Cruising Toward a Stop?

That is the million dollar question of the day. The rain has ceased for now, the sun is shining, and we're still not sure when the Canal entre Champagne et Bourgogne will reopen between the towns of Joinville at lock 44 and Vitry-le-Francois  at the beginning/end of the canal. We've not been able to find an official update on the canal status--and any prospective resumption of navigation--since the original announcement of the closure at the end of last week. So on Friday, July 16, we set off from Langres, figuring that the water levels had to drop sometime, and that we may as well be as close to Joinville as possible when the closure is lifted.

It was still grey and foggy on Friday (16th) and most
of Saturday (17th). Vnf staff has to operate the
lift bridges for us.

The bicyclist on the tow path was surprised to meet
a herd of cows being led to who knows where. 

They were an orderly group.

Our first two stops were Rolampont and Foulain, two small villages with old churches, but not much else going on. As with some previous areas, we were having trouble with internet and cell phone reception. As we briefly explored each town, we became aware of how out-of-date our Waterways guidebook was with respect to services offered in various towns. For example, Foulain has a Halte Nautique that had been rated relatively highly, and the town was said to have a restaurant, a bakery, and a grocer. The reality was that the park with the boat quay had not been mowed in a very long time and we had a great deal of difficulty locating the mooring bollards (but at least the neighbors were quiet--we were adjacent to the town cemetery!) and there wasn't much happening for shops and services in the town center.

No more boulangerie (bakery), an apparent
victim of ongoing changes in France.

We couldn't find a grocery store, not even a small
superette, but we could buy eggs from a vending
machine 24/7

The restaurant choices in town were a British
tea house (opened in hopes of getting British boaters
from the canal?) and this pizza vending machine. We've
seen a lot of these vending machines in France.

On Sunday, July 18, we stopped at the port adjacent to the relatively large hilltop town of Chaumont. The town was built in the 10th century on a rocky spur overlooking the Marne and Suize valleys. The "rocky spur overlooking" aspect of things deterred us from using our bicycles to go exploring the old center of town, but we're not sure the walk up the hill was much easier. 

The city is the current administrative capital of the department of the Haute-Marne. The center of town has maintained a lot of the medieval atmosphere from the time when its chateau was built.

Overlooking old Chaumont to the Suize valley. The
only remaining part of the original fortress, a relic
of the Counts of Champagne, is a square tower,
 the top of which can just barely be seen at the far right.
  

Pat and another perspective on the old city. The bell
towers of La Basilique St. Jean-Baptiste (13th-16th C)
 can be seen in the upper right

The "tourelles", the circular staircases with 
the lower steps visible on the building exterior,
are a characteristic of Chaumont architecture. Lon
just calls them a potential "head banger"

Created a bit closer to the present is Chaumont's most imposing monument, a huge stone railway viaduct. The viaduct was engineer Eugene Decomble's solution to the problem of how to get a train to the center of Chaumont, situated on a hill as it was. His idea was to take the railway line over the Suize valley on a viaduct 50 meters high. Amazingly for the times, the project was completed in 15 months. The structure is 654 meters long, has a slope of 6% and has 50 arches spread over its 3 levels. It suffered bomb damage during WWII, but was restored and is in amazing shape. Whether due to COVID or some ongoing repair work, the lowest level is currently not open to pedestrians.

Chaumont's railway viaduct

A slightly different perspective, but still not able
to see the end of the viaduct behind the trees

Maybe the walkway will be reopened
in the near future

Last, but not least, we were made aware of an American war memorial in the cemetery of the St. Aignan church (14th/15th C), located on the side of the canal opposite the port. From 1917 to 1919 Chaumont was the headquarters of the WWI American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) led by General John J. Pershing. From 1917 to 1921, an American cemetery existed in the St. Aignan churchyard and contained the remains of nearly 600 American soldiers. In 1921 the bodies were removed for return to the United States or to one of the permanent American cemeteries in Europe.

St Aignan church

The American memorial in the churchyard. The
inscription reads, in French: "1917-1921. This simple stone
will recall to future generations that here has been a cemetery
containing the bodies of more than six hundred American
soldiers who fought at our sides for right and liberty."

Our mooring at the port in Chaumont. The boat in
front of ours is that of Tom and Lyn Lewis, and we
had an entertaining "catch-up" with them last evening.

We moved on today, and are currently at a lovely, park-like Halte Nautique in the village of Vieville. Below is our cruise plan altitude profile, with our current position in Vieville denoted by the intersection of the purple lines.

We're coming down! Lots of locks on French canals

The portion of the canal that is closed is now only 30 km ahead of us. The last town with a decent mooring option on this side of the navigation stoppage is Donjeux, a mere 21 km down-canal. We can cruise to Donjeux in one or two days, and then we may be stopped. We're hoping any stop will not last too long, but we are currently at the mercy of Mother Nature and the vnf. C'est la vie!

