Settled and Unsettled

Our current life in Auxerre could be described as both "settled" and "unsettled." We've quickly "settled" into living in Auxerre and not moving the boat from day-to-day; we've not even had to adjust our location on the quay. We've experienced no earth-shattering events, but we have been enjoying our slow perusal of the city's sites, the occasional movie and dining out, and using our bikes for a couple of exploratory trips outside of the city limits.

What's been "unsettled" has been the weather this past week--rain or the threat of rain most days, quite breezy, and temperatures more like early June than late July. (Not complaining about that, though, as we've no wish to experience the extreme heat that has enveloped southern Europe this year.) We have family coming for a few days this week and want to be able to take them out for a day cruise, but we're a little discouraged by the weather forecast for the next week, which looks like a continuation of the wet and windy pattern. What's also unsettled (although "not settled" is probably a better way of putting it) is the electrical problem on the boat. The electrician should be back from vacation next week, so hopefully we can get him on site sooner rather than later. But we also have the problem that the new batteries that were delivered to us last week were not what we had ordered, so the order mix-up has to be resolved.

Auxerre continues to please us. The tourist office's walking tour is rather extensive--Auxerre's historical center is, after all, the second largest protected area in Burgundy--so we spent parts of three days exploring different sections of the route (and still have more to do). One of the major stops was at the Saint-Germain Abbey, which currently houses the Art and History Museum. It is a former Benedictine monastery, founded in the 5th century and dedicated to its founder, the bishop of Auxerre, who died in 448.

The interior of the Abbey church. The present church
was built in the 13th century.

Most fascinating was the cellar that was accessed from the back of
the church. It contains vestiges of earlier constructions on the church and . . . 

. . . sarcophagi dating from the 6th to the 9th centuries.

Parts of the Abbey cloister date to the 12th century; this area in
classical style was rebuilt in the 17th C.

The abbey church houses a number of very old religious artifacts,
including this 15th century stone figure of St. Denis.

The Saint-Germain abbey church is visible above the Auxerre skyline, as is
the adjacent 12th century tower of Saint Jean.

The oldest part of the abbey is its 9th century Carolingian crypt, built around the tomb of Saint Germain. Access to the crypt is possible only with a guided tour, which we didn't have time for on the day we were there. It's definitely something that we'll be returning to the abbey to do.

The carved coat of arms on a 16th C. house, the
scissors and comb denoting
the location of a former barber and hairdresser shop.

A statue honoring Charles Surugue, former mayor
of Auxerre, who enlisted in the French army in
1915 at the age of 76. He was the oldest
soldier in the Great War.

The abbey overlooks the Place du Coche d'eau in the Marine neighborhood near the Yonne waterfront. The building with peach-colored timbers was a passenger barge house (maison du coche d'eau). The bottom floors in stone were a warehouse, and the upper floors in timber contained apartments.

There had been a double rainbow just before Lon
snapped the photo; too bad he missed it.

Auxerre old town center.

This was probably one of the heaviest concentrations of
timbered houses in town.

Saint-Pierre Church. The 16th and 17th century
church is on the site of a 6th century basilica (that
became part of an 11th century monastery).

The ceiling decorations in Saint-Pierre were
 stupendous. Not bad for a church whose
parishioners were wine-growers and butchers.

On Thursday, July 27, we had the pleasure of hosting Dutch friends from Haarlem, Netherlands for a few hours. They love vacationing in the south of France and stopped by Auxerre to say "hello" as they made their way to the Mediterranean. 

We always love our reunions with Suze, Rosa, Yolanda and Joost.

Yesterday, Sunday, July 30, the weather finally allowed us to venture a bit further afield. We decided to visit a couple of places that we'd had to skip when we turned back to Auxerre to deal with the boat's electrical issues. To get to our first stop of the day we cycled south along the Nivernais Canal, nearly to where we'd overnighted on our shortened trip.

Thirty minutes by bike to get to this spot on the Nivernais--
when we did it by boat it took us nearly 4 hours.

