Summer on the Saone

Last time we trekked south from Toul we took the Moselle upstream and then the Vosges, but this time we decided we wanted to cruise the Nancy 'embranchement' en route to the Vosges, so we headed off downstream on the Moselle to Liverdun for our first night away from Toul. This is one of our favourite moorings, having the most wonderful away-from-it-all feel when moored on the ducs d'Albe outside the little port area. We've never ventured into the little backwater off the Moselle, always a little nervous of depth, but we love the mooring on the river itself.

As we left our mooring in the morning we could see there were a few rowing pairs and fours on the river. Two were well in front of us near the left bank so we gave them plenty of room as we set off down the river. Then one pair started to move out towards the middle so Alex gave a hoot on the horn and instead of making for the bank again the pair started to try to get to our right basically heading straight for us. We had to do an emergency stop or we would have run them down. What an idiotic pair, but no apologies from them as we set off again.

Then, into Nancy itself. Lunch topside of the lock just off the river, and then we stopped at a double red bridge light. Of course, we telephoned VNF and were given the answer that it would open at 'dix-neuf heures'. This of course was nonsense as the canal itself closes at 6pm!! But, difficult to argue with limited French so we accepted defeat and stayed put. In fact the mooring we eventually backed up to, at Malzéville, turned out to be one of the best in Nancy so we were content enough. Eventually a German couple on an English Fairline cruiser came along and we explained the position. The lady wife spoke good French so she managed to discover that the reason for the unexpected closure was that there was to be a 'feux d'artifice' display later that night and the bridge was closed for safety reasons: VNF's Health and Safety policy didn't allow any random boats to pass while the fireworks were set up. So all was explained, or at least we thought it had been explained, but when there turned out to be NO fireworks later that night, we were all left a little perplexed!!

So onward the next morning towards the embranchement canal, 

Almost hidden from view

which we enjoyed doing, even if it was thirteen 'uphill' locks – each 3.15m deep, which caused some hilarity when we tried to get our ropes on way above our heads! You might think we would have got our act together, at least by the time we'd got to the top lock, number one, but NO – we were still taking three and four attempts to get the blasted things on! We thought that despite those slight delays we had done the flight in a pretty good time, but of course, pride comes before a fall, and the top lock was showing a double red – i.e. not operational. Now that would have been OK if there had been anywhere to moor, but no. We were flailing around immediately below a major road bridge with nothing to tie to save a VNF railing. So eventually, Louise climbed down the bow using the forecabin porthole, clambered up to the lock and eventually discovered the intercom to alert VNF. They came very quickly and we were through onto the summit level. Now 10 years ago we were unable to cruise this canal because it was closed because of a landslide on the summit level, which we were able to pinpoint on this trip because of the lack of any tree cover whatsoever! Then there was a narrows to negotiate, controlled by traffic lights, and then a slightly unwelcoming mooring for the night, but it was raining and a bit miserable so it was a TV night!

Then off bright and early to tackle the 5 downhill locks onto the Vosges, the canal we've been looking forward to re-doing for ages. It is a lovely canal, especially after its summit level, which we would arrive at in about a week's time, but before that we had another lock failure to contend with, another climb down the bow for Louise and another intercom call to VNF.

The next couple of gentle days passed by without incident, and then we arrived at northern Thaon, and moored up on a splendid concrete quay, complete with fendering and good bollards which was under construction 10 years ago. 

Thaon mooring - strange but great!

Well, it looks much the same now, adjacent to a wilderness area with Super U and Aldi 500m away on poor paths. No-one knows quite what this mooring is about as there is a strange jutting-out section between two good quays which seems to have no use, except to attract fishermen or bathers, but even they were sparse on the ground. This mooring is just into the rat-run for the 4 specially-built sand and gravel commercials which ply backwards and forwards over 5 kms and through 4 locks all day every day. The gravel barges load up at PK 76 and offload at PK 81 and start at 6am. They stop, seemingly wherever they are, at 7pm.   (We were hoping that they didn't work on Sundays as that would be our day for several ROFFs - roof off the wheelhouse for low bridges - as all-day sunshine was forecast.) 

