Roanne May 5-28
Roanne is where we moored Highlander for the winter. Highlights on our return include lunch at Troisgros to celebrate our anniversary. We're welcomed at the restaurant’s door by two staff, and asked if we'd like to see the kitchen. Twenty chefs in spotless whites are working at a relaxed pace, heads together here and there. Michel Troisgros comes over to chat, and appears interested in who we are.
He points out his son, who represents the fourth generation of the restaurant family.
Coffee in the pretty garden is accompanied by petit fours on a plate piped with anniversary congratulations - a lovely touch. Overall a great experience, but not one to be had too often unless you have very deep pockets...
The restaurant service is impeccable. The food ranges from wonderful to very good, but we decide that, overall, it didn't quite match the exorbitant prices.
Coffee in the pretty garden is accompanied by petit fours on a plate piped with anniversary congratulations - a lovely touch. Overall a great experience, but not one to be had too often unless you have very deep pockets...
We’ve been socialising with Port locals, including those who live permanently aboard - mostly Brits. We enjoy get-togethers at a couple of local bars and restaurants, a 70th birthday party on one barge, and dinner on another. A group comes to us for drinks and nibbles at 5.00 - and the last one, a Pom, drunk as a lord, has to be thrown out (gently of course!) at 10.00pm.
Simon arrives a few days after us, to help with the prep and painting of the boat. We’d had it done in Maasbracht in 2014, but within a year it was flaking, and now there are rust patches.
Simon and Roger apply themselves to the sanding and also some painting - when the weather permits. Mostly it's far too cold, and too rainy.
On the first (and only) hot and sunny day so far we take the willing worker on a short cruise along the Canal Latéral de Roanne à Digoin.
We 'wild' moor on the Saturday, in a bucolic spot with a picnic table and a solitary bollard, and cook a barbecue ashore - after our Champagne aperitifs.
Next morning Sime and I walk through the lush countryside to a little village a km or two away, where, being Sunday, everything is shut and the boulangerie, alas, permanently closed.
It's all downhill weatherwise once we return to the boat and set off again.
When it’s not raining we enjoy moseying along the tree-lined canal, with glimpses of farms, low hills, and an occasional village beyond as well as on the canal. Walking around Briannon the morning after our overnight stop I find a boulangerie and bring back croissants for breakfast - they’re flaky, buttery, and delicious.
Simon learns to do the ropework and to steer.
While waiting for one lock Highlander goes aground, and it hard work to push off and going again. It’s done to add to Simon’s experiences, of course...
Simon leaves on 25th. We miss him - he’s great company.
Canal Latéral de Roanne à Digoin May 29-31
Roanne was once a centre of the French textile industry, and the canal was built to enable the transport of goods from the town to further afield. Begun in 1832, the Canal Latéral de Roanne à Digoin was opened in 1838. The canal is 56 km long and has 10 locks. Eventually rail took over from water transport, and the canal became commercially unviable. Some years ago the former industrial port was renovated and landscaped, to become a very popular base for pleasure boats.
With on-and-off rain forecast for the next couple of weeks painting is out of the question. We decide we'll move northeast along two canals and begin travelling south. We’ll turn right at the Saône, towards Lyon, then cruise the Rhône to just past Avignon, when we'll go to a friend’s 70th birthday celebration. There are floods further north, mainly centred on the Paris region. But the rain is so widespread we’ll want to be sure of the conditions on the two big rivers before we leave the last canal - if they've risen, the current will be very fast.
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| We dodged past this tree, but not the one further along |
Canals tend to be immune from flooding, but after massive thunderstorms on two successive nights we thread our way past tree branches blasted into the canal.
Finally we’re stopped by a tree fallen across its full width. The canal is too narrow to turn around, there’s nowhere to moor, and Rog reverses 2 km to a mooring back in Briennon - quite a feat. We wait there for the VNF to clear the tree, which they do quite early the following morning.
The canal we're mooching along runs within sight of the River Loire and we see that it's spilled over its banks into the surrounding farmland, stranding cattle in some places.
