The Petite Saone

On the way back we stopped at Verdun-Sur-Le-Doubs. We really enjoyed it here. It was a very pretty little town and we spent some time exploring.

                                               Verdun 

We spent some time in the Museum du Pain. This was all about the baguette. We watched a movie on how the baguette was made, before machinery and now.

Verdun is a town of fisherman and is the headquarters of the “Knights of the Pochouse”. This is a dish made from a mixture of several fresh water fish in a delicious wine sauce. Russel wanted to try this so we went to a local restaurant and he really enjoyed it.

         

                                              My Favourite veiw of Verdun

                                 We passed a flee market. They even had Tractors for sale

a veiw of Verdun as we were leaving

We stayed in St Jean De Losne long enough to do our washing at the local lavoire and then headed down the Saone to Auxonne.  Another gorgeous French town.!!

                               A view as we entered Auxonne

The church in Auxonne - however wasn't open both times we went to see

Whilst riding around we discovered a large army presence. There was a very big barracks.

The Military headquarters we saw.

This is a statue of Napoleon Bonaparte who attended the army academy in this town. He was the second lieutenant in the Regiment De La Fere and a student at the artillery school of Auxonne. He stayed here from 1788 to 1791 during 2 periods interrupted by a leave of absence.

We were speaking to a policeman who said that the town is very proud of Napoleon.

One of the main reasons we wanted to go here was to see the one of the last of the needle weirs still in service on the French waterways and the very last on the Saone. As the water starts going down, dozens of wooden planks called needles are placed one by one against folding metal frames. Once in place they simply held there by the water pressure. When the river starts flooding, to help the flow the planks are lifted out and the frames folded down to the river bottom.

Guess what? The river is flooding so we didn’t see the needles. Below is a picture of what we could see.

We left Auxonne and headed up the Petite Saone and finally stopping at Gray. It was a long travelling day so we decided to see the town the next day. That night I came down with a dreadful bout of the 24 hour wog. I was so sick the next day that I just laid in bed and only came up when Russel needed help at the locks. It was a lonely day for Russel. He even had to cook his own dinner.

We did however make it to the next place Seveux. Below is a picture of their wash house. It is one of the best we have seen apart from the one at Tonnerre.

The Petite Saone Canal is very pretty and has a lot of interesting locks and tunnels. It would be one to take visitors on. The only problem is the huge number of hire boats and they can be quite frightening to enter the locks with. I wish they would give them a little advice on how to use locks. One lock keeper was quite cross with one lot that kept using his motor in the lock. If you are up the front of an up lock it can be quite violent.

The entrance to one of the tunnels we went through. It looks small from afar but once you get in there is plenty of room

We reach the end of the tunnel. It is well lit so no need for us to use our own lighting as we have done before

This is a picture of a Garde Du Porte. it is an open ecluse that they can close if the river is too high. We pass through lots of these in this canal.

We noticed that these calves weren't happy enough with the grren grass they were eating the lillies in the river.

We arrived in Port-Sur-Saone the 13th July and decided to stay for two nights hoping they might have some celebrations for Bastile day on the 14th. I am afraid the concert and fire works were washed out sue to too much rain. We spent the day on the boat listening to a penny bomb going off nearly every 5 minutes for about 4 hours. It drove us insane. If only we new how to say shut up in French!!!

We have finally arrived in Corre. We did our last ecluse this morning. Arcturus comes out of the water on Wednesday morning and we then head for Paris to catch our flight at midday on Thursday.

For the year 2012 we did 110.84 engine hours,  230 kilometers and 260 ecluses.