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 with 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 hiking 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-and-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).

The Perfect Ratio

I've written before about how the number of locks one encounters when cruising can impact trip planning, the length of a cruising day, and the amount of physical energy expended during the cruise. It takes at least 15 minutes to get through a lock, given the slow approach to enter, tying up, gates closing, water filling/emptying, gates opening, and slow departure. Add 5-10 minutes if the lock needs to be prepped, and even more if there's a waiting line of boats. I find locks interesting, and having a "reasonable" number along the way contributes to a positive cruising experience. Too many locks can be physically draining--for CARIB's captain, it requires large amounts of concentration to "grease the entry" into spaces that aren't that much wider than we are (although we have it easy compared to the 38-meter commercial barges that are sized to just fit the dimensions of the Freycinet-gauge locks); for the crew, tossing and tightening the lines that stabilize us in a lock is a good upper body workout that is best experienced in moderate doses.

We are now on the Canal lateral a la Loire, the third of the canals for us on our "tour" of the "Bourbonnais Route." The first, Canal du Loing, was 49 km long and had 19 locks, for a km/locks ratio of about 2.6. Not bad. The Canal de Briare fits 36 locks into its 57-meter length, for a km/locks ratio of about 1.6. A number of these locks came in "chains" of 3 or more locks separated by short distances of canal, and once we got started on a chain, the subsequent locks in the chain were usually ready for us and the eclusiers (where present, especially at the deep locks) were helpful with getting our lines attached. It turned a potentially "painful" experience into a pleasant one. The Canal lateral a la Loire is the longest of the 4 "Bourbonnais" canals, stretching 200-kilometers with only 47 locks along that distance, so it has a very pleasant--dare I say "perfect"-- ratio of 4.25. The last canal, the Canal du Centre, is 112 km long and has 61 locks, so the 1.8 km/locks ratio will have us working harder again.

After we crossed the Briare Aqueduct on Friday, June 28, we had hoped to make our first stop the town of Chatillon-sur-Loire. It had promised to be a pretty little village with a good port, but we were not fortunate in our timing. A lovely open spot along the quay was reserved by a hotel boat that day, and the rest of the port was filled, mostly with what appeared to be long-stay boats. So, we continued on to the village of Beaulieu-sur-Loire. We had to work around a few shrubs to get moored, and the electrical connections were spotty, but it turned out to be a nice stop.

The condition of the quay looks better from a distance than it
did close up, but it did the job. The picnic area was cute and 
well-maintained, and it was an easy walk into town.

Beaulieu was one of many fortified towns in the 11th century. It was closely associated with the canons of Bourges, who exercised both temporal and spiritual authority over the town until the French Revolution.

Left: Sainte-Etienne church had the most unusual pews I'd ever seen:
 individually enclosed. I suspect modern churchgoers of the
 "that's my pew" mindset would love it.
Right: the church had a very basic interior; the ceiling of the
11th C nave had been covered with lath and plaster.

The Sainte-Etienne Church in Beaulieu. The 13th C bell tower did
 double-duty as a defensive watchtower for the fortified town.

The half-timbered building is the former residence
of the canons of Bourges, and was built in the 14th C.
The square tower behind it was a dovecote of the same era.

The medieval town didn't need to worry about running out of water.
The fifty-one hamlets that comprise the Beaulieu commune contain
two hundred wells. These three are just a sample of what was in
the town proper.

Thunderstorms were in the forecast for later in the day on Saturday, so as we made our decision about where to stop, we thought that it would be nice to have access to electricity. We can function without shore power, but when it promises to be cloudy our solar panels aren't quite as efficient, so the ability to plug into electricity is an "easy button" for us. After weighing the different mooring options available to us within the distance we were willing to travel, we pulled into the village of Léré late morning on the 29th.

Léré had been a port on the Loire for much of its existence, but it also served as a place of refuge for religious relics brought by the canons of the city of Tours who were escaping invading Normans. Some of the monks stayed to form a chapter in service of the collegiate church of Saint-Martin de Léré, and the church gained its reputation because of the sheltering of the relics. Léré was a fortified town as well, its ramparts dating from the 12th-13th centuries, and which have since disappeared.

The rear of the collegiate church. The interior and the 11th C
crypt, where the relics were protected, can be visited as part of
a guided tour from the tourist office. Unfortunately, we arrived
in town too late for the Saturday morning tour, and the next one
wasn't happening until Tuesday. The town was cute, but not so 
cute that we were going to hang around for 3 more days.

