Too Much

My brain is full. It's been 10 days of history and travel without the time or energy to put "words to blog." It's time to free up some cranial space.

When we left Ménétréol on Wednesday, July 3, we were travelling with a burden it's usually best to avoid when you're boating--a schedule. Because this year's cruising route takes us as close to the Loire Valley chateaux as we're likely to ever be on CARIB, we wanted to take a few days away from the boat for a side trip to see some of the Loire castles. For that, we needed a safe place to park the boat, but we also needed this to be somewhere that would give us easy access to car rental and/or good train connections. The town of Nevers fit the bill.

To avoid locking ourselves into a schedule too early, we put off making port and hotel reservations until we absolutely had to.  By July 1 we had decided that our goal would be arrive in Nevers on Saturday, July 6; rent a car and leave on July 8 for 4 nights in the city of Tours (our base for chateau day trips); and return to Nevers on July 12 to watch the Bastille Day fireworks on July 14 and make everything ready for resumption of cruising on July 16. Appropriate arrangements were made, and at that point a "schedule" was born.

We weren't able to leave Ménétréol on the morning of July 3rd due to a lock malfunction on our route. While it's a little unusual for us to cruise in the afternoons--strictly as a matter of preference--our "schedule" meant that we needed to on this day. The cruise to La Chapelle Montlinard was an easy 4 hours, aside from one stretch of water with a fair amount of weed.

We haven't had any real problems with weed this year,
for which we are grateful. One stretch of the canal had
quite a bit of weed, but mostly along the sides and not
in the center. It would have been fine, except we met
two boats in this stretch, which forced us into the weed.
It took a few tries with reversing the power to clear
the prop of the weed we picked up during those passes.

The quay in La Chapelle, next to a silo of some kind, wasn't especially lovely, but it did have the advantage of being one of those spots that provided mooring, electricity, and water at no charge. 

Our mooring in La Chapelle. The large barge in front of us was a liveaboard, the boat behind
us was a rental boat that became our "lock buddy" when we left La Chapelle on July 5.

Its biggest advantage, however, was that it was situated only 2.5 kilometers west of the fabulous medieval town of La Charité-sur-Loire. We stayed 2 nights in La Chapelle specifically so that we could have a full day on July 4 to visit La Charité.

The skyline of La Charité-sur-Loire: a bridge (left) built in 1520 provides access to the town; remnants
of the 12th-14th C ramparts in upper left; the Notre-Dame church mid-upper photo; and the Loire
River at the foreground.

La Charité-sur-Loire is a town of about 5000 on the banks of the Loire River. It was an important trading center in medieval times, but it really blossomed when the monastic order of Cluny--the largest and most powerful in the Middle Ages--turned its expansionist eyes on the town. In the middle of the 11th century, Cluny Abbey created La Charité priory. Its Notre-Dame Church, consecrated in the 12th C, was for a time the largest in Europe after that of Cluny. The priory, with its 400 outbuildings and 200 monks, became known as "Cluny's eldest daughter" and the Notre-Dame church became a major stopover for pilgrims on their way to Santiago de Compostela. The charity provided to the pilgrims by the monks is said to be the source of the town's name; the church's continuing role as a pilgrimage stop resulted in its addition to the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1998.

The Hundred Years' War, the Wars of Religion, and--most significantly--a devasting fire in 1559, sent the priory into steep decline.

The fire of 1559 destroyed the 10 bays of the nave of the church. 
In the late 1600's, 4 of the bays were rebuilt, and enclosed by
a new church facade. This courtyard once formed a large part of 
the interior of the church. After the Revolution, houses were allowed
to be built along what had been the walls of the old nave.

The 12 C bell tower is the only remaining element
of the Romanesque facade. The nave of the original
church used to connect to the tower.

The interior felt large in its present state, so one can only imagine how enormous it would have
been with the additional 6 bays.

The planned route in 1840 for construction of the Paris-Nevers royal road would have cut through the church and would have administered the coup-de-grace to the historic site. The timely intervention of the author Prosper Mérimée, working as an inspector of historical monuments, kept that from happening. The last 20+ years have seen a systematic restoration of the priory site and town. Today, La Charité-sur-Loire is also known as a town of books, a "city of the word." This was evident from the number of book shops we saw on our walk through of the town. It was a great place to explore.

