Lyon to Saint Jean de Losne

 

We had a reasonably uneventful cruise up the Rhone from Lyon to H₂O’s old lock mooring taking about 5 days. However, we did have an altercation with a fisherman when we reached Tournus.

There was space on the quay behind a large barge called Baron d’Ecluse, which at first we assumed to be a hotel barge, but right in the middle of this empty quay was a fisherman. There was a space on the quay ahead of Baron d’Ecluse, but we knew it to be the mooring for the trip boat which was coming up behind us, so we asked the fisherman to move as we were mooring up. He absolutely flatly refused to move, telling us to moor here and there, on the finger pontoons (impossible as limited to 15m and 20 tonnes) on the passenger boat mooring (no). Eventually we managed to alert the captain of Baron d’Ecluse and seeing our problem, he suggested we moor on them, which we gratefully did.

Baron d'Ecluse

But, who do these fishermen think they are? God Almighty or something? Surely the quays were built for boats, not fishing? A perennial problem.

Once safely moored Louise rang Tourist Information in Tournus to alert them to the problem. They said it was a police matter and they would pass it on. We took a photo of the fisherman and his van and emailed both to the TIO. Then, blow me down!, if 10 minutes later the bugger started to pack up and leave!

However, despite this unpleasant encounter, our overnight stay alongside Baron d’Ecluse was peaceful and pleasant. We arrived at H₂O and the old lock in good time and went to suss the trains at the local station for our journey to collect the car: a lot more trains are now available at Saint Jean-de-Losne than there used to be which meant planning our itinerary was much easier.

Alex decided we would pay full price for the ticket to Dijon and try to persuade the ticket-seller at Dijon to give us an ‘old age’ discount for the rest of the journey to Moissac where we had left the car. We’ve often found that a discount has been given despite our not having a Senior Travel Card so it would be worth a try.

We arrived at Dijon in good time (7.30am) only to discover that the ticket office didn’t open till 9.00 am and our next onward train was at 9.20.

We looked at buying tickets on the automatic ticket machine to see what sort of price it was going to be and Hey! What’s this? ALL the trains for today and the next two days were fully booked! Not a single ticket to be had.

We then found ONE multi-ticket for Thursday’s journey which Alex immediately bought and then waited for the ticket office to open to see if they could help by finding matching tickets for Louise, otherwise it would have been a long journey AND a night in a hotel (alone) for Alex.   And yes, the young man came up trumps. Louise could do the first of the three legs first class and the other two trains second class for an extra €30.  OK, but we would be travelling in different coaches never mind not in seats together for the whole first two legs – 3½ hours then 2½ hours. The last 20 minutes from Montauban to Moissac was in a local train, where seats were free.

And of course we had to change our overnight booking near Moissac and our ferry booking for a later one as well. What a palaver!

Yes, we should have booked in advance as it was the French holiday season, but we have never had this problem before even at the same time of year. We think it has to be the staycation effect of Covid.

However, on the Thursday all went well and after 4 trains we got to Moissac around 5 o’clock and thankfully when Alex got to the car (leaving Louise at the station with our haversacks) it started OK: in fact, there was a very faded note on the driver’s door asking if we wanted to sell it!

And then, when we opened the boot to throw the luggage in, there was the remains of a cucumber!

Well, we had done an extensive shop at Moissac before setting off some months previously but on reaching Toulouse, we realised that we had ‘mislaid’ said cucumber, even though it was on our till receipt. So Alex had a bright idea and rang friends still on a boat in Moissac and asked them to check the boot with the hidden spare key and if it was there to help themselves (rather than have it putrefy in the heat of the car boot while we were away).

But for some reason they couldn’t find it, so we had to assume we must have left it in the shop. Thankfully, it hadn’t putrefied and attracted swarms of flies as we had expected: it had just dessicated, shrunk and turned yellow. We can only think it must have been hiding under the roof bars we keep in the boot.

                                                                                

                                                                                The famous cucumber!