Rain, Rain Go Away

I almost hate to express the sentiment in the title of this posting, given that so much of the U.S. is suffering from extreme heat and drought. But it has been a wet couple of weeks here, the current week particularly so. After a lovely weekend the clouds and rain moved in and we don't seem to be able to shake them. There has been flooding in France, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands, and we have received numerous advisories to mariners in the last two days regarding navigation stoppages on various rivers, canalized rivers, and canals in the French waterways network. The Petite Saone (which we left just a week ago), the Canal de la Meuse, and the canal des Ardennes have been affected by navigation stops due to high water, to name just a few. In fact, the Canal entre Champagne et Bourgogne-which we are currently on-is also closed to navigation starting about 90 kilometers ahead of us. As of this writing we can still cruise for a few days before we reach that specific area, so we hope and pray that the sun comes out soon and stays around long enough for the water levels to drop. What is unknown is the amount of damage that will be left in its wake.

Monday, July 12, was spent off-and-on driving in the rain--and completing a sequence of 8 deep locks--to get to the village of Heuilly-Cotton at the summit of the canal and the entry to the Balesmes Tunnel. We walked around briefly, and decided it was an attractive village, but there wasn't a lot going on there.

The Church of Saint-Loup D'Heuilly-Cotton,
parts of which date to the 15th century

A memorial in the church graveyard states: "French remember
eight heroes martyred and slaughtered by the Germans on 
the 28th of June, 1944 so that France may live". The eight people
shot were in a railway convoy that was taking prisoners to Germany.

We walked toward the tunnel entrance to get an
idea of the approach.

We moored for the evening just prior to the signal for
 the tunnel. A great spot, except for the house nearby
 with several very noisy watchdogs. The Rottweiler
in particular was a true "Hound of the Baskervilles" 

On Tuesday morning, as well-rested as we were going to be, we tackled the 5 km/3 mile long tunnel. 

Approaching the tunnel on a gloomy morning, but
at least it had stopped raining

The green light giving us the go-ahead. It's not
obvious from the photo, but we could just barely see
the light from the tunnel exit 3 miles away.

Looking ahead: It certainly wasn't bright as daylight,
but at least there were lights along one wall. It might
have been more nerve-wracking if the only light
came from the boat.

Looking back to where we'd been. Lon did a great
job of driving, and my role was to tell him how far
we were from the walls so that he could make the
appropriate adjustments.

The beautiful view that greeted us after one hour and
15 minutes in the tunnel. Still gloomy, but not raining.

We knew that the tunnel would require intense concentration--and it did--so we were pleased with our decision to make it a relatively short cruising day and stop just a few kilometers down the canal in the port for the town of Langres.

Miracle of miracles, the sun came out for a while
in the late afternoon. Lon takes advantage
to relax in his bare feet with a cold beverage.

The port is in a lovely park-like setting. And we
have all the benefits of electricity, water, and a relatively
short trip to a supermarket (although the hill on the
approach to the store was rather steep)

All good things must come to an end, and the rain moved in with a vengeance. We haven't seen many other boats on this canal, but one came cruising in after the heavy rain started, so Lon went out to assist with the landing and we ended up having docktails in the CARIB salon with Tom and Lyn Lewis. Tom is of Irish descent, and has had an extensive post-military career as an itinerant singer and composer of sea shanties (see www.tomlewis.net). A  very interesting and fun couple. 

We knew that heavy rain was coming, so our planned stop for the town of Langres was timely, insofar as it's nice to have electricity and a secure mooring when the weather is bad. The shame of it is, however, that Langres seems to be a very interesting town, and the rain made it impossible to explore it to the fullest.

Langres is a medieval city surrounded by 3.5 km of wall and sits on a rocky promontory high above the canal (and over 1500 feet above sea level). The wall contains towers from the 15th and 16th centuries, gates from the 16th-18th centuries, and a Gallo-Roman gate from the 1st century. Its Cathedrale Saint-Mammes was constructed in the 12th century and updated in the 18th century. It was the birthplace of Denis Diderot, a French philosopher of significance during the "Age of Enlightenment." We taxied to the center of the town this morning and walked to the cathedral and a few overlooks along the city wall before surrendering to the elements and seeking refuge in a restaurant for lunch.

A very wet Langres town center

Tom, Lyn, and Lon on the city wall

17th century gate and guardroom

Tour Saint Jean, the last artillery tower constructed
at Langres (circa 1538). In the late 19th century
it became a communications center--for pigeons! The
birds, which could cover 100 km in 80 minutes, were
used to deliver messages up to World War I.

