Bailly to Vincellottes

Sunday 6^th April – Tuesday 8^th April

We liked the mooring so much at Bailly we stayed until Tuesday morning.  It was very quiet there, with a great view of the river, and sound of the birdsong was brilliant. 

We found out that you get the tokens for the electric and water from the Bailly Wine Cave up the hill. So we cycled up there and bought two tokens for 1 euro each.  You have to go right into the tunnel to where they run the wine tasting tours. 1 token gives you either 12 hrs of electric or 30 minutes of water.  

One day we went for a circular bike ride to Champs-sur-Yonne, which was back towards Auxerre and we then crossed the river to take a cycle path to Viincellottes to cross another bridge to then get back to the boat at Bailly.   At Vincellottes we cycled past a lovely looking restaurant by the river and they were busy serving lunch and decided we’d go there later in the week when we planned to moor up near Vincellottes.

We cycled to Champs-sur-Yonne, a very nice village/town with a supermarket
I can't resist taking photos of the wisteria

Champs-sur-Yonne
In the foreground is the river Yonne then there is excess water spilling over from the canalised section
we had travelled a few days before.  We would have loved a photo of us going along this section from this angle

Champs-sur-Yonne
You can see the canal on the left and the river on the right

After our circular bike ride,  a lovely day, shopping bag full of goodies

A beautiful sunset at Bailly

We moved our boat onto Vincellottes on Tuesday morning, only about 2km and 1 lock.  We really are taking it slowly.  We moored up in a short section of canal, there is a bit more activity here as there is a camping/motorhome site on the other side of the canal to our mooring.  We went for a walk around Vincellottes, a really lovely old village, and found out the nice restaurant we had seen  is closed until Thursday.  We spoke to the owner who was outside the restaurant loading something into his car.  He told us he was sorry that he was closed.  He explained it was the first time in 25 years that he had decided to close on Tuesdays and Wednesdays for the off peak season.  He was very chatty.  He told us they had not had much rain this winter, we told him the UK obviously had received it instead!  He was bemoaning the fact that as it hadn’t been very cold this winter so there weren’t many mushrooms around, and that if we found any he would buy them from us.

We came away thinking he was so nice that maybe we should stay until Friday morning so that we could go to his restaurant on Thursday. 

Leaving Bailly

Our mooring at Vincelottes PK160.5 

Wednesday 9^th April

We woke up to a beautiful sunny day, a chilly start but we are not complaining.  We went for a 3km bike ride, some of it up hill to a village called Irancy, a beautiful village with lots of wine caves.  We found one called ‘Chais & Crus’, that was open and we partook in a wine tasting.  The owner of the winery, Olivier, was brilliant at explaining the different wines he produces.  The village of Irancy produce red wines from the pinot noir and César grape, nearby St Bris produces a white wine from the sauvignon grape, and he also has vineyards in Chablis and produces a Premier Cru and a beautiful soft Cremant de Bourgogne (the local ‘champagne’).   We purchased rather too much to take back on our bikes so Olivier kindly offered to drop it off for us in the evening.  Our cycle back to the boat at Vincellottes was very easy, all downhill, albeit a bit wobbly!

Our wine duly arrived as promised in the evening, delivered by Olivier and his grownup grandson.  We all sat on the back deck drinking some Chablis we had chilled in the fridge that we'd bought from a supermarket in Auxerre; he politely said it wasn’t bad! What do you give a quality wine producer to drink?   

Irancy with the vineyards on the hillside

Irancy was a lovely old town to walk around, there were quite a few wine caves.
We chose Chais & Cru in the centre of the town as it seemed the most welcoming (open!).

 Thursday 10^th April

Another amazing day, not a cloud in the sky, but it was cold during the night, it was very cozy in the boat but it looks like there was a frost during the night.  We had a lazy morning, we then went to the restaurant in Vincellottes called ‘Auberge Les Tilleuls’ for a very special lunch.  We sat on the terrace by the river Yonne sitting in the sun.  We had a lovely meal, although drinking at lunchtime isn’t a good idea, we came back and read books for a short time and then fell asleep!  We plan to be up early tomorrow to move on to Mailly-le-Chateau.