We got to our hotel for the night at about 7 o’clock making it a 12 hour day of travel. The next day we returned to H₂O and the following one home. And after all the lorry problems a week or so before, which we’d seen on the internet, the ferry was virtually empty, as indeed was Dover port when we arrived.

We returned to the barge after a 5½ week break in the UK, but when we consulted VNF and our PC Navigo program we learned that as a result of the drought and/or weed, each of the routes we had hoped to take north are closed for one reason or another so there is no chance of getting to Seneffe before the year end: we would just have to winter in St Jean De Losne.

At first we were moored on our own bank-side place - nice shady spot after 4pm!  

                      Shady spot under trees for boat and car

But then we were told we'd have to move before September 9th as, because of the difficulties many boats were having getting north, many more were expected into the old lock.  Thus, we'd be moored outside a 38 metre barge - TELEMAK whose deck is like the deck of an aircraft carrier!!  

Close to the old lock is this enormous grain silo quay which loads 80m barges

On one of our day trips in the car from Saint Jean we followed the old natural line of the river at Seurre - nowadays boats take a man-made 'derivation'.  That leaves this lovely port of Le Chatelet 'up a blind alley' and as the river is rather shallow over its 5 kilometres - no chance for RICCALL!

The air con is still being problematical but at last we have managed to arrange for some engineers to look at it and they say there is a leak on the internal wall unit which is irreparable.  So - take out the wall unit and hope to buy a new one when we get back to the UK. This air con is proving to be very expensive!!

Added to that, Alex has a problem with a tooth, so we are cutting this visit short to return to the UK again to have it sorted.

What a year!!

Here are the stats for this year:

Kilometres  1137

Locks           206

Bridges            2

Etang de Thau to Lyon

 

Our troubles are not over yet! Nothing like!  

We had a good trip over the Etang du Thau arriving in Frontignan some two and a half hours after we set out.

A distant view of pretty villages on the Etang

We had, with some difficulty, managed to get our navigation aid ‘PC Navigo’ up and running the previous evening, but after two years of non-use, we had almost forgotten how to use it.  However, it gave us the correct course to follow across the Etang which takes away some of the concern over whether you can spot the next set of channel marker posts!  Binoculars essential.

While we were in Frontignan we took advantage of our friends' Richard and Julia's car for doing heavy shopping - several trips - and treated ourselves to an afternoon out in Sete - a five minute train ride away, where we had drinks sitting alongside the maritime canal near the commercial docks - in deck chairs!!

Day out over, at this point we were very much in need of fuel but, as it was the weekend with plenty of socialising on the cards, we decided to wait until Monday to start ringing round to get a camion to deliver the 500 litres we needed.

Come Monday, and we went straight to the Mairie to ask for their help in making the necessary phone calls, but the unwilling receptionist, when she eventually made an appearance at her desk some 15 minutes after we had arrived, made a couple of phone calls and informed us (we think) that they couldn’t deliver in the port for ecological reasons (in case of a spill, presumably). We took from this that it would be possible on the canal, out of the port, but she couldn’t help us further.

Right, we thought, Palavas-les-Flots would do and luckily for us, there was room on the mooring opposite the VNF depot. We chatted to the VNF staff but they were unable to help at all apart from suggesting the local Carrefour, which they said had a pump for boats on the Lez river, a short distance away. OK, yes, but only for petrol for all the little boats, of which there are thousands in this area.

A hirer on the same mooring as us, Mark (and Nina) when hearing of our plight, offered to make some calls for us with his fluent French. The fourth one of these seemed to bear fruit, in that they sent a form by email for us to fill in and return. Then we could have a delivery.  We filled in this form (most complicated and asking the most tricky questions) and returned it. We heard nothing for 2 days so after two further emails to them Mark gave them another call. ‘Oh, no, we can’t deliver to a boat in this area for ecological reasons’!!  So, basically, it seems that you can’t get a delivery at all between Agde and the Petit Rhone and we wonder how many plaisance bargees are aware of this.