Lovely Thaon conference centre

The barges' constant trundling makes mooring up in, and looking round Thaon a little problematic, but a bike ride from the outskirts with or without rain should sort that out!

Thaon was a nice little place with all sorts of independent shops (plus the ubiquitous Lidl), but more importantly, for us, a post office as we had an urgent birthday card to send for little Jasper coming up 6 years old. Then we set off to encounter a double red light at the first lock! A Dutch boat similarly stopped had rung VNF who said it would be a 2 hours delay while the engineer was called. We managed to reverse and moor up on one of the commercial gravellers and Alex went off to investigate. Between the engineer and Alex, the gate problem (a sheared bolt) was fixed and Alex had saved the day!!!!

Although we had seen Epinal by bike some years ago, we had never dared to enter the 'embranchement' as it was marked just 1.4m deep years ago. This time we were assured by VNF that it was 1.6m so we cruised in to meet up with EMMA (Paul and Jacky) and ETTIE again (Richard and Julia). 

A lovely port and so nice to be able to visit by BOAT!!

We stayed just the one night and set off bright and early to attack the 14 locks of the flight up to the summit level. All went pretty well according to plan and we achieved the whole lot in 3 hours despite having two hold-ups which required VNF presence.

Les Forges mooring was empty and we moored up in full sun perhaps not realising that we were in for a full fortnight of dazzling sun and exhausting heat! That was the first day we were badly affected, not by mosquitoes, but no-see-ums, those devilish little biters which you literally CAN'T see.

The descent of the Vosges from the summit is one of the loveliest on the whole canal system and we had been looking forward to it hugely. It was just as lovely as the first time we had done it in 2010, and we were able to moor in all the out-of-the-way places we had hoped for. In one of them, we had a storm to beat all storms in the late evening which was brilliant, and at another, we moored up with and met M-J and Michael on OLIVIA ROSE and enjoyed drinks and nibbles on RICCALL while chatting over boaty stuff.

EMMA had overtaken us on the summit and arrived in Fontenoy-le-Chateau ahead of us so was able to keep us informed regarding space (or not) on the quay. 

Excellent, if ruined chateau at Fontenoy

Moving bird of prey at Fontenoy

If you fail at Fontenoy, it is a long way and several locks before you could find a decent mooring. The mooring at Pont du Bois, while lovely, can only house one barge and when we did arrive, it was fully taken up by a strange looking craft called WILCAT skippered by Fred and his wife Francoise.  Alex was fascinated by it and had a long discussion with Fred, who had kindly helped us moor up on a tricky bank. The boat is entirely electric, powered by PV panels over the whole roof,  and was built by Fred from scratch.

WILCAT - congrats to Fred

The heat continued unabated while we were at Corre, (nice supper in the shade with Mike and Randi of GLISTENING STEEL – a shared boat). Now the temperatures soared to 44C, and France apparently had its hottest day ever recorded, and how we knew it without being told! It was impossible to keep RICCALL even vaguely comfortable despite our best efforts with shade cloths and regular wetting of our white sheets laid on the deck!

We managed to find a nice pontoon with shade, not for RICCALL, but for us to sit under, so we moored up and spent the afternoon under the bamboo bushes in reasonable comfort. 

A relief to find this mooring with afternoon shade for us

The adjacent house owner, however, decided to mow his lawn – all of it – twice, taking much of the afternoon to do so. Then the farmer, doing something noisy in his far-off field, decided to do the same in the field on the opposite canal bank. This went on until Alex finally came to bed at 10.30pm! We set the table for breakfast next morning on the back deck to take advantage of the cool of early morning, when a 10-year old boy arrived with his remote-controlled Tonka toy and started roaring it round the pontoon and adjacent grassy bank. Louise, in her best French managed to ask if he could possibly play with his vehicle somewhere else while we had breakfast! He left, wishing us 'bon journee'!

So to Conflandey, with its shady quay. EMPTY!! Amazing! 

RICCALL be-decked with her shade cloths

We had been there just a short while when the house owner came down to ask if we had any rubbish to get rid of. Also amazing! We said no, we were OK thanks. Then he explained he had to mow his lawn and was it OK? Of course, we said yes, and so out came the ride-on mower (2 hours) then the electric hand-push mower (1 hour) and then finally peace. 