A beautiful place for a fantastic lunch at 'Auberge Les Tilleuls"
at Vincelottes over looking the river Yonne

Our Journey has begun. Back along the Canal du Nivernais from Auxerre to Bailly

Auxerre to Bailly

We spent a very pleasant few more days at Auxerre. Time was spent cleaning, small repairs such as our grey tank pump sensor had packed up so we (Kev) had to fix that, a small leak from the kitchen tap quickly fixed, engine was serviced, propeller cleared of weed that had attached its self to us, lots of walking, reading, sitting in the sun and generally having a fab time. 

There were a few down sides, there was a small kiddies funfair just by our mooring, it had been there since we arrived, and every afternoon it opened up and played the same music over and over and over again!!  One of the tunes they repeated was ‘Jingle Bells!!”  It was like torture; just at the moment we felt we deserved a rest to sit on the back of the boat with a glass of wine and a good book, the music started.  Also towards the end of our stay they decided to do more work on the Quay over the other side of the river, work that entailed a jackhammer that ran all day.

The weather changed a little for Thursday and Friday, grey and some rain, and it was very windy during Thursday night.  It woke us up with the sound of our ropes creaking and water splashing against the bow of the boat, all sounds we have to get used to again.  Unfortunately our boat is dirty again covered with the same sandy, dust from The Sahara that we know UK is suffering from at the moment, all that hard work gone to waste. 

The forecast was good for Saturday so we decided to start our journey back along the Nivernais.

Saturday 5^th April

We woke up feeling rather nervous.  We hadn’t been boating for 6 months and we were wondering if we could remember everything, we also had a low-ish bridge to contend with immediately.  By the side of our boat a load of weed, rubbish had collected over the winter so it was difficult to test our bow thruster properly until we got under way, luckily all worked well.  We got under the bridge no problem; the water level must have been similar to what it was last year.

Our first lock was also pretty immediate, we both threw our ropes perfectly, and so we were feeling rather smug.  My second lock I missed the bollard three times and then gave up, jumped off the boat and wrapped it manually around the bollard, luckily no one was watching!  I blame it on my new ropes, which I had asked to be made longer for the deeper locks; maybe that was a mistake, we shall see. 

We travelled 9km and went through 6 locks.  One lady lock keeper worked 4 locks, and she was so, so slow and on her mobile phone the whole time…..we were wondering whether they get free calls on the VNF mobiles and if she was calling her friends/family on it!

Our mooring at Bailly is fantastic, a really well kept pontoon, it has electric and water but you need tokens for it but we can’t see anything that tells you where to get the tokens.  We know there are no shops in the village.  We don’t need water or electric so we are not bothered. 

There is a Wine Cave at Bailly, a short walk up a hill.  It is the birthplace of AOC Crémant de Bourgogne, sparkling wines.  It’s actually the same as Champagne but they can’t call it that. 

We took a tour of the cave, which is in an old quarry; it was formed using underground extraction dating from the end of the medieval period to the end of the 20^th century.   The tour had about 20 French-speaking people, so we had to follow and guess at most of what was being said, we had a leaflet in English that helped with the understanding.  The underground caves are enormous; one bottle that was fermenting exploded which was very exciting.  We were told it sometimes happens due to an imperfection in the bottle.  Luckily we weren’t too close but it made an impressive sound. We had a short tasting at the end of the tour and we were given the tasting glass as a souvenir.

We are staying here at Bailly another day, just because we can!  It’s a lovely mooring, last evening the birdsong was amazing, and even now I can hear lots of birds singing.

Leaving Benjamin our narrow boat neighbour,
and you can see the horrible rubbish that had collected by the side of us, now floating free.
It would appear to be anything beginning with the letter 'B'  - Bags, Balls, Barrels and Bottles gets thrown in the river!