On Google Maps and on its "welcome" building, our touristic goal in Escolives-Sainte-Camille, 10 km south of Auxerre, was identified by the rather non-descript name of "Site Archeologique". The chance discovery in 1955 of Merovingian burials in the roots of a tree that had been pulled out of the ground led to excavations that uncovered the remains of a Roman villa under the 350 or so graves in the Merovingian necropolis. Now called Villa Scoliva, the villa/farm was located near the old Roman road Via Agrippa (which is now the French highway D249) and had been occupied from the end of the 1st century to the end of the 5th century.

The guide on site was just wonderful. She told us she was only able to do the tour in French because she didn't know the technical archeological jargon in English, but because we arrived 20 minutes before the next scheduled tour was to start, she took just Lon and me into the site (at no charge!). She gave us a whirlwind look at the excavated Roman thermal baths and the separate building with the collection of artifacts, and her grasp of conversational English was enough to give us a rough idea of what we were looking at. 

Lon gets a brief explanation about the thermal baths from
 the guide. The foundations of the thermal baths are
 the best-preserved part of the villa. They were built at the
 beginning of the 1st century and were enlarged in the 4th. 

Small baths and a latrine.

From the Merovingian necropolis.

They had quite a collection of sculpted stone blocks, and carvings from a 2nd century
religious sanctuary. 

A mural found in the residential portion of the villa.

Because the stop at the Roman villa was so quick, we had time to continue to Irancy, one of the wine villages around Auxerre. It was a very quiet town on Sunday morning.

Studio and gallery of artist Georges Hosotte, whose gallery
in the Chapelle de Bailly I had visited previously. It wasn't
open for visitors until later in the day.

Irancy is known for pinot noir wine. There were several wine
houses in the village. It reminded us of the villages we visited in 
the Champagne region.

The Saint-Germain church (12th - 18th C.),
was an unusual shape. No entry to be had for us, as
Sunday services were taking place.

Lon waits for me to finish taking pictures.

What would a wine village be without the surrounding vineyards?

We enjoyed the country biking, but we were also ready for a lunch stop at the Creperie le Lavoir in the canalside village of Vincelles. 

By the time we stopped for lunch the sun had almost 
disappeared, and had we been sitting exposed to the breeze
we would have been uncomfortable. It was definitely jacket
weather.

Too Good to Last

It is said that all good things must come to an end, and so is with our string of "things working out the way we hoped" this cruising season in France. 

When we plotted out the "big picture" for what we wanted to do this summer on the boat, it was pretty simple: two weeks in Cergy to prep the boat; five weeks to cruise the Oise, Aisne, and Marne on our way to three weeks in Paris; and a Seine-Yonne cruise to get us to Auxerre by mid-July for the DBA Rally. We assiduously tried to avoid calling this a "pl*n", instead, jokingly, calling this a "hope" or "aspiration." And it worked--we had a marvelous three months with nary a glitch. 

The time after the Rally was always a bit of a blank slate waiting to be filled. We had already reserved a winter slot at the Port de Plaisance in Auxerre, but with no specific start date. We knew we would be having visitors for a few days at the beginning of August, which would give us at least a couple of weeks to cruise before their arrival. As indicated in the last blog entry, we decided to spend that time cruising on the Nivernais canal (essentially a canalized continuation of the Yonne River) before returning to Auxerre to meet up with our guests.

We spent three nights at the Port in Auxerre after the Rally. It was nice--we had plenty of time for the "usual" preparatory chores of grocery shopping and laundry, socialized with other DBA members coming and going from the Port as they continued their own cruising seasons, and even went to a movie.

It's a privilege to always have a waterfront view.

Wednesday, 5 p.m.: the English-language version of the
new Indiana Jones movie was not well-attended. It was just
Lon and me up until show time, when 3 other people joined
us. So-so movie, nice theater.