Our lunchtime view overlooking Place Diderot.
Yes, those are raindrops on the window.

We're planning to leave Langres tomorrow morning and continue north, but we will have to see how the canal situation is in the morning and make a final decision then. The rain seems to be lessening and the weekend forecast looks relatively good, so fingers crossed that the canal closure won't spread further south to where we are.

It continues to be a year of "sort of" plans.

  

Catching Up

This should have been posted two or three days ago. The problem is, we are discovering that our internet connectivity is very spotty in this part of France. As a result, e-mail, blogs, and all things requiring the internet cannot always be done in the timeframe that we would prefer. Hence, the need to "catch up" with things left unsaid during the last several days.

We made our about-face on the Petite Saone on Wednesday, July 7 (our 42nd wedding anniversary!) and made great time returning to Gray in one day. We stocked up on groceries at the local Intermarche and followed up with a relaxing pizza and salad anniversary dinner at a nice restaurant just across the road from our mooring location. The following morning saw Lon making a quick bicycle trip to buy a replacement battery for our generator and then we were off again downstream.

After 30 km we made a right turn onto the Canal entre Champagne et Bourgogne (Canal between Champagne and Burgundy). At its completion in 1907 (the last to be completed of the Freycinet canal network in central France) it was known as the Canal de la Marne a la Saone, so-named for the two rivers that it connected. Apparently wine-related names promote tourism better than river names, hence the relatively recent re-naming of the canal.

We were more than a little concerned when we turned onto the canal, because what met us was a waterway containing masses of weeds. It was a slog just to get to the first lock, where we retrieved a remote control device that we use to operate the automatic locks. The VNF have figured out some ingenious ways to cut down on the need for staffing at the locks. Instead of a lock keeper being on site, the remote was dispensed via an automat-type process. One more lock and then we tied up for the night near a little village called Maxilly-sur-Saone. It was early enough in the day that we were able to go walking in the area.

The Chateau de Talmay is a privately owned residence
in a neighboring town. The tower dates from 1250, the
elegant lower structure from the mid-1700s. Not open for
tours at this time of year, but the whole complex looked stunning.

An area of concern for us was that a report to mariners on the VNF website mentioned weeds as being a problem along the whole length of the canal. If the rest of the canal was going to be as bad as what we encountered when we first turned onto the waterway, we were going to be in deep trouble trying to get to the Netherlands via this route. Fortunately, we have a boat that is “keel cooled”, that is, it has pipes running along the exterior of the hull that contain engine coolant and the heat exchange takes place at that interface without the need to pull raw water from the canal through filters and into the boat. This avoids the problem of filters clogged with weed and an overheated engine. Nevertheless, our boat prop cannot efficiently propel us when it is fighting through weeds, and masses of plant material can wreak havoc with the valves and gates of the locks on the canal.

Noxious weeds in the canal. Not too troublesome if
they stay to the edges of the waterway, but that's not
always the case.

VNF employees working to clear weed from in front
of the upper lock gates, as a commercial barge waits
for us to leave the lock.

Our first full day on the canal had good sections and bad sections, but fortunately most sections did not have enough weeds to cause a problem. We had great weather and enjoyed a very peaceful cruise through what is a very rural part of France.

We had to contact the vnf to open this lift bridge at Cheuge
because the automatic opening feature was malfunctioning.

Our hoped-for mooring spot on July 9 was already
occupied by a large barge (Baron de l'ecluse, i.e. Baron of the lock)
 crewed by the lovely Swiss couple pictured above. So we pulled
 into a slightly weedier spot behind them and joined
them on the deck of their boat for Happy Hour. 

The subsequent days have been much the same: underway by 9 a.m. or so, cruise for 4 or 5 hours, and use the bikes or walking to do a little bit of exploring. We've had a problem or two with malfunctioning locks, but those issues were resolved fairly quickly (what's amazing to me is that I've been able to communicate well enough in French over the phone to explain the problems.) And we've been pleasantly surprised that weeds haven't caused many problems or been particularly thick.

The chateau or fortress (not sure which) in Cusey that
had apparently been converted into a private dwelling.

Lon canalside on one of our biking expeditions

                      

We shared a mooring spot with "the Baron" again
on July 10 in Cusey--and another Happy Hour with Markus 
and Angela

Biking by the unusual church in Piepape on 
July 11

The Reservoir de la Vingeanne, one of four
artificial lakes that provides water for the canal.
It appears to be a vacation area, but was relatively
 uncrowded on Sunday the 11th. Maybe it's the
weather, maybe it's still the effects of the pandemic.

A warm bike ride deserves a break for liquid refreshment.

C.A.R.I.B. III settled for the evening in a green
and peaceful mooring spot near Piepape.