 

Left: the ornate Romanesque portal of the 11th C, a listed historical monument.
Right: a Gothic portal, part of the renovations in the 14th C.

The "Joan of Arc House" in Léré. No claims are made that Joan was
actually here, but the lintel over the door has "1421" inscribed, so
the date of construction was close to her era.

The last remaining tower of the city ramparts.

The 19th C lavoir (wash house) on the left in proximity to the 15th C hospice at right.

Visible from the Léré port. If we see any more of these, I may have
 to name our summer "The nuclear power plant tour of France." France 
gets a lot of its electricity from nuclear power. This plant was near the
 town of Belleville-sur-Loire, between Beaulieu and Léré.

It absolutely poured overnight on Saturday and into Sunday morning. We were happy to wait it out at our mooring until 11 a.m. when the rain mostly stopped and we could continue on.

The things you see when you're waiting for the lock: the Chateau de Peseau, the oldest parts
from the 14th C, is now being run as an events center by the family that owns it.

Fortunately, there was no repeat for us of the canal closure due to high water that we experienced when we were on the Briare Canal. Boaters elsewhere in the French waterway system haven't been so lucky. Navigation was stopped on the Yonne River, Petite Saone River, and Nivernais Canal due to high water; and on the Burgundy Canal because many trees had toppled into the canal during the storms and had to be cleared. Some of the rivers are still closed, but water levels seem to be dropping. 

After a cloudy start, the weather turned lovely during our Sunday cruise. We were now entering into a part of France that we'd visited briefly by car during one of several trips we made to France in 2018 when we were purchasing CARIB III. To say that we were in "wine country" isn't exactly helpful, as much of France is wine country of one sort or another. So, to be more specific, we were entering the region in the eastern part of the Loire valley that produces wines with the "Sancerre" appellation. The wines in this area are primarily white Sauvignon Blancs, with some Pinot Noir. In our previous visit we'd stayed at a small hotel in the town of Bannay--we recognized it as we passed--and spent a day in the hilltop town of Sancerre, from whence the wines get their name. We were ready for a trip down memory lane.

The church in Bannay, Saint-Julien, has an extremely odd profile. The choir, the part
closest to the canal, dates from the 15th C; the pepper pot towers at the other end are 18th C.
The Hundred Years' War and subsequent religious wars will do that to a building.

A natural stopping place to visit Sancerre would have been the town of St. Satur, but the port doesn't accommodate barges, so we continued a couple more kilometers to the village of Ménétréol. We had a rather exciting end to our cruising day, and not in a good way. We could see that no other boats were parked at the town quay but could also see what appeared to be a rental boat headed our way and was intending to stop at Ménétréol. No problem, there was plenty of room on the quay, but I wondered why Lon was approaching the quay at a relatively fast speed and without his usual finesse. It turns out that the cable running from the throttle control on the flybridge (Morse Control) to the transmission lost screws and became disconnected, thereby keeping us in forward gear and with no way to reverse in order to slow us down. Lon had to use our bow thruster to keep us from crashing into the rental boat, then drop the rear anchor and make an adrenalin-fueled trip to the engine room to manually disengage the transmission. We ended up making a bow-first "crunch" into the far end of the quay, but we'd slowed enough, and we didn't do any damage to either CARIB or the quay. With assistance from one of the men on the rental boat we were able to toss lines to shore and get manually pulled in and moored.  Note to selves--make Monday, July 1, a maintenance/recovery day.

Ménétréol-sous-Sancerre has been a village since the 11th C, first under the control of the Abbey of St. Satur, and then in the 12th C under a charter of franchise by the Count of Sancerre. Its main source of wealth through the years has been the cultivation of vines. Ménétréol retains a number of interesting old buildings, and although vineyards grow in close proximity, we didn't notice any active houses for wine production and sale.

16th C House with a Tower.

Lon points to the marker that denotes the water level
during the flood of 1866.

The old mill.

The 19th C viaduct cut through town; these days it provides
a viewpoint over Ménétréol.

We spent Monday doing some of the necessary things--grocery shopping for me, and for Lon a trip to the local bricolage (hardware store) for replacement screws to fix the upper helm (ultimately unsuccessful). Until he can find replacement screws, and because we do the bulk of our driving from the flybridge, he "borrowed" screws from the lower helm and got us back in business. That gave us Tuesday as a sightseeing day in Sancerre.

