One of Those Days

It was bound to happen sooner or later. We'd been meeting our "aspirations" for the cruising season (well, except for the weather early on), and having a nice, relaxing boating and tourism experience, so it was inevitable that at some point something--or some things--would happen that were not quite the way we'd like. We could have done without that kind of "excitement."

When we left Reims on May 20 we had a short, 2-hour cruise to the village of Sillery. Our main purpose in stopping there was to have a night with electricity and water at their halte nautique, setting ourselves up for the following day and what would be a relatively ambitious cruise (24 km, 11 locks, 1 tunnel) to Conde-sur-Marne. 

Sillery itself was a largely rebuilt village, but they did have a French national
cemetery in the vicinity of the halte nautique. It contains the remains of
almost 12,000 soldiers, mostly French, who died from battles in the
 defense of Reims in WWI. Nearly half are unknowns.

All French towns were required to erect a war memorial after
WWI. Sillery's memorial was unique compared to any
that we have seen to date, and seemed especially poignant.

While in Sillery we were also able to cycle to the remains of a French fort just a few kilometers out of town. Fort de la Pompelle was one of several forts built around Reims after France's defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. Construction was finished in 1883, but the fort was never actively used as a French military base and was decommissioned in 1913. In September 1914, the invading Germans briefly occupied the fort until it was recaptured by the French in the First Battle of the Marne. It was then that the fort became instrumental in the defense of the city of Reims throughout the rest of the conflict. It was partially renovated in several stages and houses a very nice museum.

The fort was cleaned up and stabilized, but not fully rebuilt.

The entry to the front of the fort complex. The museum
entrance is to the far left. The photo below shows, from a
similar perspective, what the fort looked like in wartime.

                           

One of the museum's claims to fame is its collection of German
military helmets. It was extensive (and this is only some of
what they had).

Sunday, May 21, was a beautiful day for cruising. It was a bit breezy, but nothing too intense, and with little-to-no other traffic on the canal we were able to get through the first 3 locks and the Billy Tunnel with no issues.

The entrance to the Billy Tunnel, at the summit of the Canal de 
l'Aisne a la Marne. The tunnel is just over 2300 meters long
(about 1.4 miles).

One of the nicer tunnels we've been in, with 
well-maintained walls and lots of lighting.

The one glitch of the day came at the first lock after we left the tunnel. Locks 17-24 are in a chain, so once a "twisty" is used to activate the first lock, subsequent locks will be activated as well, and the boater is expected to keep moving until the "chain" is complete. When we got to our first lock of the chain, Lock 17, the twisty did not activate the lock preparation sequence. We had to tie up along the bank, and a trudge down to the lock showed me the source of the problem.

This hotel barge had decided to stop and tie up between locks 18 and 
17. The problem was that lock 17 was set for them to go through, and when
they didn't, the lock would not reset for us. A radio call to the hotel barge
(operated by a very nice British/Kiwi couple), and their subsequent
telephone call to the vnf, got someone from vnf on-site to
restart the lock prep process for us. It wasn't all bad--it gave us time
to take a breather after the tunnel and have some lunch.

By mid-afternoon we were tied up on a quay in Conde-sur-Marne, at the junction of the Canal de l'Aisne a la Marne and the Canal lateral a la Marne. Another waterway completed! After a relatively long cruising day, cooking dinner did not appeal, but the problem was that, as in many small villages, there wasn't a local restaurant. What to do?  

Pizza dispensers are a relatively 
common sight in small town France, and
 this was Conde's only "eating out" option.
 We'd always wanted to try one, so Lon
 has an optimistic smile as he waits for dinner. 

Out comes the pizza . . . 

And voila! It looked and tasted
 pretty good. 

Pizza was not the only item available by vending machine in Conde-sur-Marne. Right next to the pizza machine was the town's answer to the lack of a superette.

Conde's answer to the lack of a grocery store: a vending center
that carried everything from fresh produce to olives to prepared
deli-type foods.

The days of every village having its own bakery
are long gone. The neighboring village had this bread
and pain au chocolate dispenser instead.

We stayed for two nights in Conde-sur-Marne, mostly to just relax after dealing with that long tunnel and all of the locks of the previous cruising day. The major point of interest in the vicinity of the village was a pumping station used to help supply water to the canal summit.

The Tower of Conde sur Marne dates from 1869 and
was designed to look like the keep of a fortified medieval
 castle and a Roman aqueduct. It was a clever way to hide 
the pumping mechanism.  

The tower as viewed across the wide-open fields.