However, the pontoon on the Lez at the back of Carrefour was close to the car fuel pumps so the decision was made to take the boat there, moor on the pontoon and use our 3 x 20 litre drums to hand-haul 60 litres at a time into the tank on RICCALL.

In the meantime, Alex took a short walk past the old mooring which we used 12 years ago but now festooned with little day boats, and on the way, he spotted 3 guys with vans saying ‘Climatisation’, the upshot being that one of the young guys agreed to fix our air con. This would make it the second repair in a month: the first one worked for a week and then failed. Let’s hope he gets it right!

Cori did indeed come to refill our air con and reckoned that one of the joints had a small leak, so tightened it up and refilled with gas. But when it came to payment he demanded €200!!! Well! We hadn’t asked how much he was going to charge, assuming that it would be about the same as the last guy (€80) so we just had to pay. He saw us coming of course – desperate and a captive audience. (He had seemed such a nice guy, it was a surprise to find he was a robber.)

We then took RICCALL up the Lez watching the depth closely and managed to moor up on the rather rickety pontoon at the pumps.

                               Alex ready for the off                            First three filled - only 21 to go

The next two hours were spent filling the three 20 litre drums, heaving them onto the boat and emptying them into the tank. All went surprisingly well and we spent the night on the pontoon absolutely exhausted – but with an extra 480 litres in the tank.

Our subsequent crossing of the Camargue meant some lovely moorings and sights to behold:

A couple of days later we were on the Petit Rhone, then the Rhone proper.  Now of course, we were against the current and in open water, so using more revs per minute than on the canals. Alex was sure the engine sounds noisier than it used to with a strange rattle which comes and goes.  Something else to worry about?  Or is he becoming paranoid?

At the first Rhone lock Alex opted to go for the mooring above the lock for the night as the lock was ready for us and another 4 boats were all milling around ready to use the lock. Oh dear! Louise was not happy – the lower pontoon was empty, but who knew if the upstream pontoon would also be empty. No – there were two boats already moored there. But hey! One of them is leaving to use the lock, so a polite request for the other boat to make a bit of room might be considered reasonable. This was met with a rather surly effort to move one metre so we tagged on the end of the pontoon, then discovered they were leaving in one hour (!) after which we had it all to ourselves.

But overnight no fewer than five hotel barges plied their way up and down between midnight and 5 o’clock in the morning: one of them sat for half an hour with his prop engaged waiting for the lock to be ready, causing us huge disturbance. But of course, in this context, might is right!!

We have to admit though that despite the occasional annoyance of these behemoths, they are amazing to watch.

The next day we put into Port 2, l’Ardroise, one of our favourite stops on the Rhone, to wait out the wind for a couple of days and give ourselves a break. Ariane, the harbour-mistress, was her usual cheerful self and came round for aperos with us and a QLR of RICCALL the next evening.

                                                                Louise and Ariane at Port 2

And outside Ariane's mobile home - a submerged 30m barge!!

                      RICCALL seen from the cliffside above                                                        Port 2, l'Ardoise

Moving on, we had a long day and finally moored on the lock mooring above Chateauneuf Ecluse. Moorings for our size of boat are almost non-existent on the Rhone, making it a pretty tricky voyage, so using the lock moorings is our only option and to be fair, no-one has ever queried or objected to this.  Chateauneuf Ecluse - one of the most beautiful moorings with a 360 degree vista of mountains never fails to lift the spirits with the Alps to the east and the Cevennes, the foothills of the Massif Central to the west.

Alex went for a stroll round to the lock and back and on the way spotted a very large tortoise! He said hello to it but it didn’t seem very friendly and drew its head under its shell. What on earth is a rather interestingly coloured tortoise doing wandering around a place like this? When Alex returned the next morning to take a photo of the tortoise, it was, of course, nowhere to be seen.

