Kerr Barging Blogs

Continuing along the Canal we have enjoyed the hospitality of a number of towns which clearly welcome the pleasure boats and their crew and make excellent provision for us, including very attractive gardens and free electricity and water. We have enjoyed Beffes, Herry, Cours les Barres, Lere  and Belleville.

Attractive Halte at Cours les BarresMost of these towns trace their history to the times of the Gauls and probably beyond. The excellent cycle track of the Valley of the Loire is well promoted and we made good use of it to explore the area.

Pouilly sur Loire. Home of the famous wine- Pouilly Fumee One day we stopped for lunch on our way home and found ourselves in a farm courtyard where the tables and chairs were set out under shady trees. It was a delicious lunch made even more interesting by the wildlife: two pigs, a baby alpaca one week old, peacocks, roosters, hens and their chickens as well as a gaggle of geese- all wandering around among the tables.

Another ride took us to the Belleville Nuclear Power station with its two reactors and an interesting description of the French electricity system including wind, hydro and coal/oil/gas fired power.

Belleville ("Beautiful town") now has these at its front door
Another highlight was a trip to Sancerre, an interesting ancient fortified town, with excellent wines. With the day forecast to be 38 degrees we set off early, up hill as is often the case with fortified towns. The town itself is 2 kilometres away from our starting point, as the crow flies, but 160 metres higher. The cycleway was a bit more gradual and took 3.5 kms to make the climb. The reward was a fantastic view over the Loire Valley and a rewarding tour of an interesting town. Sancerre is one of those excellent towns which present their important history in an accessible way, with a red line painted on the road to follow and clear descriptions of the historic buildings as the route reaches them. We stopped off to visit the Maison des Sancerre with its history of wine making in the region including very personal recollections from many of the vignerons and finished off with an excellent lunch in the main square. By then the day was getting quite hot and we were pleased to be able to free- wheel almost all the way back to the boat, a just reward for our earlier hard pedalling.

View from SancerreThe vineyards
Now the hot weather has really set in with a forecast over 35 degrees for 16 consecutive days. We seek good shade for our moorings and so far have been quite successful, currently well placed on a grassy bank under a thick grove of trees. Mornings have been moderate, about 28 degrees, with the afternoons heating up quickly to reach a peak about 6pm and cooling very slowly, with the sun finally setting at 10pm. The water in the canal has been reaching 32 degrees though it drops late at night to about 28 so we can eventually get to sleep. It takes us back to our many months in the tropics where a water temperature similarly of 28 degrees provided routinely warm nights. It is amazing what you can get used to. Still, if we choose to aim for summer all year round, we must expect hot weather!   
The towns along the Loire suffered in World War II. Lere was bombed by the Germans during the June 1940 offensive and several townspeople lost their lives. Other towns in the same area suffered either bombing or ground attacks at that time. The saddest memorial was in the town of Neuvy sur Loire. By July 1944 just as everyone was breathing a sigh of relief that the war was almost over and they had come through fairly unscathed this tiny town was bombarded by hundreds of bombs from American liberators on three separate days, not at night, July 17th and August 2nd and 7th. Of the population of 1,000 people 129 were killed and over 300 injured. Ninety per cent of the buildings in the town were damaged, 70 completely destroyed. The toll would have been greater if the people still uninjured had not abandoned the town after the second bombing- the first was put down to error. To this day, no-one there knows why this little town was targeted. This was no stray bomb dropped by mistake. Certainly there were bridges over the Loire near the town and a railway track which was carrying German troops, but these were successfully target bombed and the town was unaffected. The main bombing fell on the town itself.
The town was awarded a Croix de Guerre after the war but this was small comfort for the people of the town who had lost so many men, women and children for no apparent reason. Yet another tragedy of war. 

Best Regards,

Penny and Dave

On this route, one canal ends and another begins without much fanfare. So it was when the Canal du Centre became the Canal Lateral to the Loire, in the town of Digoin. There is no clear end/ start point, but there is a clear difference in how they are managed. Whereas only the entry lock onto the Canal du Centre was manned, every lock on the Canal Lateral to the Loire is worked by a lock- keeper, usually manually though there are a few locks where the keeper can press a button instead or winding a handle. We do enjoy the contact with the keepers who are almost invariably welcoming and cheerful. As well, manual locks are quicker and less prone to breakdown than the remote- control automatic ones.