We had inklings of trouble when we cast off from Auxerre on Thursday morning, July 20. The bow thruster sounded anemic and wasn't producing the usual volume of water power. It wasn't enough of a problem to stop cruising, so we continued on. 

Thursday was a busy day for boats on the canal. We had 7 locks to pass through before reaching our intended destination for the day at Bailly (the same village where we had the tour of the Crémant cave the week before), and at nearly every lock we encountered rental boats, usually in multiples, when we exited. 

At our second lock of the day, we had 3 boats waiting as we
left the lock. It wasn't an easy passage--the narrow waterway 
was rocky and shallow to starboard (on our right).

 

Meeting and passing a large hotel barge in a narrow and 
shallow (we bumped bottom in one section) part of the Nivernais.

When we moored on the quay in Bailly, Lon's initial check of the bow thruster wasn't especially informative. He found a couple of loose connections that he tightened, but left the main investigation to the following day. By then, the bow thruster had no electrical power to it at all. Disconcertingly, his further search found two blown fuses in the electrical system, one of which was to the alternator that normally would charge our batteries when we were underway. As well, the voltage of two of our four house batteries was nearly zero. We needed to get a stand-alone battery charger to test whether the batteries were totally fried, or whether they could be recharged and hold a charge, so we cycled a short way to the village of Vincelles to borrow a charger from our friends Ian and Lisette on Catherina Elisabeth, who were moored there.

It was a beautiful afternoon for biking; too bad
we weren't able to do it strictly for pleasure.

The bad news was that one battery seemed to be kaput--it wouldn't hold a charge at all. The second battery could be charged, but we weren't sure if it was compromised by having been connected to the totally dead battery. The good news was that our other two large house batteries seemed fine and were supplying power to most of our critical systems--navigation instruments, refrigerator, range, etc.--and were being recharged by our solar panels. The "bad" batteries were responsible for powering the bow thruster and our Kabola heating system. Much as we'd hoped to explore further up the Nivernais, we decided that if there were room for us at the port in Auxerre we would cruise back there on Saturday, July 22. At least there we would be hooked up to electricity and we would have a much better chance to order new batteries and arrange for an electrician to find the reason(s) for the blown fuses and dead battery.

While Lon was working on CARIB, I cycled into
the nearby village of Saint-Bris-le-Vineux,
with its narrow streets and old buildings.

The old Chapelle de Bailly in Saint Bris was no
 longer functioning as a religious building, but
housed an art gallery featuring the works of
artist Georges Hosotte, as well as those of his
son, Tristan Hosotte.

 

We had company on Friday night, DBA boats Phoenician and
Matilda (and a LocaBoat hire boat). Happy Hour on Matilda turned
into a late dinner aboard Phoenician. It was a nice break from 
thinking about electrical issues. The Cave de Bailly building
is visible at the top of the photo.

Our return to Auxerre on Saturday was uneventful. Lon drives really well without the bow thruster, so its unavailability was never a problem. We didn't encounter much boat traffic, and just enjoyed the beautiful day. Southern Europe may be suffering from a heat wave, but the temperatures in our part of France have been perfect for July.

We passed this chateau along the way. What you can't see is
the moat that surrounds it.

The railroad bridge and water frame our approach to the lock.

The locks on the Nivernais are all manually operated and are fully
staffed. Most of the eclusiers were college students for whom it
was a summer job. Lon got off the boat when he could to assist
with the lock operations and save the eclusiers a few steps.

Approaching a lock in a park-like setting.

On our way downstream through the shallowest stretch of
the Nivernais. Unlike our trip upstream, we neither had to pass
a large barge on this narrow stretch, nor did we bump the bottom.

In Champs-sur-Yonne, the canal leading up to the lock is separated from
 the river by a stone wall. We didn't think much about it on our
 way upriver, but on our return, it provided a "port in the storm"
when we had to stop as the locks closed for lunch, and we were in a
 portion of the Nivernais without good options for mooring a boat of our size.

