Small is Beautiful

When the Yonne River at Montereau meets the Seine River, the decision for a boater is: Right turn or left turn? Left means going downriver on the Seine towards Paris, and right means going upriver on the Petite (Little) Seine with an end of navigation at the town of Nogent-sur-Seine. Because we were curious and realized that, in the immortal words of 70's musical duo Seals and Croft, "we may never pass this way again", an up-and-back side trip to explore what the Petite Seine had to offer seemed to us to be worthwhile. So that's what we did when we left Montereau on Tuesday, June 4.

It's 48-kilometers from Montereau to Nogent, a relatively easy distance to cover in two 4-5 hour cruising days, with an intermediate stop each way in the town of Bray-sur-Seine. The Petite Seine is currently more of a commercial waterway than one used for pleasure boating, with several sand-and-gravel loading stations along its length, a grain port at Bray, and a multimodal container port at Nogent. We saw a few recreational boats moored at individual houses along the river, but never encountered another "bateau de plaisance" plying the waterway with us.

One of the sand and gravel loading quays, passed on a Saturday when work had apparently
stopped for the weekend, heavy equipment lined up like little ducklings. 

Commercial traffic means that the locks on the Petite Seine
are rather large. The first two on the lower reaches of the P.S.
are 180 meters (585 feet) long; the locks further upriver are
120 meters (390 feet) long. Timing being good,
we were usually in a lock by ourselves.

The "tightest pass" of our cruising days--leaving a lock, then passing
a barge headed for the lock, in the same part of the river as
 a barge being loaded with sand/gravel.

All-in-all however, the river did not have a particularly industrial feel. The commercial barge traffic was only occasional, and the commercial quays were not that many, given that they were spread out over a 48-kilometer distance. What we saw was:

Occasional houses or cabins;

a tucked-away off-channel liveaboard community;

rarely, a riverside village, and;

local wildlife who voiced their displeasure at our passage.

But by far, what we saw the most as we cruised the river was . . . trees. Lots and lots of trees, with very few breaks that would have allowed us to see the landscape beyond the trees.

While a steady diet of trees may not have been the most stunning scenery, the bird song was constant and beautiful, the sun was shining, and the cruising was absolutely peaceful and relaxing. Most of the time it was just us on the water.

We very much enjoyed our stops in two of the larger towns along the route, Bray-sur-Seine and Nogent-sur-Seine. Bray made a great half-way stop. Bray became a fortified town in the 10th century, complete with ramparts and a feudal castle that no longer exist. Its church was also begun in the 10th century, but the oldest parts of the existing building--its pillars, choir, and ambulatory--date to a 12th century reconstruction, the nave is 15th century, and much of its interior statuary is 16th or 17th C. Bray also has its fair share of our particular favorite, 16th-century timbered buildings.

An interesting tidbit about Bray's history that didn't appear in the information supplied to us by the Bray Tourist Office concerns its Jewish history. In the 12th century, Bray had an important Jewish community. The details are a little fuzzy, but in 1191, a Jew was killed by a Christian in Bray, and in 1192 the Jewish community received permission to execute the perpetrator. Perhaps in response to rumors that the man was executed in a manner meant to mock the death of Jesus, or using a claim that the Christian was his vassal as a pretext for achieving certain political ends, the king of France, Philip Augustus, sent an armed force to the town and ordered the Jewish community to be burned at the stake. One report says that over 80 people died. Although this did not totally wipe out the Jewish population in the region, it did not remain for long. 

The mooring at Bray was awesome: by a city park, and
no charge to stay there (including power and water).

The one downside to the mooring, if one can call it that, was that it was in a somewhat narrow
part of the river. Several commercial barges passed each day, and as they didn't always slow down,
we were sometimes "rocked" by their wake. For that reason, we had 5 mooring lines securing us
to the floating pontoon.

Cats in Bray seem to be active with local beauty salons.

Contributors to Bray's timbered house heritage.

Eglise Sainte-Croix

Left: Lon in the ambulatory of the church. The timbers in the
ceiling were a striking feature. Right: The nave with its
barrel roof, and a view of the late 16th-century organ.

We stayed in Bray a total of 3 nights--one on the way upriver to Nogent, and two on the return trip (we took advantage of beautiful weather on Friday, June 7, and the great mooring location, to catch up on some chores). We also contributed to the local Bray economy by going out to lunch and then spending some euros at one of the local hardware stores.

We cruised from Bray to Nogent-sur-Seine on Wednesday, June 5. In this section of the Petite Seine the locks were the smaller 120-meter variety. The cruising was easy; the waits at the locks minimal to non-existent.

Our mooring in Nogent was not quite as ideal as what we had in Bray. Nogent has a Port de Plaisance, but access to it is difficult, as it requires scheduling passage through a manual lock with the French vnf. It was easier, if a bit rougher, to avoid the scheduling hassle and find a quay that didn't require going through the manual lock.

The best we could do for mooring in Nogent. The platform we're
immediately adjacent to was coated with dried mud from having
been underwater earlier in the season. The concrete further to the
left is actually the top of a wall that is at least 3 feet higher than
the mud-covered platform and is level with the sidewalk. We used
a ladder to get that high, then had to climb over (or through)
 the metal fence to get to the street. It wasn't as bad as it sounds,
but it wasn't a mooring we wanted to linger at for long. 

Our view to the front of the boat--the two cooling towers of the Nogent Nuclear Power Station
to the left, and to the right, the former Nogent mills.

An interesting "sandwich" to be sure, but the town is actually quite lovely and has some important connections to French cultural life. The author Gustave Flaubert used to stay with relatives in Nogent, and used the town as the locale for his novel "L'education sentimentale." The walking tour supplied by the tourist office is based upon sites mentioned in the book. The sculptress Camille Claudel spent 3 years of her childhood in Nogent, and the town is the location of the national Camille Claudel Museum. At its heart Nogent is another former fortified town with a long history and . . .  lots of timbered buildings.

In Nogent, watchdogs may lurk on the upper floors.

The large timbered building is the Pavillion Henri IV, built in 
the latter half of the 16th C. Legend has it that during this period,
while Henri IV was preparing to reconquer the kingdom of France,
he used to meet with his mistress Gabrielle d'Estree here.

Lon crosses Le Barrage du Livon to access the park island of
Ile Olive.

Our approach to the Church of Saint-Laurent of
Nogent-sur-Seine. Construction of the church started
in the 15th century and was completed in the 16th.

Thanks to a series of restorations in the relatively recent
past, this church was in amazing condition compared to
many of the others we've been in. It was light and 
bright, with many restored frescoes.

A quiet weekday in the center of Nogent.

Local parents were unhappy that the school was planning to close
down one classroom; they were concerned that the teacher: student
ratio would become too large. 

Both legs of our return "down" the Petite Seine went relatively fast because we had current behind us. We had some slight waits at locks, but nothing too significant. On our final day on the Petite Seine we cruised all the way from Bray to Moret-sur-Loing, a distance of 36 kilometers. 

Just before we reached the confluence with the Yonne River, we spotted the Priory of Saint Martin
on the hillside. Dating from the 10th C., it was converted into a farm in the 17th C. and abandoned
as such in the mid-20th C. It currently houses the Gaia Museum, an archeological museum focused on
prehistoric artifacts.

Up to this point, aside from the brief cruise on the Canal du Bourgogne, all of our cruising has been on rivers--first the Yonne, then the Petite Seine. With our arrival in Moret, we prepare to transition to a mostly-canal experience.