On the Saône again – just for 2 days!

6th and 7th May 2024 (plus a few days prep beforehand)

It was so good to be back on board early in May. The trip down was pleasant and uneventful once we were on the ferry. The UK side of the drive was held up for 40 minutes at Hindhead Tunnel, so we only just squeaked in to our booked crossing, but then it was calm and quiet.

Now we are a little older we choose to break the journey through France and have discovered that Béthune is a good place to stop.

Back at the hotel we had a good night’s sleep and after breakfast we were back on the road to Saint Usage and Calliope, with a stop at Ikea in Dijon for new Captain and Crew stools to sit on while cruising.

As always it was great to be back on board. Before long, we were (mostly) unpacked, admiring our new fishy cushions for the re-upholstered seats, and out on deck for that ever important first seasonal glass of rosé.

Then there was the excitement of our new roller blinds for the wheelhouse. Yes, Calliope has had a bit of a facelift this year. We felt it was time after 9 years good use.

There had been much debate over the blinds! I am not keen on the dusting of horizontal slats and we both wanted blinds that would shoot out sun and could ‘disappear’ leaving maximum light flooding in ay other times. So Stu worked with Laetitia Cabaret to design these roller blinds that can be as far up or down as the situation requires. I have to say we are rather pleased with the result. (Sorry, don’t mean to sound smug).

Stu installed them on Saturday while I did a mega-Intermarché shop ready for our trip up the Canal Entre Champagne et Bourgogne, where there are long stretches with no shops. We have been caught out before.

The plan was to leave on Monday, but before that we had a gastronomic treat in store.

Then final preparations had to be completed. I retrieved my ‘garden’ from Beatrice, who had watched over it while we were away, and put it back on board.

Then there was the obtaining a new gas bottle, filling up with water, and cleaning off the recently accumulated Saharan sand which had been arriving with each rain storm.

Monday soon came; it was time to say goodbye to good friends while the Captain turned Calliope round to head for the lock. (Yes, there are friends waving in each photo, tucked away almost out of sight!)

Within minutes we were tied up in the lock, and descending several metres down to a Saône river that still flowed quite fast – but not dangerously so.

The lock gates at Saint Jean de Losne are opened and closed manually, so many thanks to the éclusier (lock keeper) who pushed and pulled and wound for us.

The gates opened, and it felt like being set free to roam the waterways again. We were off to the start of another season. 😁

It was rather a grey start to our summer! But the river was wide and it didn’t rain. Here we are leaving Saint-Jean-de-Losne, heading upstream.

Within about two hours we were at the lock into the deviation for Auxonne – this canal of just over a kilometre avoids some more turbulent parts of the river and brings you into Auxonne just above the weir.

Now to see where we could moor. There are options at Auxonne. First we came to the wide steps that run down to the river and have bollards at the top, but with the river still above its normal level that would not be suitable.

Next are the town pontoons, our preferred place. We had a back up plan should they be full, option 3, the H2O marina. And we thought that was where we would be heading as the pontoons looked full apart from a 12m space – not good for a 20m barge!

However …. thank heavens for friends! We suddenly realised that the barge on the pontoon adjacent to the 12m space was Martin II – the home of Belgian friends who we meet at the most unexpected places on the waterways, from Nieuwpoort in the North to Moissac inn the South.

They spotted us, came out to say hello as we passed and soon realised the issue. They quickly pulled their barge back a metre or two, and came round to help Stewart delicately nudge Calliope into a space about 1 metre longer than the boat! We were moored across the two pontoons, but perfectly safe and secure. Thank you! 🙏

Later we had been invited to other friends for supper on their boat Polaris in the marina. A very pleasant evening, with good food and wine, was enjoyed by us all.

And the walk home in the late twilight beside the marina and river reminded us yet again how day after day nature is the queen of our boating life.

Once awake we were into our second day on the river. A quick trip to the boulangerie for fresh bread we were ready to carry on upstream.