So, we are now moored again at the Aquarelle port in Auxerre. It's lovely to be under the watchful gaze of the Cathedral, but we wish that the reason for being back early was better. It was so lovely to have had a problem-free cruise up to this point, and it's been a "reality check" to be reminded that "pl*ns" in boating often have to be changed. Lon's efforts this morning have convinced him that he is in territory that is beyond his understanding of marine electricity, so an electrician will need to be consulted. However, as we are now in the vacation season in France, we may have to wait a bit for an electrician to be available. 

The "lemonade" to be made of this particular lemon is that we have the time and opportunity to explore Auxerre in more detail, take some local bike rides to interesting places, and maybe book a day trip or two to a nearby town on the rail system.

The ABC's of a Rally--Auxerre, Barges, Crémant & a Castle

The past week has all been about the gathering ("Rally") of the Barge Association (DBA, because it used to be the "Dutch Barge Association", but it's not just barges these days) in Auxerre, France. Auxerre is a town of about 35,000 people in the Burgundy region southeast of Paris. A busy center of commerce and government under the Romans and a former episcopal city, present-day Auxerre has a charming old town that, despite several fires over the centuries, has hundreds of timbered houses and three huge churches, including a cathedral.

The rally was based in the Arbre Sec Park just upstream of the first lock of the Canal du Nivernais, south of the old town center of Auxerre. There were over 70 attendees, most residing on one of the 24 boats moored at the park, but well over a dozen attended "on foot". 

The 24 boats moored two-by-two along the park quay. CARIB is on the outside, 
the 4th boat down from the top left. (Thanks to James and his drone for the photo.)

All dressed up with signal flags.

This banner was posted on the boat next to the quay, and 
contained our pertinent info. It was tough to see much of us behind
a 25-meter barge.

Big kudos to the DBA members who organized the gathering, as it was a perfect mix of optional tours, social gatherings, and free time. An opening reception on the evening of Wednesday, July 12, kicked things off. We joined the next day's tour to the Bailly Lapierre Cellars. The "Caves de Bailly" are the center for the production of the sparkling wines known as Crémant de Bourgogne (crémant of Burgundy). Since 1972, the company, an association of winegrowers, has been making crémant in an underground limestone quarry that for several hundred years had been the source of building material for sites in France such as Notre-Dame de Paris, the Pantheon, and Chartres Cathedral. 

Lon outside the entry to the Cave.

The Cave was up on a hill which overlooks the Nivernais/Yonne,
and hills of Burgundy are all around.

The Cave maintains a cool temperature perfect for making sparkling wine.

The bottles age for a while and pick up some
dust along the way. 

After a tasting of two different types of crémant (maybe not the best idea before noon), we returned to the boats for an informal--but very social--lunch, and then had the afternoon to do as we wished before an evening barbecue hosted by Aquarelle, the local Port in Auxerre. The city's Bastille Day fireworks display followed. Although Thursday was July 13, and therefore not the actual Bastille Day (which is the 14th of July), many towns have their Bastille Day fireworks on the 13th. The cheeseburgers were cooked well (because unlike many hamburgers in France, they were not rare in the middle--yay), the company was interesting, and the fireworks display was lovely. What we especially liked was the musical soundtrack that really enhanced the experience.

Fireworks over the Yonne frame the 
Eglise Saint Pierre (St. Peter Church).

The next morning--the actual Bastille Day--we went on a guided walking tour in the historical center of town. We'd done this at the last rally we attended in Auxerre in 2017, but "so many towns, so many stories" meant that a refresher on the details of this particular town could only be a good thing. As Aquarelle will provide our winter mooring for C.A.R.I.B. III, we'll have a few weeks in August, September, and next spring to explore the town to a greater extent than an hour-and-a-half long tour can provide.

Place Saint Nicolas was the location of the town port in medieval times. Given its location
on the banks of the Yonne, and the prevalence of boaters, it's fitting that it's named after
the patron saint of mariners (and a statue of St. Nick resides in a niche in the facade of the
beige building at the center of the photo.) The oldest timbered buildings in Auxerre are the two
"twins" at the left in the photo.