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| This éclusier chats as he winds the lock gates open |
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| Éclusiers crank open another lock's doors on the Canal Latéral |
Canal du Centre June 1-10
The canal has lovely scenery, attractive waterside villages, and quirky locks. There’s also a lot of them… but we’re descending, and it’s easier. Radar detects our approach, but once in, the cord one of us must pull to activate the lock is not easily reached from where we hold our lines looped around the lock’s bollards. This is where a boat hook comes in handy…
After a wait, the lock gates groan and grumble into position, and the lock empties. I’ve seen snails move faster - or grass grow, for that matter.
A few of the locks are quite deep, and these have floating bollards. You attach a line, and the bollard slowly descends along with the barge. The lines don't have to be 'managed' - definitely the way to go! Someone has found the time to decorate this bollard...
We’re drifting through Burgundy, a land of rolling green hills, hedges, ancient farmsteads, white Charolais cattle, and the occasional grand house and splendid chateau.
We’re not hurrying, so we can stop for a day or so at a favourite village, and discover new ones. We enjoy the yellow irises massed among the reeds, and the varieties of white daisies, large to small, that line the banks.
People take an interest in Highlander as we pass, and we wave and call greetings.
There are the inevitable indefatigable fishermen.
We see about six large dead fish over a day or so - do the fishermen eat their catch? - and there are hawks or perhaps falcons wheeling above us on other days.
AND I manage to snap a heron, the shyest of birds. They usually don't wait around to have their photo taken.
So far, so good... but the weather continues to be cold and wet...
Approaching Montceau-les-Mines, we pass through three lifting bridges...
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| The most interesting of the three bridges |
and once the canal widens to the Port de Plaisance Rog turns Highlander around and does a deft reverse park to the inside of a pontoon normally used by much smaller boats - all the moorings for barges are taken. He’s guided by the friendly shouts of the Lancashire man on the neat little barge nearby - ‘Doris Pickle of Preston’. Our helper's accent is northern-thick - but he turns out to be a German who’s lived in Preston for forty years.
The pontoon is so rickety it’s dangerous - so with little dignity I crawl to the cleat to put the line through it...
Montceau-les-Mines' huge Saturday market extends for a kilometre or so along the canalside road. It sells most things.
At St Julien-sur-Dheune, on a fine and warm late afternoon, we moor on the quay along from a hotel barge, aptly named ‘Finesse’ - it’s all spit and polish. Chatting to the Captain, we learn that the handful of pampered guests pay €4,500 pp/week for the privilege of being looked after by two crew, a chef, a tour guide, and two hostesses.
On a day of encounters, I’m offered some ‘salade’ by the man who keeps an extensive lock-side vegetable garden. When I agree, he cuts a lettuce for me - he has plenty of time, with the lock’s slow emptying. It’s a first offer of produce for us, but it was quite usual in the days when éclusiers lived in all the lock houses and manually worked the locks. They supplemented their incomes by selling eggs and vegetables, and homemade jams, wines, cheeses...
At another neat lockside house and garden of flowers and shrubs a man is trimming his hedge to rock music. I call a compliment on his pretty garden, and he stops to chat - and offers to neaten Roger's hair.
And what do you know - this smiling, friendly man had a rock-and-roll dance career, and was the champion of France! He darts inside and brings back the trophies to prove it. He’s now 65, and has a 19 year-old daughter: quite the lad.
While on the subject of lock houses - many of them stand empty now, in various stages of dereliction.
Some are still lived in and are beautifully cared for, however. This one is now a gîte.
And some have the most wonderful gardens!
New to us (we didn't stop here last year), and now a favourite, is the village of St Leger-sur-Dheune.
I check out the town, including the tiny weekly market, jostling for space in a shady carpark.
We lunch at Au Petit Ker, a canalside restaurant; the meal is very enjoyable. Storm clouds have been piling overhead but blow over.
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| This was a grand hotel when St Leger was an important port. It's now closed. |
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| A passing hotel barge |
The countryside is becoming more open, with large areas of crops and fewer hills, and some fine old farmsteads.
A canal-side picnic lunch... with hopeful ducks in attendance.
Finally, we reach Fragnes, a place we really like.
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| It's fine weather - washing day. |
We’re through the Canal du Centre’s last and deepest lock...