The weather was clearing as we journeyed, bits of blue emerging in the sky. We began to feel as if Summer was arriving at last. There really had been a lot of rain in France during the Winter and Spring, but in many ways that had been welcomed; so many of the canal reservoirs needed a good top up, and most were now at 100%.

The Saône is so wonderfully wide compared to being on the canals, and the scenery on the banks changed as we travelled, always interesting and something new to see.

As we were only on the river for a short time I am adding in extra information I might otherwise leave out.

We came to another deviation – this time the Poncey deviation. Again it was to avoid a wide curve and potential dangers on the main river.

They are not really poles – not any more. They are tubes of a rubberised fabric, light, easy to catch hold of and to turn.

But this one did not want to leave us as we manoeuvred gently waiting for the lock to be ready! At least it means you can see what they are really like.

We didn’t tie up this time. We could see there would not be long to wait. Once in the lock Calliope was secured to a couple of bollards and the blue lever was elevated to set the lock operation in motion,.The doors closed behind us, the lock filled to take us up to the same level as the canal, and then the doors opened in front of us.

A bit of lock info thrown in here; scroll on down if that is of no interest!

Tying up was interesting here, with the bollard set in some railings; this made my usual rope throwing/hurling trick impossible, but we could get close enough to hook it over. You can see in this photo that the lock edge is old and damaged. I had to be careful not to get my ropes in the crevice as they can jam and cause trouble.

Mostly where you see these levers it is necessary to push the blue one upwards to set the lock in motion, and that is the case here on the Saône. Make sure you don’t pull or push the red one in error – this is the alarm. The lock will stop operating and VNF people will rush to the lock to see what has happened! We did it once by mistake – never again, so embarrassing!

On this day everything went in its usual smooth fashion and soon the top gates opened, the green light showed, and we were on our way. (Apologies for my sad geraniums, left from last year. The new ones are up on the roof!)

That left us with 13kms to reach our turn off for the Canal Entre Champagne et Bourgogne. Apart from some swirling waters at a bridge and passing some friends it was quite uneventful, but I did take photos of some river signs to share.

Red and green buoys indicate which side of the channel to be, usually to avoid shallow water, but sometimes for other reasons. And the bright blue sign let us know that we were likely to meet water sporters around the bend. We didn’t. But it was a Tuesday in early May.

Then as we approached LaMarche-sur-Saone we spied two familiar sights (not through their binoculars, but I rather like this effect). One was the waterside restaurant La Nymphe where we had moored up with friends for a delicious dinner 18 months before. The other was the boat of two Piper friends, tied up by a grassy park. A quick conversation across the water established that they had aimed for a mooring at Pontailler, further upriver, but the water there was over the quay, so they had retreated to LaMarche.

Now it was our turn to pass Pontailler-sur-Saône, and under the bridge.

The yellow diamonds indicate which arches you can go through, normally on the right because that is the side of the river to ‘drive’ on. But occasionally you are told to move across to the centre or left, as is the case here. The bridge is on a bend; boats coming downstream and heading to their right would find themselves caught in the centrifugal force of the current, so they need to go to their left; the upstream boats reciprocate.

And the logs, branches and trees that are whizzing down, or caught up on the bridge give an idea of how much water is still rushing down the Saône after all the rain of previous weeks.

We call the logs ‘alligators’ and keep an eye out for them so that they don’t get caught below the boat or on the propellor.

This makes it all sound rather dangerous, but it’s not. Calliope has a strong engine and can cope with the current. It just means that the Captain must be ever alert.

Then we were at the next deviation. This one also led to our canal junction, so it was almost good bye to the wide wide river.

At this point the river sweeps round to the right and you can just see the entrance to the lock and deviation to the left.

There was a short wait for the lock to empty and prepare for us. While we waited another boat arrived behind us and we chatted midstream until the lock was ready.

It was almost as if we were both dancing round a watery green maypole!

So we waved goodbye to the other boat, swept gently round to the left, and into our next adventure, away from the wide and wild, and onto the straight and narrow – le Canal Entre Champagne et Borgogne – the next two episodes of the blog!