New Territory

We headed north on Wednesday, May 10, and it was a mere 4 kilometers to the confluence with the Aisne River and new cruising territory for us. We had a bit of difficulty accessing the first lock on the Aisne, because there was no one in the control booth, no answer to our vhf hails, and the lock phone number in our cruising guide was incorrect. I finally managed to make contact with someone in a centralized vnf office, and two phone calls later someone showed up to let us into the lock and give us a telecommande device for operating the locks further along the river. 

And then it began to rain, earlier in the day than predicted (of course!) We were already driving from inside, because it had been too gray, cool, and damp to be comfortable on the flybridge.  It's a good thing I had decent foul weather gear.

Going through locks in the rain--what fun!

We didn't meet another boat during the 4 1/2 hours that we cruised that day. The Aisne has smaller locks than the Oise and less commercial barge traffic. And midweek in May is not exactly primetime for recreational boats. As for general impressions, the riverbanks are pretty much solid trees, so there's not much to see other than the waterway itself. 

Our first stop on the Aisne was at the village of Vic-sur-Aisne. The rain stopped and the sun came out, which allowed us to stretch our legs and get a quick look at the town.

The lack of mowing made mooring a challenge. First we had
to locate the bollards, then we had to beat the grass into
submission so that the line would actually settle around
the bollards and not just rest on the springy, long grass. But
we were happy to have working electricity and water. 

The village was adjacent to the Western Front in World War I, and thus was a site of heavy fighting where it sustained significant damage. That is true for all of the areas that we boated through this past week and will travel in during the next 2 or 3 weeks to come.

The Chateau of Vic-sur-Aisne. Earliest
records were from the 7th century, but
rebuilt often over the centuries. It is
now a wedding and events venue.

The local parish church, much restored.

   

The rainy day gave way to a perfectly still evening, and
river water like a mirror.

On Thursday, May 11, we finally had a dry morning for cruising, but it was still chilly enough that we did our driving from inside. By lunchtime we were moored in the town of Soissons. Its roots go back to Roman times, and by the early Middle Ages it was a royal town, chosen as the capitol city of the Merovingians by Clovis, King of the Franks. Abbeys seem to have been everywhere--there were remnants of at least a half dozen in Soissons by my count. (The French Revolution in particular was not kind to abbeys and churches, hence, the "remnants".) Soissons was 80-90% destroyed in WWI, and although much of the rebuilding was done in Art Deco style, some of the medieval character remains in the paved streets and the Gothic cathedral. 

Just us on a long stretch of mooring quay. I suspect it's a bit 
busier in the summer.

The cathedral in 1918.

     

       The single tower of Soissons cathedral.
        Scaffolding was everywhere, inside and out.

 

Saint Jean des Vignes abbey-what's left of it, anyway. Founded
 in 1076, but with most construction dating to the 13th
 century, the abbey was dissolved in the Revolution and used
 for military purposes. In the early 1800's it was
 systematically dismantled for building materials.

And this is all that is left of Notre Dame abbey
after the revolutionaries were through with it.

The shopping area of Soissons looked healthier than
what we've seen in many other towns.

We spent the full day Friday in Soissons, and unfortunately, the rain moved back in. But the silver lining was that the town was apparently big enough to show the occasional English-language movie in the local theater. We spent the afternoon enjoying "The Lost King", a British biographical film about the search for the burial site of Richard III, and the ultimate discovery of his body under a Leicester car park. 

Saturday started off foggy and cool, but the sun ultimately managed to break through. During the cruise we passed from the Aisne River onto the Aisne lateral canal. The canal is much straighter than the natural river, and the trees not as thick along the banks, so we could actually get some views of the countryside from time to time.

We passed through an area that was a graveyard for old wooden barges.

It was wonderful to occasionally not be hemmed in by
trees along the canal banks.

Our stopping point for the day was the village of Bourg-et-Comin, at the junction of the Aisne lateral canal with a canal from the north, the Canal de l'Oise a l'Aisne. The village was rather quiet this Saturday afternoon, but our stroll around town showed us that it had all of the requisite elements of French villages:

The old railway station, before trains stopped coming to 
Bourg-et-Comin.

The restored covered wash house. Many French towns
and villages have covered wash houses that were
built in the mid-1800's, when a law was passed to
subsidize their construction in an effort to fight
epidemics of cholera, smallpox, and typhoid.

The historic church, in this case, Eglise St. Martin, 
a Romaneque church of the 12th century. The tower
actually appeared to be original, which would be 
somewhat of a miracle, considering how many church
towers were deliberately destroyed in WWI.

The best discovery of the afternoon was finding a boulangerie (bakery) and tea shop that served absolutely delicious desserts. 

Lon absolutely loved his chocolate-filled eclair.

And that brings us to where we arrived yesterday (May 14) and spent the day today, Berry-au-Bac. Aside from one lock we will go through when we first start cruising tomorrow, we are done with the Aisne River (and canal) portion of our cruise. Berry-au-Bac is at the junction with the Canal de l'Aisne a la Marne, and we will enter that canal and start cruising south. 

We passed this oddity on the canal--stacked, abandoned
barges. Biggest planters we've ever seen!

We're tied up just downstream of the last lock on the Aisne lateral canal. Over the weekend
there were a number of commercial barges tied up along this quay. Due to the scale of
the locks, the maximum size barge that can use the waterway is just under 40 meters
 long and 5 meters wide. We're just a baby in comparison!

On our first evening in Berry-au-Bac we had the pleasure of having dinner with Dave and Becky of the barge Wanderlust. We were rafted together as dock neighbors in Port Royal in Auxonne from 2019 to early 2021, and have intermittently encountered them on several occasions since. They left their winter mooring in Paris about the same time we left Cergy and are on their way to the Ardennes Canal and then north via the Meuse into Belgium and the Netherlands. Timing being right, we were both in Berry-au-Bac on May 14.

Dave and Becky and aperitifs in the pilothouse of Wanderlust.

The village itself is fairly non-descript, being mostly a rebuilt creation due to significant damage in WWI. In fact, Berry-au-Bac was at the center of much fighting. It is in the vicinity of strategic Hill 108, which overlooked the canal that connected to the city of Reims. In 1917, it was at Berry-au-Bac that the first armored offensive in French military history took place.

The French national cemetery in Berry-au-Bac, and the grave
of the one Belgian soldier interred there.

Biking along the Aisne-Marne canal.

When you don't know what to serve for supper, be thankful
for the roadside pizza vending machine.

A replica of the kind of tank that the French first used in battle at
 Berry-au-Bac in 1917. It sits on the point of departure for
the tanks, the Ferme de Cholera (Cholera Farm).
 Its initial deployment was less than successful.

A memorial to the hamlet of Sapigneul, utterly destroyed
 in a battle for control of Hill 108 in 1917, and never rebuilt.

Because the first French tank battle was at Berry-au-Bac, it became
the site of the National Tank Memorial.

As we've travelled the Aisne waterways, we've been just south of sites important to the battles of Chemin des Dames, a French offensive effort in 1917. The weather and the spread-out nature of the sites has kept us from visiting them, but we intend to stay a few days at our next destination, Reims, and may rent a car there so that we can better investigate that sorry chapter of French military history.

We will now be entering Champagne country. In fact, one could say we have already arrived, given that another village just a couple of miles from Berry-au-Bac--Cormicy--has several small champagne suppliers within the town. 

Champagne is big business in this part
of the world.

I don't know whether to believe it or not, but there is no rain in the forecast for the next several days. It's not going to be especially warm, but we'll take what we can get.