Pont Canal at Digoin
The Canal Lateral to the Loire was competed in 1838 to provide a navigable alternative to the Loire River which always presented navigational difficulties and was becoming silted in places. It connects the Briare Canal (our next stage) to the Canal du Centre (our previous one) to provide a route from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean. Importantly, this canal also provides a good route to Paris and in its early days 75% of its traffic was bound to or from Paris. It was then a very busy waterway, with 21,000 barges travelling through one particular lock in 1896. It was necessary to keep the locks open night and day to manage the heavy traffic.

Tree lines Canal Lateral
One advantage of this canal is its moderate drop. 97 metres over a distance of 196 kilometres with 37 locks, so on average one lock about every 5 kilometres compared with about one per kilometre on the Burgundy Canal. It also seems a bit wider than several of the other canals. The scenery is as usual mostly agricultural and beef, with few large towns. One great advantage is that the Loire River is never far away.

This Canal begins and ends with long aqueducts, called "pont canals" or canal bridges. The first aqueduct at Digoin is 240 metres, the last at Briare is 663 metres, both over the Loire River. There are many others in between.
At the town of Decize we left the main canal to join the Loire River where we took advantage of some beautiful summer weather to pump up our inflatable kayak and go for a paddle on the Loire. It was a great way to explore  shallow and winding parts of this great river, the fourth largest in Europe with a length of over 1,000 kilometres. This is a very important river for salmon and special jumps are installed to make sure that they can travel up it (and its tributaries such as the Allier) to spawn. It is illegal to catch salmon here.The fines are huge.

The Loire at Decize- great for our kayak
We enjoyed re- visiting Nevers, the main city of this area especially as our stay coincided with the annual Fete de la Musique.

Beside the old Loire branch at Decize
An interesting excursion was a walk through a national park to the Bec (Beak) d'Allier where the Allier River, itself a major waterway, joins the Loire. It was amazing to see the huge confluence of these two rivers, regarded as the last two untamed rivers of France and also to find how the landscape changes in flood times as they penetrate the surrounding countryside.  

The Bec d'Aliier
The weather is really heating up with several days over 30 degrees and 38 predicted for next week. We will need to find somewhere cool where we can launch our kayak or have a swim. Water water everywhere, but the Canal is not really a place to swim, at least for us more mature people. A group of French teenagers had a great time just near us yesterday, starting off with the time- honoured process of throwing in one of the girls, then all jumping in themselves. They were most impressive neighbours, no smoking, no alcohol and every bit of their rubbish cleared away before they went home on the dot of 7pm, French dinner hour after five hours of noisy fun.

 A small boat crosses the pont-canal at Le Guetin

Best Regards,

Penny and Dave

In France the time of the Summer Solstice is celebrated with a "Fete de la Musique" in most towns and villages. The actual events differ. One year we went to an early evening concert in the town square where local performers such as students at the local school and the town band performed while families brought picnic tea or purchased sausages and drinks. Another year we were in a slightly larger town, St John de Losne, where various groups performed near cafes and restaurants. Some seemed to be professional, others definitely amateur. This year we were in the City of Nevers so the celebration was on a larger scale.

One of the many different bands
Nevers has about 40,000 people, is the capital of the Burgundy Department of Nievre and has a thriving cultural life, including a Conservatorium of Music. The Fete was spread over the whole weekend with events from Saturday morning on. All the streets in the centre of town were closed to cars on Saturday night and on Sunday afternoon until early Monday morning. There were over forty events, all free, in the streets, parks, squares, Churches and cafes.

Nevers Cathedral for the Organ Concert
It seemed that all the cafes, restaurants and brassieres were open that night, spreading their tables our into the closed- off streets and offering special menus to tempt the hundreds of people wandering around the lively streets. We chose an excellent three course meal for less than 20 euros, very good value for a Saturday night out.
Fortunately the weather was fine and mild so on Saturday night when we went to town families were drawn towards the strains of music they favoured. Bedtime seemed to be pushed well back that night even for the little ones.

