A map might be
added later…
Wednesday 28 August. l’Isle-sur-le-Doubs to Colombier-Châtelot.
7 kilometers, 3 locks, 1 hour, 45 minutes.
After applying a coat of paint to the last of the downsides we bade
Tony and Rita farewell – we will not see Tony again this year but might see
Rita as she is staying a while longer in Auxonne before returning to Australia.
The short cruise up to Colombier-Châtelot was pretty but there was a
lot of floating ‘string-weed’, the stuff which we are sure has suckers on its
tendrils and which attach themselves to one’s prop shaft at every opportunity;
we’re surprised we made it to the mooring as we spent so much time in reverse
trying to clear weed.
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| I absolutely hate this stuff! |
Soon after we had tied up, the little red classic boat
which had been moored behind Kanumbra last night, made fast to the
pontoon and the lady occupant came over to enquire whether we were having
problems with weed in our strainers – they were having to stop every hour to
de-weed theirs and we have had no ingress at all. Strange.
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| The lovely boat with strainer problems. |
The day warmed up a lot and with no wind and the relative humidity down
to thirty-four percent, we just whiled away the time watching cyclists, the
aquatic antics of the family on the boat behind us, and just enjoying the
quietude.
Thursday 29 August. Colombier-Châtelot to Montbéliard. 16 kilometers, 9 locks, 2
lifting bridges. 4 hours, 25 minutes (including a 25 minute delay at the first
lifting bridge).
“Read all about it, read all about it, read all about it here! Kate Cullen, daughter to
Lauren and Craig, was born at five-thirty this morning. First grandchild to Lynn and Shaun. Read all about it!”.
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| Congratulations! |
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| Sweet. |
Another cool and lovely morning with a light mist smoking above the
water saw us depart a bit later than usual down the lovely waterway, marred
only by the plethora of weed floating everywhere and filling the locks.
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| A well organized ex-lockkeepers house. |
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Dampierre-sur-le-Doubs' mooring just after the bushes -
we hope to stop here on our return trip. |
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| Dampierre viewed through the lock gates. |
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| The small quay at Voujeaucourt on a busy road. |
After
only three kilometers the port propeller jammed up in the lock so it was back
to the other engine, through the next lock and up to the first of two lifting bridges
which is supposed to operate automatically as one approaches but it didn’t budge. Fortunately, there was a small waiting platform to which we could
tie up to and it also gave me a chance to once again don the goggles, dive
under the boat, free the prop of weed, and drop my knife into the murky depths
(shallows actually but very slushy), never to be seen again. Next knife will be
attached to my wrist.
Arriving at Montbéliard was quite a surprise. The port is set in a big
square cut in the canal with one side having a long wall with bollards every
twenty-five meters apart and the other side being a ‘proper’ leisure boat port
with pontoons and fingers and quite a few boats present. We opted to stay the
first night on the wall mooring as it was a road-width from the Intermarche but
it turned out to be very noisy; not so much during the night but certainly from
the early hours of the morning when delivery trucks unloaded their contents
into the supermarket warehouse, early morning workers returning from or
departing for work slammed car doors and even the tractor operated street
sweeper was throttling its way past our window at six.
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| We were moored in front of the yacht with the blue cover - Intermarche extreme left of pic. |
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| This one - lovely lines but so sad. |
By eight-thirty we had
moved over to the marina, fortunately into a side-on mooring where the fingers
had been removed from the pontoon – the port is closing in three weeks time for
a full facelift and we suspect that they have already started work as the
season is definitely slowing down. To add credence to this, we now probably see
two med-style boats heading toward Germany and Switzerland for every canal
cruiser or barge.
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| A new view of our previous night's mooring. |
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| Back in a marina. |
The town of Montbéliard also surprised us; a lot bigger than expected
with a constant stream of traffic, both vehicular and human, lots of boutiques,
cafes, restaurants, and some interesting buildings from ancient to modern but
much influenced by Bavarian-style architecture and the rise of Lutheranism
which is not surprising if one digs into the city’s history a bit. Heinrich Schickhardt, a German architect, was employed by Frédéric de Wűrttemberg, Count
of Montbéliard to do work on his castle and, as a result, the architect was
contracted to build many other structures in the city.
