Canal du Bourgogne: Flogny-la-Chapelle – Tonnerre – Tanlay - Lezinnes

21 May to 25 May 2019. 32.2 kilometers, 14 locks..

Tuesday 21 May. Flogny-la-Chapelle to Tonnerre. 13.2 kilometers, 4 locks.

By twenty past eight we were away, heading for our first lock some four kilometers away, one which is in the process of being automated.

Brand new automated gates.

The lockkeeper, who had taken us through our last two locks the day before, arrived promptly at nine and in no time we were gliding through pretty rural France along a waterway interspersed with leafy avenues and spring farmlands,

Feeding time.

Sculpture work at one of the locks.

arriving at the nearly deserted port of Tonnerre, host to a single hire-boat which had stopped for lunch, just after eleven.

Tonnerre port. Forty meters from that bourne to the first mooring ring...

Outside the lockkeepers cottage.

View across the canal from our window.

A walk back to the lock and over the canal found us in a large, new Aldi where ingredients for lunch were purchased. After chatting to the Americans on the Nicols, and having lunch, we off-loaded the bikes and cycled, first through fields of peas then returning, along the much quicker main road, to a huge E.Leclerq where we did some serious shopping - we still need to go back for more!

At a circle near the supermarket - a Gillets Jeune protest against M. Macron.

We both enjoyed Tonnerre a great deal, with its bustling main road, twisting little lanes, ancient houses, rivers flowing through and quite a lot to explore.

Unfortunately for us, the star of the show, the huge, 13th Century Hotel Dieu (use Wiki translate) or Hospital “Notre-Dame des Fontenilles” was closed (only open weekends),

Part of one side of the Hospital.

The Hospital on the left with St Peter's church in the distance.

as was the birthplace-museum, dedicated to the enigmatic Chevalier d’Eon (visits allowed on Saturdays and Sundays (?) or by appointment), whose career one should make an effort to become acquainted with before visiting Tonnerre.

The family home, built by his father, a 'poor' noble.

Apparently, the place where he was born. Not at the family home?

However, the main Church of the Notre Dame was open,

Ancient oil-on-wood painting.

The restored roof of one of the side chapels.

the wash-house was beautiful,

the Church of St Peter (Eglise Saint Pierre – only open Sundays and afternoons from 14h00) perched atop a high hill overlooking the town, which looks huge when viewed from the riverside

Looking down over the town from the church walls.

but is surprisingly small and very ancient, was an interesting surprise – we were fortunate in that there was a gentleman there who spoke good English and who seemed to be an unpaid ‘guide’; he pointed out quite a few interesting aspects.

Hidden in the sacristy, a sculpture of the architect of the church
or the head mason - my guess the latter.

The 17thC organ, made a National Heritage before the church was.
Interestingly, the coats-of-arms of the Tonnerre nobles and the Pope had
not been defaced during the Revolution.

A 17thC window, restored twice thereafter.

We also had an enjoyable meal at Le P’tit Gourmet restaurant, attached to the Hotel du Centre, which is on the main road.

The front entrance...

...and the side entrance where we ate inside.

Warm tongue and potato salad with mustard dressing.

Rabbit with spring vegetables.

Like the Scarlet Pimpernel, he's everywhere.

Creme caramel.

This fella, seen last year, moored in front of us, made his lunch, and left.

Next stop Tanlay.

Thursday 23 May. Tonnerre to Tanlay. 9 kilometers, 6 locks, 2 hours 25 minutes.

On our warmest day yet, we played hide-and-seek with the Dutch boat moored astern and which we knew, by the lowered mast and craned-on bicycles, were aiming for the nine o’clock lock, the same time which we had arranged. As we had not plugged into electricity there was no need to give our game away by disconnecting the cable so we waited until they had cast off before rushing through the hatch, starting engines, untying, casting off and following them into the lock where, for six turbulent (for them) rises, we enjoyed the relative smoothness of the back of the ecluse; not often that one gets to pull a fast one over a Dutchman!

Horrible!

Bit shallow here.

Beautiful cruising conditions saw us arrive in Tanlay to the last mooring spot (fortunately the Dutchies has decided to proceed further on) in front of three barges, one of which was the immaculate hotel boat C’est la Vie.

Elle and C’est la Vie - we are the boat with the light hull.

Moving back to make space for the next hotel boat

Hopping ashore we popped into the quayside pizzeria/bar/restaurant for a welcome beer

before climbing back on board and preparing for a pork steak braai – on special at the last E.Lecler, these were the finest pork steaks we have purchased anywhere, ever!

Whinge time.

People have different opinions on what should/can/and could be allowed in places of mooring. Maintenance on boats, especially steel boats, is an ongoing necessary evil which usually entails sanding, grinding, chipping, filling, sanding and painting – very noisy and very messy. Our opinion is that these jobs should not take place in any port, especially in a pay-port unless it is deserted, and deserted means devoid of shore-side people as well as other boats. Find a place in the country or an old, deserted silo quay, knock in a couple of pins and get on with it.