The streets were all decorated
The offerings ranged from dance, rock, hip hop, country dance, choral music, orchestral performances and organ recitals. We wandered back to the boat quite late to find a Celtic music group performing in the cafe opposite.They included Waltzing Matilda in their repertoire, a bit of a puzzle, but it was a very pleasant finish to our night of music.  

 Chapelle Ste Marie- another venue

Best Regards,

Penny and David

Knitting is the theme in Nevers this summer. So there are giant knitting needles and wool everywhere.

Once back from our trip to Marseille we set out along the Canal du Centre.

Canal du Centre lock and cottage

It is a pretty canal mainly through agricultural land and also passing through some of the more southerly  Burgundy wine areas. In the past there was manufacturing also, established around mining activities in some of the bigger towns. The area around Genelard, for example, provided many of the paving stones used in Paris and also had a big steel works. Coal mining was important in Montceau-les- Mines and the towns nearby. The Canal at that time carried the products of those industries and was very busy indeed. Now it carries mainly pleasure craft. All locks after the entry lock from the Saone River are unmanned. A lock- keeper roams up and down the canal in a car and checks  where each boat is stopping at the end of the day and when they want to set out the next day. Inside the lock, one must pull a cord to initiate the filling or emptying. The system worked very well on the way to the summit at Montchanin. On the way down we had a few problems when the lock would not operate (the roaming keeper then attended) and through Montceau where there are three lifting bridges which are supposed to be initiated by pulling a cord at the first, but we waited half an hour for anything to happen. Finally it came good for no apparent reason. Still, in many hours of travel these were minor inconveniences. The Canal was quite busy with boats, at first with Hotel barges and throughout with private and rental boats.

As we had been along this canal in 2011 we tried to visit different places. One was St Leger which at first seemed inhospitable. The Post Office lady told me that she did not sell stamps and no alternative was offered even though I said it was urgent; then the bank's ATM was closed so we could not withdraw money. The next day we fared better: instead of asking for stamps David simply stated that he wanted to send these letters to Australia- the postal lady took the letters and presumably franked them. The Bank had reopened its ATM. There was even an optometrist to straighten Penny's glasses. There was no charge- it seems that optometrists operate on an international life-time guarantee for simple frame adjustments.

Town square in Santenay
At the pretty wine town of Santenay, in the middle of the Cote de Beaune wine area, David picked up a local paper which had an article on the new rubbish dump. It is very modern, with computer component recycling, green waste and many other innovations which are similar to the excellent one near us in Australia (which won a National award for recycling efficiency). As well as the information about the new "Déchèterie", half a page was devoted to the signs designating the place. The spelling on signs for the previous dump was "Déchetterie". Signs for the new one are spelled "Déchèterie". Clearly anticipating a spate of complaints about the spelling being wrong or people simply being amused about the mistake, this article explained that the new spelling has been prescribed by l'Academie Francaise, the body which looks after the finer details of the French Language. In France, correct pronunciation really matters. The article went on to list all other words with two ts ending in "erie"- there is only one other (billetterie) and presumably the Acadamie would like to fix that one as well! From the article, we also learned that the word "poubelle" (meaning rubbish bin) was named after Eugene Poubelle who was a Prefect of Paris. We had always found it a marvellous word but did not know its origin. So, the world of rubbish and recycling can be very interesting indeed.

The Dheune River

The popular fountain
At Santenay there is a drinking water fountain on the very popular bike path next to the Canal. We wonder if it has magic properties because very few of the locals pass without stopping to fill up water bottles or just have a drink. Maybe it is simply the only one for many kilometres; certainly it is much appreciated.  