La Saône June 11-21
Broad and deep, La Saône is usually placid. Now though, we immediately notice an increase in speed; rather than our usual stately 6-7km/hour, we’re hustling at 10-12 km/hour. We’re on our way to Lyon, 142 km downstream.
Initially we don’t go too far - we turn in to Chalon-sur-Saône to buy fuel in the Port de Plaisance there - it’s been very difficult to acquire along the canals.
We know we can’t stay; the Port caters only for boats up to 15m. It’s a pity we can’t stop to look around; Chalon is an interesting town with a history that dates back to the Romans who founded it and used it as a port and a hub for road communications. It too is first mentioned in the ‘Gallic Wars’.
Our first night is spent in a disused lock, a mooring that’s sheltered from the passing commercials and gigantic hotel barges that ply the Saône. It's run as a Port, with a Capitaine. It’s tricky to gain access to the downriver opening: as we turn the boat into the current to slow it down for the entry, Highlander is swept sideways, and Rog fights to set it on course again.
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| Hotel barge charging upriver |
We race onwards to Mâcon, our next stop, where the rain returns with a vengeance.
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| Setting off for the supermarket in the rain |
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| These stormwater drains were fully visible before the downpour |
Mâcon's huge Port de Plaisance, with spaces for about 500 boats and a few barges is in a side arm off the river, so it’s protected from the current. The very tall supports for the floating pontoons show just how high the water might rise. Stuck for two days, we share a friendly couple of hours over drinks and nibbles with two Aussies on a nearby cruiser.
It’s a pity that the weather puts a stop to sightseeing: Mâcon is an ancient city and a centre of the wine trade. The Mâconnais white grapes are Pinot and Chardonnay, while the black Gamay grape produces Mâcon Rouge and Mâcon Rosé. We see plenty of vineyards from the river as we pass.
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| A long, heavily laden sand barge |
The passing Saône scene...
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| Supervising our entry to a lock |
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| No rowing needed - the current is enough |
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| Grand old buildings on an island just before Lyon |
The Lyon Citadel: we've made it... Except that we shoot past the Halte Fluvial because we don't recognise the turn off into it from the river. A call to the Capitain, he appears on his bike, and once we've turned around (tricky in the current, with the risk of being swept sideways) we make our slow way back. The Capitain waits at strategic points to wave us on. Finally, we can berth.
We're in Lyon for eight days, waiting for the Rhône to settle. The limit for a stay in the Halte Fluviale is usually four days, but the Capitain can’t throw us out into a river that’s been closed to navigation.
If you have to be cooped up somewhere, Lyon is the ideal city. Smart, sophisticated yet not too big, full of restaurants and bars and 2000 years of history.
The Halte Fluviale where we’re moored is a large purpose-built excavation at right angles to the Saône. The project began about ten years ago, took five years, and now the basin, shopping centre, bar and restaurant area is a popular gathering place. It is in the part of Lyon which had been the city's industrial-commercial heartland; it's being redeveloped in interesting ways, much like Docklands in London.
Some locals come visiting...
There are sustainable buildings, restaurants and galleries, and mixed apartment housing that includes first-home buyers and tenants. Some of the old warehouses have been preserved and converted to other uses. The architecture is interesting and varied, there are parks, wetlands, and riverside walking and biking paths, with attractive landscaping. Sydney could learn something...
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| Street performance at the port |
Pride of place goes to the Musée Des Confluences, at the tip of the land where the Saône and Rhône join. A 'deconstructivist' design, according to the Director, the museum is irregularly shaped in steel and glass, and houses natural history and anthropological material, presented in up-to-the minute, interesting ways. Rog and I spend three hours there, and saw barely half of the exhibitions.
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| Part of a display in a room representing a 19th C 'cabinet of curiosities' |
We also visit lively Vieux Lyon, have lunch in a great little restaurant and visit the fascinating Musée miniature and cinéma. It houses actual film sets from the US and Europe, as well as masks, prostheses, robots and other items on loan from major studios. A celebration of special effects technicians, the films represented include Gladiator, Alien, Mrs Doubtfire, Batman…
Best of all are wonderful miniatures, built to a scale of 1:12, which depict all kinds of objects and places.
They're used in film-making too.
