Canal de Bourgogne II

Not a bad spot to break down!

The countryside just seems to get better and better - unlike the weather. We have had some brilliant, hot sunny days and some torrential downpours, complete with thunder and lightning. There are a few more boats about now so we've been able to do a bit of socialising as well as exploring the local area.
We had a bit more time to explore than we anticipated due to a breakdown! We were lined up ready to enter a lock when David suddenly called out that there was a problem - something wrong with the accelerator. I explained to the eclusiers who hauled us into the lock with ropes where we were able to tie up and investigate - the accelerator cable had broken! The eclusiers hauled us out of the lock and we moored just below it.
After an initial (very slight) panic, it all turned out fine. In a beautiful spot once again, we were able to get the motorbike off and head for the nearest port to arrange for a new cable to be sent to their address. Good old asap supplies!

Shiny, new roof lights.

Semur-en-Auxois

Chateau Bussy-Rabutin

Semur-en-Auxois

Abbaye de Fontenay - UNESCO site

Abbaye de Fontenay

David says....Really interesting, lazy & unproductive time, every day, sometimes similar but always  different. Mooring places often very quiet, v.dark at night, most street lighting off at midnight. Country walks & cycling (all those tow paths, back doors into quiet villages). Best French inland area for landscape & wildlife. Landscape a comfortable scale, historic towns, amazing chateaux & old industrial  sites, an Abbey or two. Farmyards in villages, nightingales sing all night......frogs croak. Lots of badgers, snakes, lizards, coipu, birds of prey. Fish in weedy canals, very little other traffic on canal, a boat a day, sometimes a few more.  

Canal de Bourgogne

We finally left St Jean de Losne on 26th April and are now in Pouilly-en-Auxois. It seems like we have been cruising a lot longer than 2 weeks, but that's the thing when you're in a different place every few days - time appears to pass a lot slower. I did read some research on that once. I think the gist of it was that time seems to go slower when you're learning all the time, or having lots of new experiences. So, as we get older, most of us have fewer new, learning experiences and time seems to pass a lot quicker.
So far, we are loving the Canal de Bourgogne. The weather hasn't been great all the time - lots of rain and wind, with some sun in between, but the scenery is fantastic. There are a lot of locks on this canal but they have been very easy. We have had an eclusier with us all the time (sometimes 2 or 3), all the locks have been prepared for our arrival, they're not too deep so we've been able to get the ropes on relatively easily and have been able to pass through 10 or 11 in a morning.
We had a cultural weekend in Dijon, taking advantage of its excellent free museums, and then left the bright lights of the city for the peace and quiet of the countryside. Or, so we thought - they have some very noisy frogs in France. We had one of our worst night's sleep with a frog right beside the cabin. David even got up and poked it with the boat hook, to no avail, the croaking continued right through the night. Needless to say, we changed our mooring the following morning!
The canal is very quiet (why isn't it busier?) but we have met some lovely people along the way. That's one of the things I will miss about this way of life. Everyone we meet is welcoming and helpful and has a different story about how they came to be cruising the canals of France.

We fancied a bit of colour on the rudder.

Typical lockside scene.

Around Barbirey-sur-Ouche.

Getting all the local info from the eclusiere.

Localised flooding on the Ouche.

Chateauneuf - a fairy tale setting.

Heading into the Pouilly tunnel.

Johanne is handling really well without her keel. Certainly as good as before, if not better. I have painted the inside of the galley cupboards and David has been re-furbishing the cabin roof. It's been painted and he's now glazing the skylights.

Drydocking

Well, we finally made it into the dry dock (and I use the term 'dry' very loosely!) and have had the keel removed from Johanne. So far, things have gone pretty smoothly.
Being unsure of her exact draft, we wondered if the lip at the entrance to the dock would be a problem, but David drove the boat in without even a scrape. It took the diver a while to get the supports right but, once he was done, they drained the dock and there we were, high and dry.

 

 

Starting to cut the keel.

No secret stash inside - just air and a bit of water!

Polishing the propeller.

Scraping off the old antifouling.

I did some too!

Painting the keel-less bottom!

Les Grands Froids

It has been really cold here for about a week now. We had planned to go hiking with some friends on the 1st but due to the freezing weather, we decided to head for Beaune instead. It was too cold to wander around so we visited it's famous Hotel Dieu. It was built in 1443 by Nicolas Rolin, Chancellor to the Duke of Burgundy, as a Hospice for the poor. He very sensibly donated a saltworks and a vineyard to provide a perpetual income. Beautiful building and interesting museum - it was in use as a hospital until 1971 and still houses a retirement home. As well as the usual items you might expect to find in a hospital museum, there is a superb collection of 16th Century tapestries and some very fine religious art.

The temperature seems to hover around -6 during the day and has been down to -12 overnight. It's really sunny so we have been out for some short walks  - the ice sculptures around the lock are amazing. The canal is completely frozen. David did have a go at breaking it up around our boat, but it re-froze so quickly, he decided it wasn't worth it. As the temperature drops overnight, the expanding ice pushes against the hulls of the boats and forces cracks to appear. The reverberations of this cracking echo through the boat and it sounds and feels like we're colliding with a large, heavy object. We're getting used to it now, but the first time it happened we both woke up with a start wondering what on earth was happening.

New Year

We've been back on the boat for just over a week now and, although it was lovely to see everyone in the UK over Christmas, it was also lovely to get back here. I cycled into St Jean for freshly-baked baguette the morning after we arrived and felt 'at home' again.
Our journey back was pretty smooth - lots of traffic on the A12 and M25, of course, and then clear, unbusy roads as soon as we drove off the train at Calais. That's one of the main things we both like about France - it's a lot less densely populated than the UK.
We've had some fairly mild weather but the meteo says there is a cold spell coming up and it has just started snowing. The central heating and the wood stove keep us nice and cosy.

As we came back in the car, we were able to take advantage of lower UK prices and bring back lots of supplies. The underside of the rail around the outside of the boat is full of rust holes and David has been repairing this by welding on some steel bars. I have been recovering some old aluminium deck chairs, having bought the canvas at the fabulous Cheap Shop in Tiptree.

As most of you probably know by now, my rental house is in need of some fairly heavy-duty repairs and, consequently, I shall be coming back to the UK on 16th Feb to work for 6 weeks. That will bring me back here around Easter, in time for our stay in the dry dock and then cruising.

le Val d'Amour

This week's walk was a lot gentler - more rolling countryside than dramatic drops - amongst the vineyards of the Val d'Amour.
Lots of interesting fungi in the woods:

Arbois

We started this week's walk in the pretty town of Arbois. It involved quite a lot of climbing again, but it was more spread out and less steep than last week.
We had high hopes for more stunning panoramas from the top of the gorge, but we ended up looking down into a thick sea of fog.
However, much of our walk was through woodland and the mist made it very atmospheric. When we stopped crunching through the beech leaves, there was a kind of dense, comforting silence - interrupted only by the occassional birdsong. It was quite magical at times, especially as we came across a group of wild chamois cavorting amongst the ruins of an ancient chateau.
It was noticeably colder this week and, 16km later, we were more than ready for a vin chaud at a local hostelry!