We were looking forward to re- visiting the Museum of the Demarcation Line at Genelard. On June 22nd 1940, an armistice was signed between France and Germany which divided France into two parts, "Free" France (South of the Vichy line) and "Occupied" France. The Canal du Centre here was initially part of the boundary between the two. A major guard post was set up at Genelard to prevent movement between the two sectors, though this was not always successful as many children had to cross the line each day to get to school; some farmers had fields on both sides of the line; the local doctor frequently had to cross it to attend to his patients and most difficult perhaps, the Church was on one side and the cemetery on the other. There were all sorts of opportunities to smuggle people from one side to the other, though of course this was no without great risks. The Museum was set up on this spot and conveyed very clearly the difficulties of daily life in this frontier town. Sadly it has now been closed, so we were glad we had visited four years ago. Instead there are excellent information panels throughout the town which related its history, going back to Roman times.

Traditional Burgundy glazed tiles
We were surprised to receive an email from the Railways (SNCF) with a detailed survey to assess how well we thought they had informed their customers when our trip home from Marseilles was interrupted by a fatality at the main Lyons station. The survey explored many aspects of the response and gave plenty of opportunity for suggestions and comments. It really seems that they are keen to maintain or improve the current high rail usage.
And so after a week we reached first the pretty town of Paray le Monial then Digoin, where the Canal du Centre ends and the Canal Lateral to the Loire begins. The temperature had reached over 30 degrees so we were very pleased to take advantage of the avenues of trees lining the Canal once we left each of the town centres.

Best Regards,

Penny and Dave

Canal du Centre at Paray de Monial

The train to Marseilles from Chalons covers the almost 500 kilometres in less than 3 hours, despite stops at Lyons, Avignon and Aix en Provence. We had booked a hotel very close to the station, so as soon as we arrived, could drop our bags and go exploring. First stop was the Old Port- and old it is, dating from the 6th Century BC and probably earlier. It was great to see the sea of masts from sailing boats and smell the salty air.

Marseille- the Old PortSunday markets at Marseille with Notre Dame de Garde on the hill
We had two enjoyable days wandering the old streets, enjoying the seafood being brought in each day to sell from stalls right at the port, visiting the excellent History of Marseille Museum. We particularly enjoyed the Roman Docks Museum, a display in situ of docks dating back to Roman times which had been discovered in the reconstruction of an urban area blown up by the Germans during the Second World War. Seeing the ancient stone anchors and the undamaged amphorae where they lay for almost two thousand years really helped to set the scene. Similarly, in the main museum, we saw the substantial timbers of a 20 metre Roman boat excavated from an adjacent site.

A Roman shop with huge, embedded amphora for storageAmphora from the 6th Century BCA Roman bathStone anchors from 6 BC
Two other highlights were a visit by boat to the Isle d'If, where Alexander Dumas placed his prison for the Count of Monte Cristo, and a visit to the Basilica of Notre Dame de Garde, set high above the city.

Chateau d'IfNotre Dame de GardeLooking over Marseille
So we were very satisfied as we went to the station for our trip back to Chalons. This time we could not get a direct fast train, so we would change at Lyons' Part Dieu Station for a slower train to Chalons. Now we met our first snag- there had been a fatality at Part Dieu so the fast train could not go there, instead stopping outside the city at St Exupery, near the airport. From there the hundreds of people on the TGV had to get onto a tram (two carriages, capacity about 100) to go back to Part Dieu to resume our journey. This is where some fluency in French comes in handy because it becomes just a bit easier to know what is going on. We were lucky- or pushy- enough to squeeze onto the second of the trams to arrive and settled in for the 35 minute journey to Part Dieu. The adventure was not yet over. Most of the trains on the board were either cancelled or massively delayed. The Station Assistance was taxed to the limits. Then we spied on the board the first train leaving, going exactly to our destination, and basically the train one hour after that we were supposed to catch. So on we hopped for a trip home without further complications, a taxi at the station, and Anja waiting for us just as we left her.

Best Regards,

Penny and Dave

Here are some more photos, arranged as a slide show. You might have to wait while all the images load before the show starts. There are yachts in the old harbour, excavations and discoveries at the Roman Docks, lead anchors, another Roman boat, amphorae, huge storage vats, impressive street front, the other Notre Dame, Chateau d'If, a If cell, ND Cathedral, Marseille City, interior ND, paintings and photos as thanks for prayers answered.

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