That night, as Alex was brushing his teeth, a small cruiser appeared at his very porthole asking if they could come alongside! Yes, of course!  So Alex quickly finished his teeth-brushing and went up and helped them moor at the front end of RICCALL. They had just missed the last locking down which would have got them to Port Viviers so were very grateful to be able to come alongside. Only a couple of hotel barges in the night to disturb us and our neighbours were up and off by 7.30 am.

The next night we had salmon steaks for supper but unfortunately, Louise’s portion seemed to come with added --ella!  As a result she was ‘ill’ in the night and suffered cramps for several days afterwards. Alex suffered no ill effects, so his bit must have been OK.

On another occasion, we had moored up downstream of the lock (having informed CNR of our intention) and settled down for the night. Then a German boat – ARTUR – appeared and we helped them moor up on us. The lock lights went green for entry and they set off. "Aren’t you coming too?" he asked. "No" we said, "We are spending the night here."  "But it is a mooring for waiting for lock operation only."  "Yes, well, we are waiting for lock operation - tomorrow morning."  "Oh, the typical English sense of humour" he laughed!  We had enjoyable encounters with them on a couple of further occasions.

When we finally reached Lyon’s Parc Nautic du Confluent – seven days after setting off from Saint Gilles) – we were met with a frantic and chaotic scene – it was boat carnival weekend!!

                                                       The scene which greeted us at Lyon!

We’d decided to spend a couple of nights there for more recovery time. It’s expensive, but then so are all the very few moorings in this area and it is a great spot. The port is fine and once the carnival had ended by 6pm, all was quiet and peaceful. The carnival included sail boats, canoes, swimmers, two sapeurs pompiers safety boats, and two dragon boats complete with drums and teams of amateur rowers.

Any boat over 11 metres moors on the southern quay of the port, with the little boats on finger moorings tucked in close to the Capitainerie. Both ARTUR and OMEGA were moored up on the finger moorings when we arrived. We’d passed through several locks with one or other of them. The Swedish gentleman from OMEGA came round to chat on the second day and told us they had bought their boat, a cruiser, in Slovenia, made their way to the Med, cruised round Venice and the toe of Italy into the Petit Rhone and up to Lyon. Their onward journey was via the Doubs and the Rhine to Stockholm where they live. What a journey! Makes our little trip from Buzet to Belgium seem quite tame!

A few additional pictures to give a sense of where we have been and are.

                                   Bollene Ecluse - the deepest on the Rhone at 22 metres

Central nucleaire de Cruas - with lovely picture of child on the side

                                                              Lovely Rhone-side town.  

                                            Could be Voulte or Pouzin!  Answers on a postcard!

Buzet to Toulouse, back to Moissac and to Toulouse and on, and on and on!!

 

Well here we are again, trying not to bore you all with more rubbish about the trials and tribulations on RICCALL!

We promised ourselves that we would give up the blog altogether this year but somebody said they liked it. So, just for you Julia, here is the next instalment.

We have had nothing to say for the last two years, what with Covid and Brexit and what not, but last autumn (2021 we were informed by our winter mooring capitaine at Buzet that a tree had fallen onto the back of the boat!

The photos looked pretty horrific but when we arrived, in haste, a few days later, the Communauté de Communes (local council) had cleared the tree from the back of the barge and the damage sustained was one bent back rail and one smashed PV panel (and less importantly, two tarpaulins which had been covering the wheelhouse roof).

The council workers jacked the rail back into an approximate position and offered to pay for a new PV panel and tarps. Great! But we have yet to see the payment. Fingers crossed.

                                                      Three men on a boat!!!

 On the plus side, we spotted little

 Kevin Kingfisher on our deck!

In  early spring we went through the whole palaver of getting a six-month French visa for this year as, for various reasons, we had decided against getting a Carte Sejour when we could have done so before Brexit struck. (Louise says “Mea Culpa”.)

The effort and cost of the visa makes it questionable as to whether it’s all worth it! But this year as our plan is to travel north again up the Rhone we just can’t rely on being able to achieve that in 90 days.