"Been here long Monsieur?"

Others, like the 25 meter barge Elisabeth behind us, which appears to be undergoing a total refurbishment by its British owners/repairers, have a different opinion. At about one o’clock the two vacuum attached sanders got going – no dust thankfully but the high pitched harmonic was most irritating and some of the patrons visiting the restaurant only some eighty meters from our doughty, ear-protector clad workmen, stared agog at what was going on. Sanding done, the one chap disappeared leaving the other to man a rust removal hammer for the rest of the afternoon. Knock, knock, knock, bang, bang, bang, klonk, klonk, konk, incessantly and continuously until just before six when, thankfully, he gave up for the day, vacuumed up the mess and departed leaving me with tinnitus and a headache.

This has obviously been going on for a very long time as the topsides and one side of the barge is (beautifully) complete and they have now started on the starboard deck and hull, a job which will still take them more than a few days.

So our two day stay has been curtailed to a twenty-four hour stay and our tourist Euros will be spent in another village. This is unfortunate; apart from missing out on our planned luncheon at the restaurant, the cost of mooring here is a paltry €8 including water and electricity which of course leads to other issues. Fifty meters of the quay is reserved for hotel boats which, from a tourism drive viewpoint, is fine but that leaves our twenty five meter barge renovators a long stay option with three-phase electricity (which they are using for their machines) at a price they could only dream of paying in a boatyard. Another long-stay barge has taken up the end bank of the port which leaves two mooring rings (one shared with the hotel boats) on about twenty five meters of wall plus the grassy other end bank for use by hire-boats and owner-cruisers like ourselves who are surely the target of the townsfolks generosity? There is also the opposite bank quay with no services, already occupied by a deserted and derelict looking yacht.

However, enough of that.

Tanlay is small, pretty, sandstone creation of a town, with very little in the way of a commercial center but with some lovely homes. Quiet, peaceful and a great stopover - under different conditions.

The main road.

Friday 24 May. Tanlay to Lezinnes. 10 kilometers, 5 locks, 2 hours, 40 minutes.

Friday morning was ‘at leisure’ with Lynn doing some sewing until our only sewing machine needle broke.

Nowhere does it say where you need to go to pay the mooring fee of €8 per night but the DBA waterways guide says “Up to €8 per night. Collected in the morning” - twelve o’clock arrived with no debt collector in sight so we ordered a quick pizza for lunch and cast off forty minutes later much to the relief of the Brits on Mon Amie; the huge hotel barge La Belle Epoque was supposed to be arriving in the afternoon which would have meant that they would have had to move over to the not-so-nice, unserviced, left bank, had we stayed.

Our lock booking was for one o’clock and when we arrived, two minutes late, we found a small cruiser occupying the empty lock – I had seen them passing through Tanlay at about ten to twelve so they must just have just missed getting there before lockie lunchtime. A bit of boat juggling and we spent the next couple of hours locking through the five locks together and then mooring on the same wall in Lezinnes for the night; they are in a bit of a hurry and left the next morning in time to make the next lock at the nine o’clock opening time. Nice people.

Elle est Belle

With our German lock-through partners.

He kept us entertained the whole afternoon practicing petanque.

The locked bin and water point and the noticeboard signage seem to indicate that these facilities are only available to commercial (hotel?) barges but no matter, it is a quiet and peaceful country mooring with the small village of Lezinnes some five hundred meters away.

No idea what this huge structure, on the mooring side of the town, was supposed to be.

Notices on the veloroute describe this area as Tonnerrois (once an ancient, self-standing county), the Land of Stone, Water, Forest and Wines, and that it surely is. A rondonnee into the pretty-as-a-picture little village, set on a hill with renovated stone-and-tile houses straddling an ancient Roman road and topped by a baroque-style church,

Locked but still viewable through the gate.

saw us eventually emerge from the boulangerie with two puffy, gruyere infused, shoe/shoo (choux pastries if you must believe Madame la Chef) pastries called ‘gougeres’ which were delicious. Just to keep our energy levels up of course!

Returning over the lock we watched Mon Aimie (La Belle Epoque never did arrive in Tanlay) coming upstream in the company of another boat and then locking through.

And late in the afternoon the fisherpersons (one positioned bang on the middle of three bollards when there was one hundred meters of waterside park available to it – why?) hurriedly reeled in their lines as the thirty eight meter La Belle Epoque navigated the channel and glided past us into the lock.

Look at the skipper's face - "Move over pêcheurs"

Braaing,

Beat this for decent pork steaks. Now to find some more...

knitting, photo-editing, blog-writing (internet no good here so no posting as intended), some great classical music including a rousing performance of the Warsaw Concerto, and reading, saw out the day – from tomorrow we must start with some maintenance!

Internet connection around here has been poor so, to coin a phrase, “please be patient, we are experiencing difficulties. To speak to an operator, book your flight by pressing 7…”.