Householder on his blasted mowing machine!

And then - Oh no! A hire boat arrived with 9 people on board, who proceeded to throw themselves off said boat for the next two hours, then have a barbecue on the pontoon, and then by some miracle, set off into the distance! You couldn't make it up!

Still  suffering from intense heat, we managed to get onto a part-shady pontoon next day, almost under a very smart new footbridge, which turned out to be rather noisy particularly when skate-boarders crossed. But that was the least of our troubles. 

Mid-afternoon there arrived three early twenties, one girl and two boys. They were DETERMINED to go swimming and we had taken their pontoon, but that didn't deter them. They came down onto the pontoon, not a metre from our back deck and two metres from Louise's chair, laid out their towels and proceeded to sunbathe and throw themselves off the pontoon, climbing the footbridge and throwing themselves off that!! And you just CAN'T concentrate on reading when all this is going on. Eventually our vibes must have had some effect as they gathered up their gear and took themselves off.

Is it just us?!!!

Having been disappointed by the lack of space at Soing village moorings, partly by too many boats, and partly by lack of depth (even outside a moored cruiser which kindly offered to have us alongside if there had been enough depth) we moored up on a fantastic 'private, but please respect this place' woodland location. This gave us good depth alongside, shade all day and into the evening and total peace and quiet!  Perfect!  One of our best moorings ever, but we have not been able to find out just who it belongs to, who takes care of it, etc.

Ahhh!

So we decided as moorings were pretty rare in this district, we'd just use ducs d'Albe at locks for the night and did just that at least three times. In Gray, which is a very nice town and the first place for weeks where real food shopping can be done, we moored on the VNF quay, with full approval from VNF. It was a Friday night, they were all getting off home early, and they clearly didn't give a toss if we moored there or not! So we did. For two nights and had another peek at the town, a meal out and re-met Sean and Lynn who we'd met 3 years ago in Namur. A meeting like this is just great. We had a coffee on RICCALL and chatted about our last 3 years cruising. It's great!

Sean and Lynne of ELLE - nice meet-up

Surprisingly, as we left Gray and came to Mantoche, we discovered it had space on the quay and though we expected it to be too shallow, it was actually fine and we managed a good mooring. The same cannot be said of Pontailler, our next stop. We DID stop, but were so anxious about the underwater shelf that we cast off an hour later and moved on, to find another duc d'Albe.

So our next mooring was at Auxonne. Despite tales of the pontoons being totally empty, when we arrived they were of course totally full, so with some trepidation we motored down to the 'steps', which boaters may know are downstream of the road bridge. Although there was a hotel barge moored up, DANIELE, there was plenty of room for us. The steps are 17 risers high and 80 metres long and there are 4 bollards on the very top, so another down-the-porthole descent for Louise. 

And here we stayed for 2 nights to investigate Auxonne, which we've never managed to visit before - a very nice town with a very handy railway station for collecting the car from Toul.

Our stay on the steps was pretty good, if a lot of gongoozlers around, but a couple of youngsters arrived and placed themselves on the steps right next to the boat with blasted RAP playing loudly!! - our least favourite music!  So we had no option - we closed ALL the wheelhouse windows and doors and put Elbow on the CD player at the highest volume setting! Well, sometimes you have to suffer to escape suffering!    Then that evening at about midnight music started to blast from a parked car.  After about half an hour of this Alex went up to the wheelhouse and shone his laser pointer into the car. One of the occupants got out and walked along the quay to see what was what. Alex glared at him then took fright and disappeared back down the stairs. This seemed to do the trick as they then drove off.  To cap it all we could see they were setting up for a festival the next day so we cast off and headed south.

Clearing of the steps for the festival

So then it was to a mooring in the Saint Jean de Losne old lock for our month's return to England. 

It's been a lovely first half of the year, despite the heat. The intensity of the heat however, has encouraged Alex to look again at air con!! I can only keep my fingers crossed. 

The route we've taken, probably like much of France, seems obsessed with cycles!!  Here are just a few of the strange, but clever structures we've seen over the last few weeks.