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| This 'room' and the one above really are in miniature... |
In Vieux Lyon we also take a look at one of the few remaining shops devoted to the silk industry, important in Lyon for centuries.
The centre of town is thronged with supporters of the teams here for the European football tournament. Green-clad Northern Irish break into song, raise their beers in toasts, and behave themselves, perhaps because the gendarmerie are very visible. It’s a friendly atmosphere, and the N Irish are very proud that their team has made it for the first time in years.
On a walk from the port to the Musée des Beaux-Arts I see that the sales are on
except perhaps for these red shoes: a steal at €475.
The Musée has the largest collection, from antiquities to modern art, outside the Louvre
Earlier we walk down to the confluence to check the rivers. Both are swollen and racing along, the Rhône with plenty of debris, including some very large logs that we wouldn't like to have as company.
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| A submerged Saône cycleway |
But now the weather is sunny and very warm, and the inforhône (CNR) website at last shows green for go on all the Rhône locks. We enjoy our final views from the Saône as we head downriver, pass under Lyon's last bridge into water so turbulent that waves are breaking… but 100 metres on, as we near the confluence with the Rhône, it settles down.
Le Rhône June 23-July 2
With steam and an increase in river traffic in the 19th Century, sections of the river were canalised. In earlier times, a barge would have taken three weeks to travel downriver; a big modern vessel now takes only three days.
By the early 20th Century, the government decided to harness the strong flow of the Rhône to generate hydroelectricity, creating the Compagnie nationale du Rhône (CNR) in 1933 to improve navigation and build hydro stations. CNR constructed barrages, reservoirs, 13 large locks, the last in 1980, and the power stations - the most recent in 2000 - that contribute about 10% of the country’s requirements. The company now manages 33 power stations, for an annual production of 16 billion KW/h. CNR also works to preserve the river and its valley, and and is developing renewable energy projects.
The river is now canalised along much of its length, and most of the navigational hazards have been removed. Much of the Rhône is wider than the channel - it sometimes stretches for about a kilometre from one bank to the other.
CNR built Lyon's Edouard-Herriot port where water transport is linked to road and rail on a 180 hectare site. In one year, the port handles 10 million tonnes of merchandise, 1.2 million by barge. It serves as a terminus for a regular river service between Lyon and Marseille. Thanks to an agreement with companies such as Auchan, Carrefour, Casino, and Ikea, the tonnage is steadily increasing, which means fewer trucks on the crowded roads of the Rhône valley.
With 255 km to go to our destination, we quickly feel the impact of the powerful and unpredictable currents of the river. Every so often they push Highlander in odd directions and propel us along at up to 16 km/hour. Towns and villages, vineyards, nuclear power stations, ruins, chateaux and bridges flit by.
Speeding hotel barges, each longer than the next, play cat and mouse, their wakes shoving us sideways as they pass.
The commercial barges, and especially the huge double-barge convoys, propelled by their small but immensely powerful pushers are slower and less of a problem.
A single push tug convoy of 4400 tonnes replaces 220 twenty-tonne trucks, and, for the same amount of fuel, a barge can cover 5 times the distance of a truck.
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| A pusher minus its dumb barges |
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| The dimensions of one of two dumb barges that make up a convoy (177m plus the pusher) |
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| The vital statistics of a hotel barge, including the number of passengers permitted. |
At the opposite end of the scale, small yachts head north, pushing gamely against the current. They’ve come from the Med, and are heading to the Channel and the North Sea, including Sweden. We’re hailed by two Aussies on a yacht waiting to enter a lock from which we’re emerging.
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| The entry to a lock |
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| Two barges emerging from a lock while we wait |
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| We've tied to the waiting dolphin - now I can relax. Life jackets are compulsory in locks. |
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| Commercial vessels have priority; we tie up behind. |
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| Exiting the Bollene Lock |
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| The Bollene hydro dam and lock |
Yes, they sing! We know this because twice we have a lock to ourselves - we normally have to share with a commercial vessel who’s been given priority entry to the lock while we wait on the sidelines. Their engines drown the singing. In the first lock, empty except for Highlander, we hear it: two notes rising and falling, and when the lock is nearly empty, a low rumble, for all the world like humpback whales calling each other in the depths of the ocean. In the second lock, a solitary ‘whale' sound, until it’s joined near the end of the descent by another’s song…
The Rhône vineyards
For over two thousand years the Rhône’s meandering course has been bordered by some of the most renowned of France’s vineyards. They were first recorded in the 1st century BC, and were probably the oldest in Gaul. Pliny the Elder and Plutarch both praised Côte-Rôtie, ‘the wine of Vienne’. Some people think the Viognier grape may have been brought to the Rhône valley by the Greeks, as early as 600 BC.
