Along the Nivernais Canal
Thursday July 1st
Nivernais Canal
Alison and Peter duly arrived on the same train they were due to have caught yesterday. After they settled we set off up the Nivernais Canal, which starts at Auxerre. The Nivernais is partly constructed canal, partly canalisation of the Yonne River. Construction began in the 1780s but was not finished until about 1843. The immediate intention was to provide a way to get logs to Paris from the forests of the Morvan. These logs were floated down the river as rafts. Other goods were transported by barge. In time the canal fell into disrepair but since the 1960s has been refurbished and is very popular with recreational barges and cruising boats. The canal sections are quite narrow, like the Burgundy Canal. The tow paths are being upgraded to produce a bicycle route to rival that of the Burgundy Canals. The locks are small and all have straight sides though the bollards are set well back from the side of the canal, so getting a rope over them was a challenge. By now we had four people on board so usually one of us hopped off onto the lock to help with the ropes and with the lock gates.
The countryside around the canal is quite varied, with pastures and dense woodland dominating the banks, together with very spectacular limestone rocks and cliffs and more distant hills which provide a backdrop. There are frequent weirs and waterfalls as the Canal meets and separates from the River. The towns are smaller and not quite so old as those we had visited before. The attraction of the canal is predominantly in the beautiful countryside and the river itself. All of the canal traffic is recreational and most barges are hired from one of several hire boat companies along this stretch. Even so it was not too busy and we rarely shared a lock with another barge. We met one hotel barge and just squeezed past on a narrow section of the canal.
We were amazed how, once the warm weather arrived, it just got hotter and hotter, with one sunny day following another. Some nights cooled down but others simply stayed hot. With the light still holding until 10pm and the sun rising about 5, there are not too many hours without sunshine. The hottest day reached 37 degrees. We were very grateful to be able to whip out our Weber barbeque each night, set up our table and chairs on shore and sit under the trees until it cooled down a bit. We explored the wonders of Petanque (Peter was a Master) and Alison introduced us to a card game called "Frustration" which lived up to its title.
With four on the barge and our two bicycles, two of us were able to drive the barge while the other two rode on ahead to assist with the locks, do some site-seeing and generally get a different perspective on the countryside. This was very pleasant.
University holidays coincide with this peak tourist season so many of the locks were manned by students, the majority from Dijon University. We enjoyed chatting with them. Many spoke English but we tried to conduct the conversations in our slowly improving French. Unlike the Burgundy Canal, each lock was manned by a different lock-keeper though as far as we could tell none actually lived in the lock cottage. Instead the VNF had constructed a small office for them to occupy, though at some there did not seem much in the way of shade (perhaps the hut was too hot) and with the weather sunny and hot we came across several bad cases of sunburn. This was especially true of the young women who were wearing backless strapped tops. I'm not sure that the message of "Slip Slop and Slap" has reached Burgundy! We did come across one topless lock keeper with long hair; I noticed the men of our party very alert and particularly ready to get out to help with the lock gates, but then quite deflated as it turned out just to be a long- haired guy.
Our prize for the prettiest lock goes to "La Place". The most relaxing stop was near the town of Lucy sur Yonne where the canal mooring gave us a perfect view of a stretch of the river below and the town park beyond. It was here that we saw a muskrat (I think) with a large rat in its mouth criss-crossing the canal for 400 metres at least. It was also here that a Western Australian man who was on a chartered barge nearby caught a large pike in the River, using a lure.
We had become used to the predictability of progress along the canals so were were really thrown when we rounded a bend to find a blue metal bridge spanning the canal in front of us, far too low for us to pass under. There was no lock (or bridge) keeper in sight and in fact nothing on our canal guide to lead us to expect such an impediment. We waited a while then David walked up and found that the bridge could be raised on a cantilever system, using a wheel. As there was no- one else to do it, he started to wind the bridge up, quite a task as it was very heavy. He became aware of a sign to say that only VNF staff (ie staff of the canal system) could operate it- but then was relieved to see an added note that "users of the canal" were also allowed to do so. We squeezed through the opening- only just wide enough for us to pass through- and went on our way.
On our return we were a bit more confident about opening the bridge ourselves, but became aware of a different side to this strange system when we heard a voice from the side of the canal : "where has the road gone?" An Australian couple had been driving towards the bridge when they became aware that it was up in the air at right angles to the road and on the far side. They said there was no sign warning of this possibility so I think they were quite relived to find that it would soon be back at ground level and that they had been attentive enough to notice the rather large gap in the road.
The final stop for us on the Nivernais was Clamecy, a typical town of the area with 15th to 18th century buildings and cobbled streets in the old town. It was the centre of the logging trade because the rafts were formed here. One really poignant memory from Clamecy will stay with us. As usual the town had a War Memorial listing the saddeningly huge number of men from the town killed in the First World War, but in Clamecy the tablets were spread haphazardly around the base . Then we found the explanation: this memorial had been desecrated by the Nazis when they took the town early in World War 11. A photo showed a soldier in uniform standing saluting triumphantly at the top of the memorial with the town burning behind him.
We turned around at Clamecy because further on there are low bridges which may have been too low for us. For once in our lives we thought that discretion was the better part of valour. Perhaps the experience of squeezing through the Pouilly tunnel was one the captain did not want to repeat. We reached Auxerre in good time to fill up with diesel and then continue to Moneteau along the Yonne River to give Alison and Peter experience of the large locks of the Yonne. We tied up outside a Restaurant looking forward to dinner there, but were told that the proprietor had decided to close for the night because there were not enough bookings. We were glad that we could get out our trusty barbeque and settle the barbeque table and chairs on shore to have our own home- cooked delicious barbecued dinner.