Sancerre sits on a hilltop, 312 meters above the river valley. Its height made it a natural fortress in medieval times, but the addition of a chateau and ramparts enhanced the package. It was a Protestant stronghold during the Wars of Religion in the 16th C., and last year Sancerre commemorated the 450th anniversary of the Siege of Sancerre in 1572-73, during which the Huguenot population held off the Catholic forces of the French king for nearly eight months. Rebellion must run in the veins of the Sancerre population, as Sancerre was a regional command center for the French Resistance in WWII. 

Our cycle trip to Sancerre was a bit of a challenge. The first stages weren't bad, but the bike motors weren't quite up to the steep climb at the very end.

We've started the climb, and it's gradual at this point, but we
still have to reach the height of those buildings at the top 
of the photo.

Still climbing--and loving the view of the viaduct amidst
the vineyards.

We made it to the top--even if we had to walk the bikes the last
little bit--and can now really look down on things, including
the town of St. Satur and the continuation of the viaduct.

The medieval belfry of the Notre-Dame
Church in Sancerre.

Umbrellas come to Sancerre--but where are 
all the shoppers? It was very quiet in town, perhaps
because vacation season hasn't quite started.

Left: wine grower's quarter
Right: the street where Jews were forced to live

Upper: the last tower remaining from the medieval fortifications
Lower: urban renewal at work 

Wine tasting anyone? The Chateau de Sancerre boutique will be happy to oblige. (Their vineyards
were identified in an earlier photo.)

We finished the walking tour, amazed at how much we didn't remember from our time in Sancerre six years earlier. The Joseph Mellot shop was close to where we'd parked our bikes, so a quick stop there for a bottle of white and one of rose and we were ready to head back to the boat. July 2nd it may have been, but you wouldn't know it by the cool weather. We appreciated the ease of the downhill return to Ménétréol, and celebrated by giving some business to the local hotel restaurant. Time then to relax and contemplate the next day's cruise, hoping it would be a little less exciting than the last one. 

Briare Aqueduct

After our visit to Briare we were more than ready to leave Ouzouer and transition from the Canal de Briare to the Canal lateral a la Loire. Through discussions with most of the other boaters in the halte nautique in Ouzouer, we were able to work out a schedule for departures heading south on Friday, June 28, that would get us to and through the first lock of our cruising day when it opened. The one boat that wasn't involved in the discussions decided to "jump the line" and head out at 7:30 a.m. so that they could be the first in the lock--competitive boating at its finest. It didn't impact us much; the operation of the lock was so efficient that we were only delayed by 10 minutes or so from what we had expected.

When walking by the port in Briare on Thursday we'd seen the
barge "Vindi" moored there. Boating can be a small world--that was 
the 4th time we'd encountered Guy and Ardon during our cruises:
2019 in Bescançon, 2021 on the Meuse, 2023 in Chalons-en-Champagne
and 2024 in Briare--in the port and here on the canal in passing.

The Canal de Briare meets the Canal lateral a la Loire: to the right, a lock takes one into the
last few kilometers of the Briare Canal, which dead-ends at the Old Port in Briare. To the left,
the Canal lateral a la Loire, the gateway to the Briare Aqueduct across the Loire and
the start of the 200 kilometers of the Canal lateral a la Loire.

The Loire Lateral Canal is a relatively "new" component in the canal system of France. Opening in 1838 and improved by the construction of the Pont-canal de Briare in 1896, it provided a needed east-west link that avoided the dangers of navigation on the Loire itself. 

We had a beautiful day for crossing the Loire on the Pont-canal. It's only wide enough for one boat, and not controlled by lights or gates, so boaters who want to traverse the bridge have to keep an eagle-eye out for traffic at the far end before entering.

The "coast is clear", so we approach the aqueduct.

Lon is all concentration.

Over the Loire we go.

Nearing the end of the nearly 670-meter crossing.

Still photos can't quite capture the experience, so we set up a camera on the roof of CARIB and put it into movie mode for the crossing. 

A fun crossing and in the Top 3 of our canal technology experiences. Not quite as exciting as the higher Pontcysyllte Aqueduct in Wales, or as unique as the Falkirk Wheel in Scotland, but pretty cool all the same.