To Vitry le Francoise

Over the next few days we continued our pleasant time in Champagne territory, very different this year with the vines just showing their leaves whereas last year the harvest was in full swing. Instead of finding streets full of vehicles carrying grapes and juice, with pickers camping out wherever they could, the towns were very quiet.

 Talon, who was born in Chalons and designed Quebec

David and Wendy explored the Grand Cru town of Ay, just bursting with Champagne houses (and added to the ship supplies). We learned there that last year's harvest was the second earliest since 1821, so we can count ourselves lucky that we saw the grape picking activity last year.

Soon we entered new territory, continuing along the Canal Lateral to the Marne to reach its junction at Vitry le Francois. The highlight of this section of the Canal was Chalons-en-Champagne with its many waterways, beautiful public gardens and tree-lined walks. We were at the Port de Plaisance located on a small river off the Canal.  Everywhere in Chalon's town centre are plaques and signs in French, English and German to describe its very interesting history and the background of its buildings. There are several walks through the town which  inform the visitor about the places of interest, going back hundreds of years.

Here was yet another Unesco World Heritage Site (Notre Dame Cathedral- one of two huge Cathedrals) to add to our large list. As often the case, this place is not even mentioned in the "Lonely Planet" which focusses on the big tourist areas and can also be subject to the whims of the writers (or, perhaps, where they have travelled). The people of Chalons definitely make the most of their pleasant surroundings and there seemed to be a non- stop procession of runners, cyclists and families with their children in strollers. One little girl had a rabbit in her bike basket and was struggling to keep it from hopping out. Of course her dad was on hand to wrap it tightly and settle it down- at least for 50 metres.

Our granddaughter Mary was a wonderful bargee but there is not much space to crawl on the barge, so when she spotted the huge floor in "Galleria" in Chalons during our re-stocking trip to the market and supermarket, she took off in all directions. Her last really good crawl had been in the Pompidou Centre in Paris surrounded by modern art. The French are very tolerant of such behaviour and she was rewarded with smiles rather than frowns.

Chalons has three Museums and we managed to visit them all. Among many other things were:

• Two small birds that were killed and buried with him when Napoleon died.
• Plenty of beautiful Sevres jars and plates
• A huge number of beautiful wooden scale models of famous buildings/churches around France

Vitry le Francois at the end of the Canal Lateral to the Marne is mainly an industrial town, largely destroyed in 1940 and 1944. Waterways meet here to go east, west and south so it is an important junction. The southern canal, the "Canal entre Champagne and Bourgogne" has been closed for repairs for a month, to reopen on Tuesday May 28th. We arrived in time for Wendy and Mary to catch the train to Paris to the airport and home. The canal is due to reopen in four days' time and we plan to join the queue when it does. When we arrived there were five commercial barges lined up to go through; more drifted in over the weekend. As they take priority we do not expect to get away until late on Tuesday afternoon. On top of that, there are about 8 pleasure boats also lined up. Meanwhile, we are having a quiet time getting used to life without our grand- daughter's happy presence.

Notre Dame Cathedral (too big to photograph properly!)	Inside
The main street of Chalons	The main street of Chalons
Columns from ancient Cloister	Sevres
Intricate, detailed, wooden Models	Our mooring in Chalons!
Another Cathedral near our mooring location	Another view

Here is a set of photos from the following:

Vineyards of Champagne
The house of Louise and his parents
The bed of Louise Braille's parents (he slept upstairs in the unheated attic)
Here is our typical lunch
The "devil's House"- so named by bargemen of the past (they were fearful of it)
Dormans War Memorial
and one of the many stained glass windows
Modern Barrages have huge electric motors to operate them but this barrage was formed of hundreds or thousands of these rectangular steel posts which must be manually lowered into position (or raised) from a boat!
On the way to Braille's House, David visited a garden full of huge sculptures beautifully carved from the shattered stone from some wartime bombing. They are about three times life size
David Steering