October in June

Sens is still as lovely as ever. Last year's report of our stay in the town was full of photos of its beautiful old buildings and the contents of a fascinating museum. This year? Although we had two full days in town, the off-and-on rain and nearly constant cold temperatures kept us mostly around the boat. So many heavy coats on the pedestrians who dared to venture out for a stroll along the river! There were some breaks in the wet and a few peeks of sun, so I was able to accomplish the usual task of grocery shopping and Lon checked out the generator, and on Friday evening, May 31, we returned to an Italian restaurant on the main square that we ate at last year for a lovely dinner. 

Italian seemed a better choice than this place.
An unfortunate name, as my childhood concept
of "icki" (icky) was of something disgusting or bad.

I also managed to stroll through the local covered market on Saturday morning (June 1). It was the usual collection of meat-cheese-produce.

The stained glass vegetables at the covered market looked awesome!

Drooling is allowed when looking at the offerings at a French
patisserie. Is it any wonder that I don't need the many baking
utensils and pans that we inherited when we bought our boat?

We'd hoped that by staying in Sens until Sunday, June 2, that the weather would improve. The Weather Channel kept promising that it would, but the day started out heavily grey, damp, and overall depressing before brightening somewhat in the evening. Still, we were ready to move on from Sens and started heading north again. The wind on the flybridge was biting, so our concession to the weather was moving to the indoor driving station. I, of course, would still have to deal with the outside during our passage through the day's locks.

We tried a new overnight stop between Sens and "the-end-of-the-Yonne" at Montereau. Instead of the pontoons at Pont-sur-Yonne after 2 hours of cruising, we continued for another hour before we moored adjacent to a "lovely" set of grain silos on a derivation canal. It was a bit rough as moorings go, but we hoped that the resultant shortening of the next cruising day would make it all worth it.

The "middle of nowhere" grain silos where we moored, as seen
from the nearby village of Vinneuf.

After a day of cruising it's nice to get a walk in to stretch the legs. After checking our the first lock we'd be passing through the following day on our cruise to Montereau, we turned inland to the village of Vinneuf. It's old, but what in France isn't? The focal point of the village was the Church of Saint George, dating to the 13th and 16th centuries. 

We heard music from within the church, and as we went inside, we saw a musical group with Renaissance instruments who were rehearsing for a concert that would take place in late afternoon/early evening, joined by a choir that sings music of a similar era. The sound inside the church was amazing.

The church interior had a wooden roof shaped like the
hull of a boat.

Recorders, and stringed instruments, and a forerunner of 
a bagpipe.

It was too early in the day for us to hang around until the 5 p.m. concert, and it was still cold and windy, which made a warm boat much more enticing than the prospect of taking our bikes off the boat and returning to the church for the concert.  A bit of a regret to be sure; we probably would have enjoyed the concert very much.

Vinneuf is in the middle of farm country. The wet spring
has made everything very green. After the droughts of the past
few years, nobody is complaining very much about the rain.

We did see an interesting sight on our return to the boat after our "jaunt" to Vinneuf:

Proof that aliens exist? The crops were flattened in parts of the
fields we passed by, and we couldn't help but think that if we had 
a drone, we might see an amazing pattern in the field.

Finally! On Monday, June 2, as we made our way to Montereau, the rain stopped, and the sun came out. It was still cool in the breeze, but it was amazing to have sunshine. 

Before we could get to Montereau we had to pass through the 
"interesting" sloped-wall locks in the lower reaches of the Yonne.
The last 3 locks have no pontoons to attach a boat to, so we ended
up not secured to the lock walls as would normally be done,
but floating in the middle (kudos to Lon for keeping us off the walls).

So close--the last lock of the day--the last lock of the Yonne--and the lock decided to experience technical difficulties after we were inside. The eclusier on site didn't speak enough English to be able to explain to us what exactly was happening. It was an issue with the lock gates on the upstream end (behind us in the lock), but the specific issue remained a mystery. The eclusier called for reinforcements and after about a 45-minute delay we were finally able to escape from our temporary prison.

Two vnf employees leave the "rear gate" (to us)
control booth after fixing the issue that kept us
a "captive audience" in the lock for 45 minutes.

Last stop of the day--last stop on the Yonne River--at the junction with the Seine: Montereau-fault-Yonne. We had an overnight stop in the town last summer, but the mooring spot wasn't the best. At that time we had hoped to get on the pontoon that the city maintains as a Halte Nautique, but it was full of what seemed to be long-stay boats. By the time stakes were pounded into the bank upriver we were exhausted and in no mood to explore the town. But this year--yay!--there was room on the city pontoon that we were happy to grab.

A great spot--right by the bridge that connects to
 the center of Montereau.

Montereau is a relatively sleepy town today, but it has two historical claims to fame. The oldest dates back to 1419 at the time of the Hundred Years War, and allows Montereau to claim a spot on any "Assassination Vacation" itinerary. On September 10 of that year, the Duke of Burgundy, Jean sans Peur (John the Fearless) was assassinated on the Montereau Bridge by a relative of the future King Charles VII. Not an auspicious end for a man who had made the trip to Montereau in order to negotiate an alliance between two French factions.

A plaque commemorates Jean sans Peur 600 years after he was
 killed on an earlier version of the Montereau bridge.

The second historical claim to fame is a quintessential "Napoleon was here" moment. On February 18, 1814, Montereau was the site of the Battle of Montereau, which pitted the Imperial French Army under Napoleon's command against Austrians and Wurttemburgers. It was Napoleon's last victory during the French campaign. By April 11, Napoleon had abdicated the throne and was sent to exile in Elba.

The battle as mural on the walls of a local building. The town
conducted a huge re-enactment of the battle earlier this year in February
to commemorate its 210th anniversary. 

Napoleon is still hanging around, in statue form at least, 210 years after the battle.

And then, of course, there's the church.  It took from the 12th C to the 16th C to build the Collegiale Notre-Dame-et-Saint-Loup--and the bombardments of June 1940 to damage it so heavily that substantial reconstruction was required.

The church has a prominent location overlooking the Yonne.

We departed Montereau with the intention of making another short side trip. A right turn on the Seine took us onto the section of the river known as the Petite Seine. It's a relatively short stretch, only 48 kilometers to what is, in any meaningful sense, the end of the navigable waterway. And the weather forecasts look promising!