When we cruised the Rhone au Rhin Canal two years ago we also dealt with automated locks. The remote control system was a little different, and we have to say that the system we are currently dealing with has a couple of lovely features.

Our current remote control device for operating 
the locks.

After we've entered a lock and are secured to the bollards, we have to activate the process to fill--or empty--the lock (depending on whether we're going up or down). On the Rhone au Rhin, this was always done by physically raising the blue bar on the apparatus pictured below. This could sometimes be difficult if the bar was located in a difficult-to-reach part of the lock wall. The beauty of our current remote control device is that its "bassinee" button allows us to compete this step electronically (well, most of the time).

Another cool feature this year are the "ici signs" posted prior to the locks that tell us when to push the button on the remote to activate the lock preparation process. No more guesswork as to whether we're too far away from the lock for the signal to reach, although we've found it's still helpful to have line-of-sight to the lock.

Tonight we are at the summit of the Champagne and Bourgogne canal, which means that we have been climbing during the last few days of our cruising--a total of 43 locks. Tomorrow we start our day with a tunnel that is 5 kilometers (3 miles) long. When we come out the other side, we begin going downhill, and will pass through 70-some locks before we reach the end of this canal. At that point we will have two choices of route: continue north or make a right turn and head east. At this point we're thinking that the eastern route will be our choice, but as we have already found out, much depends upon the condition of the respective canals. 

The profile of the "eastern route": Canal entre Champagne et
Bourgogne, Canal du Marne au Rhin Ouest, Le canal de la Meuse,
La Meuse. The purple cross marks our position at
Cusey on July 11; we are currently at the top of the first peak.

Here's hoping we have better and more consistent internet going forward!

It's Time for Plan B

Well, that didn't take long. Only five days on the water and we need to make a significant change in our cruising plan. But first . . . 

We stayed in Gray on Sunday, July 4, with the weather forecasts promising significant rain all day and possible thunderstorms. We probably could have cruised, because although it was foggy and rainy very early that morning, it only rained for about an hour the rest of the day. 

Time for a walk and a lovely view approaching the historic
center of Gray from across the Petite Saone River.

We left Gray in a light drizzle on Monday morning, but the weather cleared pretty quickly and it was quite a nice day to be on the water. 

We're cruising through a largely rural landscape, and
that means cows

It was also "tunnel day" for us, and we were treated to a passage through the 640-meter long Tunnel de Savoyeux.

Approaching the tunnel

It wasn't bad inside. Some tunnels have
no installed lights, so we have lights on the
boat to light our way, but we didn't need the
boat lights here.

We found a nice spot for our overnight just upstream of
the tunnel exit

                         

A walk later that evening, and Lon is
standing on an observation deck above
the tunnel exit

Most of the "urban life" around these parts is just small villages. A half-mile walk from our stopping point was the village of Seveux. Archeological digs have found evidence that a settlement has existed on the site since at least Roman times, and the apparently abandoned warehouses speak to the previous involvement of the town in river commerce. These days it's rather quiet--a church, elementary school, bakery, and a rather nice looking (modern) restaurant are primarily what constitutes "downtown." It also has a chateau that is registered as a historical monument.

The Chateau de Seveux, or at least what is left of it

The weather remains unsettled, but we don't have the luxury this summer of being "fair weather boaters", so even though there was off-and-on light rain today we cruised for about 4.5 hours. This meant that most of the driving was done from inside the boat. Aside from the reduced visibility to the rear it worked out rather well.

Evidence of a well-used lock. Years of exposure to
lines from passing boats have resulted in
deep grooves worn into the lock wall

As we sat in the boat this afternoon, halfway up the Petite Saone river, listening to the rain patter on the roof and thinking about our remaining few days of cruising on the Petite Saone before transitioning to the Canal du Vosges, we received an e-mail advisory to boaters from the French inland waterways authority VNF (Voies navigables de France) that upended our plans. It seems that some of the hydraulic machinery underlying the Vosges Canal between the locks at Pont-du-Bols and Selles was damaged and resulted in the emptying of the canal between these two locks. The Vosges Canal is now closed to navigation until the problem is fixed and the section of the canal re-flooded. There is no information at this time as to exactly how long this will be. Days? Weeks? We don't have the luxury of time to sit around and wait for it all to sort itself out. So our "sort of" Plan B means that we will turn C.A.R.I.B. III around tomorrow and backtrack down the Petite Soane River as far as the town of Heuilley-sur-Saone, where we will then turn onto the Champagne et Bourgogne Canal. This is the start of an alternate route north and we'll have to make some further decisions later regarding which additional canals we'll try to use as we attempt to get to the Belgian border.

Disappointing, yes, but it could have been worse. We might have already been all the way up the Petite Soane. And as the photo below shows, it's a beautiful evening in France!