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| The Church of St Mainbouef of Montbelaird, |
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| The fabulous gallery. |
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| And even more fabulous altar. |
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| Reliquary of Saint-Maimboeuf |
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| The old marketplace, now a collection of boutiques. |
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Looking toward a pedestrian walkway - note the
young lady sunning herself on the chaise on the left. |
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| Protestant church. |
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| The Château des Ducs de Wurtemberg |
Friday was Lynn’s birthday and so, after having replaced a malfunctioning,
newish float-switch with a rather patched old one and having pumped dirty water
out the shower drain and bilges, we took ourselves off for a quick tour of the
town followed by lunch at the oddly named Bains Douches (Baths Showers?)
restaurant.
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Herb crusted lamb fillet
and langoustine risotto. |
Needing some electrical cable to fit our recently ordered, additional, solar
panels which we hope will be in Deluz next week, we biked off over the canal to a
huge shopping complex which, amongst other retailers, was home to a large Brico
Depot which stocked just about every conceivable piece of hardware imaginable –
except for 4mm2 twin-strand flex! Back aboard it's locker rummage time and lo-and-behold out comes four meters of genuine solar wire plus four meters of 4mm2,
single-strand electrical flex (the two combined will be adequate for one
panel), sufficient cable protector to house them, plus five meters of 4mm2
twin-strand flex already housed in cable protector. Voila!
The Montbéliard tourism website was advertising a fête celebrating one
hundred and thirty years of the existence of the Montbéliard cow breed to be
held near the Tourist Office on Sunday 31 August – the only problem was that 31
August was a Saturday. Some frantic Googling finally revealed that it was indeed
being held on 31 August, this very Saturday so we took a slow cycle through the
magnificent park
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| Petanque courts. |
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Amazing! 6,000 plants
and 1.8 kilometers long. |
and joined the goings-on at the tourist office, coming away
with some delicious, aged Comte cheese, some Montbéliard sausage and two jars of Cancoillotte cheese, so delicately delicious when served warm. The day warmed up to being
hot and uncomfortable, scuppering our plans of doing more of the tourist thing –
sitting aboard with fans whirling was much more appealing!
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| Montbeliard cows - the stars of the show. |
Sunday 1 September. Montbéliard to Dampierre-sur-le-Doubs.
7 kilometers, 4 locks, 1 lifting bridge. 1 hour, 40 minutes.
After a patter of rain during the night, the morning dawned much cooler
than of late but clear and with a southerly breeze, none of which deterred us
from our intended objective of visiting the Museum in the Château des Ducs de
Wurtemberg. Luckily for us, it was the first Sunday of the month so entrance to
the museum was free; to help fend off the coolth, a preliminary stop at a boulangerie
resulted in the demolition of a pair of oranais aux abricots, a French
apricot pastry made with preserved apricot halves, pâte feuilletée (puff
pastry), and pastry cream – great to enjoy at nine-fifteen in the morning!
Despite “Oh, not another museum” misgivings, we enjoyed the museum
thoroughly with its eclectic mix of exhibitions depicting the evolution of flight, the development of
the city, pre-historic to ancient developments in the area, natural sciences, and
modern art.
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| The 'flight' exhibition. |
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| The city in the Middle Ages. |
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| The Chateau kitchen. |
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| Another view from the ramparts. |
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| Exhibition of 20th Century artists. |
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| Modern art exhibition. |
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| That cow again. |
And then it was a scoot down into the valley, lines off, big fender
popped on a piece of jutting pontoon, and a gentile cruise to the tiny village
of Dampierre-sur-le-Doubs, a trip made more enjoyable by the efforts of the
young lockie who pre-set three of the four locks and the one lifting bridge in
our favour – locks are normally automatically set to favour boats coming
upstream which makes downstream locking quite tedious.
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| We caused quite a traffic jam. |
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| Dampierre ahead - looks familiar? |
Our short walk around Dampierre revealed nothing much of interest apart
from a spotless, small village with a number of families enjoying Sunday lunch
on their ‘terrasses’.
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| Pretty Mairie. |
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I'm not sure that I understand the
significance of these crosses. |
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| Elle |
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| The village wash-house. |
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| Our supper after having been dispensed - fresh! |
It’s a strange feeling to have ‘turned around’. Mechanical issues
during the August holiday slowed us down to the extent that we could not get up
to Mulhouse but in return gave us the unexpected bonus of ‘rose-smelling’
hours, something very valuable and much appreciated.
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