Auxerre town (limited height and depth noted in our canal book
and on the bridge itself!) was actually no problem, and when it came to the
turn and reverse into our arranged mooring place, communication was much easier
with the roof off and the whole manoeuvre went without a hitch (amazingly as
Riccall is usually virtually uncontrollable in reverse).
So now we had a safe place with electricity to leave Riccall
for a couple of weeks, and someone to keep an eye on the boat – perfect! Again thanks are due to David, our friend on
his barge CARMEN, for acting as intermediary to get us the temporary mooring
and checking on Riccall in our absence.
We drove back to the UK, spending a lovely evening and night
with Peter and Nicci on AURIGNY in Deinze in Belgium, then two nights with
Julia in Bedford, one night with Michael and Sylvia in Harrogate, where we
could admire all the preparations for Le Grand Depart of the Tour de France and
finally home to Newton Aycliffe.
Unusually for us we spent all of the Saturday watching alternately the
women’s tennis final and Le Grand Depart from Harrogate on television, and
Sunday watching more Tour de France and the men’s tennis final!
Our main reason though for this return, the christening of
Louise’s first beautiful little granddaughter, Sophie, was not for several
days, so we had the usual dashing about collecting together everything we
needed to bring back to France with us and fitting in a visit to brother and
sister-in-law David and Bun in Wedmore, and Emily and Ric in Bristol.
The christening itself was just perfect, and we spent a
further great night with friends from way back, Max and Judith in Kent, before
catching a morning ferry and the 6 hour drive back to Auxerre.
We decided to spend a few more days on the mooring in
Auxerre as it was just so lovely. We were due to be joined by friends Sylvia
and Michael in a few days time in Migennes, a few kilometres downstream on the
Yonne and just onto the start of the Canal du Bourgogne – but not such a nice
mooring.
When we finally got to Migennes we still had a day before
our visitors arrived so we sussed the station, train times, did a bit of
shopping and were amused to see a pair of elderly scavengers who dropped by
every hour or so to see if anything had been left by hirers in the rubbish
bins!
Alex was also suffering a slight hangover because when we
had arrived the night before we had been joined for post-dinner drinks by four
multi-national hirers John, Viv, Grant and Itati who were about to leave their
boat the following morning. We all
finally got to bed about 1am but in the morning they very kindly gave us all
their leftovers, including a full crate of beer and two bulging carrier bags of
goodies! Many thanks to them and bad
luck the scavengers!
The night Michael and Sylvia arrived in Migennes, the local
bar had become the centre for an all-night party! M and S were tired enough after their
day-long journey to us to sleep through it all but we had a fitful night until
5.30am when the last of the partygoers eventually stopped chatting and drove
off. The goods trains, which ran all
night on the opposite side of the port, didn’t help either!
We set off for St Florentin with Michael and Sylvia,
stopping for the usual enforced lunch on the way (the locks here shut 12 to
1pm). At Maladerie we got to our first
ROFF. This gave M and S a treat, as it
was the first time they had ever seen the roof being lowered into the well
deck.
After a thankfully peaceful night we all went by train to
see Auxerre, as we knew M and S would love it as much as we had. Had a great day, a super lunch and spent
another quiet night back in St Flo.
The following day we came to our second ROFF at Germiny –
the lockkeeper just had to wait for us while we completed the manoeuvre. But she was quite happy to do so, and we got
a thumbs-up from her and two passing lady walkers when all was completed. We finally moored up at Flogny where we had
free water, and ate an excellent barbecue cooked by Michael on our new
barbecue. (We have rarely bothered with
barbecues in the past because the old-fashioned charcoal-burning type is such a
trial, so we had finally used the opportunity of M and S’s visit to treat
ourselves to a new gas type, which was a great success.)
Another good quiet night at Flogny and on to Tonnerre, where
we had an evening and morning to view the town with its amazing ancient wash-house
and interesting cathedral on the hill.
We also learnt that Tonnerre had been subjected to a serious
mis-directed bombing by the American Air Force in May 1944 in the lead up to
D-day. Can’t think quite what their
proper target might have been so far south! but it left the town in ruins. Sad,
sad pictures of the time were on display in the cathedral.