The northern and southern Côtes du Rhône, separated by a vine-free 50 kms, stretch from Vienne to Nimes and are very diverse. The northern section has sheer south facing slopes, the steep terraces supported by low stone walls. Virtually all the work is done by hand, or sometimes even by helicopter. In the south, the climate is Mediterranean. Vines grow in arid soil between olive groves and lavender fields. The south’s sunshine and alluvial soil help create, among others, the renowned wines of Gigondas and Châteauneuf-du-Pape.
Overall, the region’s wines are predominantly reds (94%), the remainder are rosés and whites, 3% of each. The Côtes du Rhône AOC regulations permit the use of 21 grape varieties, of which eight are white.
The Rhône has few places to stop...
Vienne is our first overnight mooring, but we don’t have a chance to visit a vineyard, ancient or otherwise; in fact, we barely manage to stop. The current is so strong that although we turn upriver against it, it’s only with the help of three young men that we get our lines onto the mooring pontoon’s cleats. The three retire, exhausted, as I scramble onto the pontoon to finish tying up - this proves impossible on my own as Highlander is pushed away, so I 's’il vous plaît' a burly council worker nearby who hauls mightily and clinches the job. Phew!
Our second stop is much easier, and very pleasant. On a spur of the river leading to a barrage the village of La Roche-de-Glun has thoughtfully provided a Halte Fluvial that includes a pontoon long enough for a barge. The current is much less, the setting is lovely, the walk into the village is via a beautifully landscaped park on a small tributary river, the village has a 14th C centre and a very good boulangerie-patisserie…
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| The 14th C tower of Diane de Poitiers |
Our third night’s mooring involves a slow trip 4 km trip up a side-arm to a cement works, where, manoeuvring in the tricky current, we manage to wedge Highlander in between two rows of dolphins...
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| The broken window |
We manage to shove off it with a lot of huffing and puffing - and edge our way between that dolphin and the next to a small craft waiting pontoon, where we stay put, listening to the howling wind, watching seagulls blown backwards as they fly, and noting the white caps as the wind whips
the water into waves...
Once we’re able to leave, we cruise rapidly through an obviously Provençal landscape, down to the thrumming cicadas.
Though we can’t see it, our nav book tells us that we’re passing Châteauneuf-du-Pape. On the west bank opposite sits Château de l’Hers. Built in the 12th C on a rocky summit, the fortress once regulated navigation on the Rhône, but now a tower, dungeon and parts of the walls are all that remain.
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| Moored barges and Château de l’Hers |
In case you're wondering about navigation... apart from our nav books, with their charts and informative texts, we can identify our position from the PK signs planted on the banks.
This one tells us we've come 219.5 km from Lyon, where the Rhône PK signs begin.
We also use an offline GPS nav app on an iPad attached to a speaker system: we listen to audiobooks, podcasts, or music as we trundle along. We also use the excellent mooring guides on the Barge Association's (DBA) website that I download and print.
Through another lock, this time with the small fry...
and we whisk past Avignon, looking forward to mooring there when we return north. In another 14 km, not far past a spectacular bridge...
we spot the Relais Fluvial where we’ve booked in Highlander.
The nearby village of Aramon has a small weekly market...
... a smallish supermarket, several cafés and restaurants, plus ancient buildings in the characteristic white stone and curved terracotta tiled roofs of the region. Swarms of twittering swifts wheel through the streets and squares.
It’s a relief to arrive. Friends come to lunch on the Friday...
And on Saturday July 2 we leave to celebrate L’s birthday in Goult, not too far away. After that, we'll fly to Stockholm, to visit our grandson, born on June 3, and his parents, M & M. The weather is hot and sunny.