Resting complete, on Tuesday, May 23, we turned left onto the Canal lateral a la Marne as we left Conde-sur-Marne and headed toward the city of Chalons-en-Champagne. We managed to leave a bit ahead of a commercial barge (so it wouldn't slow us down) and encountered very little boat traffic on our 3-hour trip to Chalons. We did meet a hotel boat leaving Chalons, and we were fortunate enough to be able to stay in the space they had vacated at the city's halte nautique (which was otherwise quite full). 

Called Chalons-sur-Marne prior to 1998, it was in that year that Chalons-en-Champagne regained the name that it held prior to the French Revolution. The renaming was probably, in part, a way to "market" the town for Champagne tourism. Trading has taken place in the area since Roman times, but the most important existing historical monuments date to the 12th and 13th centuries and are religious in nature. 

The Notre-Dame-en-Vaux Collegiate Church is listed
as a UNESCO World Heritage site as one of the pilgrimage
churches on the Santiago de Compostela pilgrimage route.

The Sainte-Etienne Cathedral dates to the 13th C, but the 
jarring baroque facade is from the 17th C.

The town had a lovely medieval center, with winding narrow streets and lots of timbered buildings. Slightly outside the center, and taking advantage of the canals and rivers, were three fabulous parks.

The Chateau du Marche was built utilizing part of an old
fortified bridge, and was developed at the end of the 
19th century as a bank.

A timbered building along the Nau River.

A bit of history of interest to Americans: the red, white, and blue poles on the sidewalk to the right in this photo were part of the commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the selection of the American unknown soldier from WWI. The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington Cemetery had its genesis in WWI. The War Department ordered the selection of an unknown soldier from those buried in France. Four unknowns were exhumed, one from each of the four American cemeteries in France. In October 1921, the final selection of the unknown was made at this site in (at that time) Chalons-sur-Marne.

We used our visit to Chalons to partake of a tour and tasting at the one remaining champagne house in Chalons. The Joseph Perrier Cellars was founded in 1825, and its cellars are found in former Gallo-Roman chalk quarries carved into the hillside. We will never be connoisseurs, but it was a fun way to spend a part of an afternoon.

A walkway through the cellars, with much better
lighting than they would have had in Roman times.

Lon relaxing prior to the start of our tour. We were the only two
people on the English-language tour.

Marketing to build the champagne brand.

When we arrived in Chalons we encountered boating acquaintances on two different boats: Stan and Sharon (from California) on Encore, and Guy and Ardon (from Australia) on Vindi. Both couples are part of the barge association we belong to. We had met Stan and Sharon at a barge rally in the city of Auxerre in 2017, when we were still in the hunt for a boat. We met Guy and Ardon in 2019 when we were cruising through Besancon, and again in 2021--only in briefly in passing--when we were on the Meuse River.

Guy and Ardon shared Happy Hour with us on C.A.R.I.B. III.
 It was fun to catch up.

When we left the quay the morning of March 25 we had to go "up canal" for a short bit so that we could turn around and drive past an electronic detector that would trigger the lock preparation, and allow us to backtrack along the route we'd used to arrive in Chalons two days previously.

On the left, the view back toward the lock (visible) and our mooring quay (not visible), which was the direction that we ultimately wanted to go when leaving Chalons. The area to the right was shallow and not navigable for us past a line strung across the water at about the level of the small boats seen in the trees.

When we reached this wide part of the canal, Lon, driving from inside because it was a cold morning, began the forward-back, forward-back maneuvering needed to get the boat turned. All was well until the "back" stopped working. Uh-oh. I was outside at the front of the boat and heard him say "I lost reverse". Nor could he get the transmission back into neutral, so we were moving slowly toward the barrier line. He ran to the back of the boat to drop the rear anchor but had difficulty seeing if it was deployed. He told me to get the flybridge driving controls installed, and while I was doing that (adrenaline fueled a faster installation than I had ever done before), he went to the front of the boat to try to get the front anchors down. Before he could accomplish that I was able to confirm to him that the back anchor had deployed. He watched the bow of the boat just "kiss" the barrier line and then stop. Whew! He went down into the engine room and had to manually put the engine into neutral so that we could switch to the flybridge controls (which use a different set of cables). We decided that we could proceed with our cruising day from the flybridge, and he would do more troubleshooting when we arrived at our destination for the day.

It took a while for our heart rates to get back to normal. We had one additional "glitch" in the day further along the canal, in that a boat ahead of us appeared to trigger a lock malfunction which delayed us for an hour or so until we could get vnf assistance to reset the lock mechanisms.

Needless to say, we were very glad when we tied up for the day. A bit of a challenging day on the water, but we had reasons to be very grateful: we didn't stray into the non-navigable water and go aground, and Lon's mechanical know-how diagnosed the transmission problem as a loose clamp rather than a broken cable. The loose clamp he was able to fix; a broken cable would have required the services of a mechanic with specialized tools.

Here's hoping less "exciting" days lie ahead.