The back of the church and the cloister from the vantage point
of the Benedictine Garden. Fragments of the Saint-Laurent Church.

A more extensive view of the Saint-Laurent Church. The church was the monks' private church, contemporaneous with Notre-Dame Church. Burned in the 1559 fire, demolished and buried
under rubble in the 17th C, it was rediscovered during archeological excavations in the mid-1970's.

Two wings of the cloister exist, restored to its 18th century "look."

Climbing the 84 steps that have been, since
the 12th century, part of the required passage
for pilgrims to Santiago de Compostela.

Lon walks along the north ramparts, the best preserved of the 
former fortifications of the town. Ramparts were first constructed
in the 12th century, and were modified over the next couple
of centuries. Most of the other portions of the ramparts were torn
down. In some cases, towers were incorporated into other buildings.

View over town and the Loire from the ramparts.

View of "downtown" through what used to be
the Gothic gate into the church nave.

At this point we were 37 kilometers from Nevers and had 2 cruising days to get there. Our previously-selected choice of mooring for the evening of July 5th would have taken us to about the halfway point to Nevers; however, the chance to meet Nigel, a former Barge Association barge owner and cruiser had us stopping earlier. 

The small town of Marseilles-les-Aubigny was a busy port in the heyday of barge transport. It is situated at the confluence of the Loire lateral canal and the defunct-since-1956 Canal de Berry. There appeared to be at least 2 boatyards still in business, although the town's function as a port for commercial traffic seems long-gone. 

We were moored on a quay across the street from Nigel's house.
Sloped walls always make mooring a bit more of a challenge, in part  
because it can make it difficult for us to walk on or off the boat
without a gangplank. Our existing gangplank would have extended
into the adjacent road, so Lon had to quickly design and fashion
a shorter gangplank using a ladder and some excess cabinet shelving.

Lots of boats, in various stages of decay (or not) line the basin in Marseilles.

A chat with Nigel aboard CARIB was a pleasant way to spend a late afternoon hour; otherwise, there wasn't much to see or do. The town didn't even have the "requisite" 11th or 12th century church--only a much more modern 20th century edifice that wasn't open.

Rain kept us tied up on the quay until 10 a.m. on Saturday, July 6. Had we not been on a schedule, it's likely we wouldn't have made the port at Nevers--27 kilometers distant--our destination for the day. There were several nice-looking quays enroute that would have made for a lovely stop and a shorter cruising day.

A nice-looking halte at Cours-les-Barres. Power, water, and
a short stroll into the village.

The approach to the double lock at Guetin. The boats to the
right show the location of a quay adjacent to a park. We
stopped briefly for lunch while waiting for the lock to open; it,
too, would have made a nice overnight stop.

Canal art with a nature theme.

Passing a disused commercial side-arm of the canal.

The canal was rather curvy at times, which produced several blind spots. One "Murphy's Law" of boating is that, if you are going to meet oncoming traffic on a canal, it will be at or near a narrow bridge on a blind curve. It was true for us at least twice that day.

Fun and games--narrow bridge, blind curve. We used the horn
a lot, but it still gives one a bit of a "stomach drop" to see the bow
of an oncoming boat coming into view behind a curve.

We also had to dodge a few raindrops during the last hour or two of the day. Normally, a little rain wouldn't be an issue, but at the moment only our flybridge driving station is operative, so we aren't able to move indoors when the weather turns foul. Despite rain threatening us throughout the day, we "kept on keeping on." I simply hauled out an umbrella and held it over Lon to block any steady rain.

The double lock at Guetin had very deep chambers.
Fortunately, the eclusier was there with her hook on a
rope to grab our mooring line.

Greeting us as we came to the top of the 2nd lock chamber was an aqueduct.
Not as long or as fancy as the Briare Aqueduct, but a fairly stiff breeze
made it a more challenging crossing. And the clouds roll in . . .  

It was nearly 5 p.m. before we were moored in Nevers. The port employee originally wanted to put us on one of the small finger docks. I'm not sure how he thought our 21 meters (70 feet) was going to fit on a dock designed for boats of 12 meters or less. We refused the offer. We finally settled onto a long floating dock that held other barges, but it was an interesting process to fit our 21-meters-plus-tender into a 25-meter space.  Parallel parking at its finest. 

Parking in Nevers: the final product (top) and close-ups of
the space we have in back (bottom left) and front (bottom right).