So we set off from Buzet mid April, for a leisurely trip to Ramonville, Toulouse, for a couple of weeks in dry dock, which we had had booked for ages, this to renew our ESTRIN and replace the keel cooling pipes which we think now have a minor leak (not something to contemplate getting worse on the Rhone).

We were on the Garonne Lateral Canal for two years 12 years ago, and marked up all the bridges in our canal guide as to whether they were passable with roof ON or not - ROFF. We confirmed our notes again when passing through in 2019.

This spring though as we travelled towards Toulouse, we noticed that the water level was up a bit. Even so, as we approached Dieupentale bridge, which our book told us was tight, we thought if the height marker at the bow of RICCALL went though OK, the wheelhouse would, as normal.

The height marker did indeed go through OK but three-quarters of the way through there was a horrendous graunching as the roof struck the underside of the bridge and with 70 tons of inertia behind it RICCALL graunched along for a metre or so. The boat eventually came to a sickening halt.

We were stuck absolutely fast. As we tried to manoeuvre the barge left or right, forward or backward, we could hear the PV panels disintegrating!

We rang VNF and explained the situation as best we could. They said they would send help and be with us in 45 minutes.

The bief was 17 kms long and the usual practice of lowering the water level in the pound, would take forever, even if VNF had been prepared to do it, so we got on with it ourselves.

Alex sprang into action and retrieved our tirfor, which we have kept in deep, deep store since we went aground on the Marne. Having been rescued by a team using a tirfor on that occasion, our first action on getting home that year, was to buy a tirfor on ebay (£50) and have it on the boat.

It’s a heavy old thing and by the time Alex had set it up, worked out again how it worked, tied ropes to bollards on the barge and some fence posts on the shore and given it a couple of pulls on the lever he was knackered!

But lo and behold, at that moment a young man on a bicycle turned up and offered his help. “Oh thanks, Are you sure? That would be great”.

It turned out he was a volunteer rowing instructor and thus very suited to generating a backwards and forwards leverage motion using the tirfor. Being young and strong and taking turns with Alex, after two hours overall, we eventually scraped our way back out of the bridge hole.

We have to give heartfelt thanks to Nicolas without whom we might still be under the bridge. (Of course, VNF never did make an appearance!)

When we reached Grisolles, our overnight stop, we easily discovered Nicolas in his rowing club adjacent to the canal and invited him for aperos. He was very good company, spoke English extremely well, but was preparing his team for an away competition, so could only spend a short time with us.

We finally got to Toulouse but on the journey up through the locks (ROFF for this section, no question) the alternator decided to stop working! So now we are waiting to go into dry dock together with our friends Julia and Richard on ETTIE, during which time Alex hopes to replace two of the PV panels which, although damaged, are still giving some output, get the alternator working properly, mend the leak in the overhead skylight in the kitchen, get the leak on the cooling pipes fixed and refix the rear bollards which were originally seated on wood and which is now rotten - and so it goes on!

After some carry-on with wooden blocks on the crossbeams to accommodate our keel and keel cooling pipes we were eventually in the dry dock and high and dry.

Once we got a closer look, the cooling pipes themselves were still on good shape: the problem was that we had touched something pretty hard at some point which had caused an indentation in one of the pipes, right up to and including the screw fitting into which it was connected.

This is where the slight leak was, and because the screw fitting had been so distorted it would be impossible to unscrew the pipe. So the welder did his best but the proximity of the keel and the underside of the boat meant it was impossible for him to weld the top of the joint (no room, no vision) so a very minor leak still exists.

The rest of the boat has been high pressure washed and sprayed to the water line. The ESTRIN surveyor Willem has been and given the barge a largely clean bill of health and at the same time given Louise and Alex a hefty dose of COVID which we kindly and unwittingly passed on to Richard (ETTIE) who came to supper the following night while Julia was back in the UK.