The front of the cathedral. Built and rebuilt over several
centuries, and never completely finished. Of the Romanesque
church from the early 11th century, only the crypt remains.
When Auxerre lost its status as an episcopal center during the
Revolution, the building ceased to be an official cathedral.

Way back in the day, the cathedral was colorful both
inside and out. Only remnants remain of the medieval
and Renaissance frescoes.

The Town Hall (Hotel de Ville) and, to the right, the Clock Tower.
The Clock Tower was originally built in the 15th century and
used as the prison of an earl before it was turned into a clock
and belfry in the late 1400s. The current structure is a 19th century  
rebuild due to the destruction of the original by fire in 1825.

Timbered buildings in the wealthier upper town. Colors started
being used on the timbers in the 18th century.

As we'd encountered in other towns, the workmanship
of the carving to decorate the wood on these 16th
century buildings was impressive.

There wasn't enough time for the guided tour to make it to the Abbey or to the Saint Pierre church, so those are added to our "to do" list for later, along with some other things. In the evening, the DBA held its first-ever Progressive Dinner. It was a three-course event, and participants were with different people for each course. As a host boat, we stayed on CARIB throughout the evening and provided the main course, but our guests were responsible for the appetizer and the dessert. We were a little disappointed that we weren't able to move to any other boats during the dinner, but we realize what a complicated scheduling endeavor it was, so we can't be too critical. Overall, it seems to have been quite a success and a great way to "mix it up" among the attendees.

On Saturday, July 15, the "event of the day" took us to Guedelon Castle. 

Guedelon Castle. The chapel tower to left, pigeon-loft tower
(to enable the Middle Ages version of email) at center,
 and gatehouse towers to the right.

Pretty impressive--for a structure whose construction started in 1997. The Guedelon project is a form of experimental archeology, with the goal of trying to answer some of the unanswered questions that exist about medieval castle-building. The castle is being built from scratch and is styled on military architecture that was used for hundreds of castles erected during the reign of Philip-Augustus in the late 12th/early 13th centuries. Aside from some concessions to modern safety requirements--such as steel-toed shoes--the castle is being built with the materials, tools, and technology of the time by workers wearing period clothing. The construction site is adjacent to a quarry whose stones provided materials for buildings for hundreds of years, and a forest that provides wood for the support beams. It is quite an interesting effort.

Courtyard view 1. The building at left contains storage rooms
on the lower floor, and a reception room on the upper floor.

Courtyard view 2. The chapel tower is at center, to the left
we were able to walk atop the defensive outer wall.

This "hamster wheel" contraption (treadwheel winch) was
 used to help hoist materials (capacity of about 1000 pounds)
 to the upper levels. The power is being provided by the man
walking in the wheel to the left. 

Lon in an interior walkway on the upper floor
of the building with the reception hall.

The decoration in the lord's chamber. The pigments
used were obtained from the local soil. 

The wood-working area. Everything-from beams (one per tree, to use the drier center wood and
avoid having to wait months for the wood to season), to shingles, to wooden nails-are prepared here.

 

And if you got tired of buildings, you could always watch
an alchemist at work. Now if only we could have understood
what he was mumbling as he performed . . . 

A relaxing Sunday--not being "market people" we skipped the outing to a Sunday market in Chablis. We did, however, attend the afternoon Q&A forum in the Abbye Saint-Germain and the casual farewell dinner at a bistro in the park very near to our moorings. On Monday we hung back and let the morning rush of boats heading through the lock back toward Auxerre get through, then followed in late afternoon and moored again at the Aquarelle Port.

As of this writing we'll head south again on Thursday and try to get in a few cruising days on the Nivernais Canal. Because of some low bridges our boat height won't allow us to go too far, and we have to be back in Auxerre on August 1 to receive guests on August 2, but we've heard that it's lovely cruising on the Nivernais, so we want to at least give it a try.