Waving goodbye to Charlie from Amarok, we hope to see Charlie and Marcia again soon

Our immediate challenge

Perfectly manoeuvred by Kev 

My first bollard, see how far back they put them?
Not easy when you can't see them from the boat if you are in a lock going up,
as all ours will be until we get to the Baye Tunnel

There she is, our lady lock keeper on the phone again!

Fresh new leaves appearing giving a vivid green

The view from the Bailly wine cave.  One the left is the canalised section that we came through
on the right is the River Yonne and a weir

Our lovely mooring at Bailly

A beautiful evening, full of birdsong and still water reflections.

I have been looking at the statistics of our blog and the table below shows the number of page views, since we started the blog last year, broken down to each country.  We’d love to know who is looking at the blog especially those from Russia, China, and the Ukraine.

Entry Page Views United Kingdom 4086 United States 1085 France 1078 New Zealand 318 Australia 158 Russia 152 Germany 147 China 124 Belgium 104 Ukraine 83

First Blog of 2014

A beautiful place for our winter mooring

Wednesday 26^th March

We are back in France…….the sun is shining and all is well with the world!

We had a brilliant journey here; 10 hours from door to door.  We managed to catch an earlier Eurostar train which meant we arrived at 4pm in Auxerre with plenty of day light left.  Rangali was looking a bit dirty, especially on our new decking nearest the bank, but inside everything was perfect, no leaks, no damp, not even many spiders….maybe the Conkers do work!!

We had booked into the Ibis hotel 100 yards from the mooring, as we thought we’d be arriving later and that it would be cold and damp inside Rangali…..but we probably could had stayed on-board.

In the evening we met up with Charlie and Marcia from Amarok, another Piper barge, who we’d met last year…we had a lovely evening with them, eating at a local restaurant and drinking too much vino!  They'd arrived on Tuesday after 2 days travel from Arizona so were a little jet lagged.

Thursday 27^th March

We spent the day cleaning the boat, and trying to get the grey tank to pump out but we found out that the automatic switch wasn’t working.  We have ordered a replacement switch that should arrive in the next few days and we have had a manual switch put in to help us work the pump for the wastewater from the shower and the washbasin.

Our lovely back deck awning (made and fitted by Wilson Covers) was covered in black mould on the underside, and our port side deck was covered in grime and green algae so my Karcher steam cleaner came into its own.  Kev was not happy I had bought it a couple of years ago, thinking I was wasting my money, and to be honest I have hardly used it over the past two years, so he was right, but after using it yesterday, cleaning the Flexiteek, it's worth its money ten times over!!  The Flexiteek looks like new again.  (up-date...when using steam cleaner I used the plastic bristle head and followed the direction of the grain, but also we have since used our Karcher pressure washer and this cleans it perfectly too)

As we have the car we drove to the supermarket and stocked up on the heavy provisions and wine and then had a quiet night relaxing on the boat.

Friday 28^th March

We had a great night sleep on-board, and the sun is shining again this morning, we are really lucky.

We walked into town to sort out our French phone and modem.  They were really helpful and we bought top ups to last us 6 months for the phone and two vouchers of 3GB each for 35 euros.  Each voucher is valid for 6 months after you activate it, but if you don’t activate it, they have a really long use-by date.  We have some credit left on our modem, which runs out tomorrow that we had activated last September.  It's called ‘Let’s Go’ on Orange, highly recommended.

We are sitting in the sun on the back deck, looking forward to seeing Marcia and Charlie this evening, who have kindly invited us to supper on-board Amarok.

We plan to stay at Auxerre until we feel we need to start on our journey.  We really love the city of Auxerre, so want to make the most of it.  We want to go more slowly this year, we have a provisional route planned but this may change as we go with the flow.

Charlie and Marcia with Kev

All the works on the Quay have finished
and very impressive they look too with multi-coloured fountains

Such a lovely old city,
we sat outside a cafe and had a cafe au lait and a croissant and watched the world go by

Our proposed route for 2014
Strasbourg is one of our aims but we shall see if this happens.
We will end up at Migennes for our winter mooring
as we are taking the boat out of the water to paint the hull beginning of next year.