So we entered our second week in dry dock feeling weak with Covid, but it’s dry dock after all and you have to do what you have to do while you’re there, regardless of how you feel.

In terms of Covid Alex had nearly the worst sore throat he can remember while Louise had a continuous streaming nose: strange – the same disease and two totally different presentations.

When questioned, our surveyor agreed it was probably he who had infected us, didn’t apologise but hoped it had not been too bad!

It was our fault as well, of course, as we always wear masks when shopping but failed to ask Willem to take a test before coming to us, we didn't wear masks while he was with us and we didn't give significance to the occasional coughing fit he had. We let our guard down. Idiots!

We sent off for a replacement alternator from the company which had originally reconditioned ours and at huge expense it was delivered on our second Thursday in dock. At first the output was too high and the Sterling control system went into overdrive to shut it off. Then after a couple of other minor tweaks it decided to die completely, like our existing alternator. So it appears that maybe the standard regulator is somehow taking the alternators out.

We were told of an alternator expert near Villeneuve sur Lot, so we limped back to the free mooring at Escatalens where we plugged in and took the original alternator and control box up to the guys at Villeneuve sur Lot on Monday.

They had some hiccup and didn’t get to look at it till Friday, so the new diodes were supposed to arrive on Tuesday but they then said it would be Monday (6 days later than promised). And we can’t test the regulator until we have got the alternator fixed so to save time and uncertainty we have ordered a new regulator from the UK.

The next disappointment is that with the heat really warming up we thought we would get the recently installed air con working to cool the bedroom. On, no we won’t!! Over the two years or so since we installed it it has run out of cooling gas, so its not working either. So far we are onto our second air con engineer who might agree to fix it. It just needs a re-charge even if there is a small leak. It would last long enough for this summer!

We have moved form Escatalens where they switched off the water and electricity without warning (yes, I know it was all free) to Castelsarrasin. But the spot where we are moored is booked for ROSA the hotel barge next week and we need the continuity of stable mooring so we are now moving to Moissac where we are promised a mooring for as long as it takes.

This is doubly good because Alex has just succumbed to a medical problem in the nether regions which he has had before and hopefully the doctors in Moissac can sort it out again as has been the case in the UK on the last two occasions.

Who said boating was a gentle and relaxed pastime?!

Actually, it turned out over the next few days that the medical problem might actually have been just bruising from the bicycle seat when Alex rode over some rather rough ground. Well there’s a plus!

We collected the car from Escatalens with the kind help of Dee from Zeelandia, who gave us a lift there. When we got to Moissac we caught the train back to Castelsarrasin for the car, but in all this as the weather gets hotter we noticed that the air con in the car was not as cool as it should be, so that’s another thing that needs sorting out!

Having trawled the internet for local garages we did a drive round and hit on one which offered to replenish the car cooling agent the following day for the princely sun of €64. We no longer care now, we will pay anything to get all these jobs done. Unfortunately, air con engineers don't want to know when ‘boat’ is mentioned. So we learned from this and trawled on line again and made a short drive in the car to suss-out a place on the outskirts of Moissac and bingo! The lovely Christine rang her partner and he was prepared to come to the boat, the very next morning, to do the re-charge.

Pascale did indeed come to the boat (another €80 but so what?!). We also heard from the alternator repair guys to say the new regulator had been delivered and everything was ready for pick up.

So after the air-con recharge on the car had been fixed we set off for the 100kms drive to pick up said alternator.

Next day, with some trepidation, Alex re-installed the alternator and new regulator and gave it a go. NO OUTPUT!

To cut a long story short, after two days struggling to find out what was wrong, Alex eventually discovered an earth connection he had made which was incorrect and should not have been made (actually it was a tachometer output for the alternator not an earth as he had thought).

Once that was discovered, everything seemed OK until he reconnected the Sterling microprocessor controller when everything went haywire again. So - disconnect that and just run it on the standard regulator and all seems well.

At last we're off!