Seurre to Verdun-sur-le-Doubs/Verdun to Fragnes (Canal du Centre)

Seurre to Verdun-sur-le-Doubs

Friday 7^th August

21km 1 lock 2 hours

We enjoyed our stay at Seurre, it was extremely hot and humid again which left us feeling very lethargic.  So we didn't do very much except perspire!

We rang ahead to Verdun to book a place to moor.  We were rather confused as we were told to arrive between 12 and 2pm….this is usually when the captainaire’s take their lunch but we found out when we arrived that the captainaire also runs the café at the port du plaisance so prefers people to arrive when he’s working over lunchtime.  We left at 9.30am and made really good time, so we tried to slow down to try arrive after 12, but we still arrived early but luckily the captainaire was there to show us where we were going to moor and he helped with our ropes.  It’s a really picturesque mooring, we were really pleased that we stopped there.

Going down at ecluse Ecuelles
It was another very hot day

Arriving at Verdun sur le Doubs

Verdun is a lovely place to moor

We were very surprised to see a commercial
come past us at our mooring at Verdun
it is coming down the Doubs to join the Saöne

Sunday 9^th August

Verdun to Fragnes on the Canal du Centre

20km 1 lock 3 hours

Last night there was a big thunderstorm which helped to clear the air.  In the morning we woke up to really heavy rain.  It was forecast to be a horrible day but we decided to move onto Fragnes, so I dressed in my wet weather gear, waterproof dungarees and jacket.  Luckily there was only one lock to deal with which was the deep 10.76m lock that was going to take us up onto the Canal du Centre.  It was still pouring with rain at the lock.  As we approached we were uncertain if we were going to have to wait a long time as we had read on the VNF website that it was only operating at specific times to preserve water but as we approached the light went green and red and we could see water coming out so we knew the lock we being prepared for us.  We had arranged a mooring at Fragnes and a spot for us was marked out with our name and red and white tape.

Travelling down the river Saöne
We haven't seen much rain for months so we can't complain

Lock 34b to take us up onto the Canal du Centre
Nearly 11m deep

You just about see me at the front getting rained on
Kev kept very dry!

Monday 10^th August

We had confirmation from Julia and Richard on Ettie that they had managed to get a mooring at Chalon sur Saone so we set off on our bikes to see them late afternoon.  We managed to find them at their unconventional mooring and we had a great time catching up and talking all things Piper and French barging.  Their guests, Malcolm and Mandy had gone for a look around the city and arrived a while later so we hope we managed not to bore them too much talking about boats.  It was so lovely to see Richard and Julia onboard Ettie, it was a shame we didn’t moor at the same spot, but possibly a good thing as we would have drunk far too much!

Julia and Richards mooring at Chalon
The port du plaisance doesn't like barges our size

Cheers!!

Ettie moored up at Chalon

Tuesday 11^th August

We got a little lost yesterday on our way to Julia and Richard, but in doing so we found where a Grand Frais supermarket was in Chalon, so we set off on our bikes again and went food shopping.  Even though we were limited to what we could carry on our bikes, we managed to get quite a bit, including a whole tray of fresh raspberries for 6 euros.

It got very busy at Fragnes with hotel barges
this one had problems with a hire boat determined to squeeze through rather than wait

Choisey to Abergement La Ronce/Abergement to Auxonne/Seurre

Choisey to Abergement La Ronce

8.5km 4 locks 1 hour 50 mins

We set off at 8.30am and we were moored up by 10.20am.  We had a quick look around Abergement, its just a very small village, with very smart playground and sporting facilities just near the mooring.  We found a boulangerie for the all important baguette!  The mooring is just after a lock, and the canal is quite narrow, which seemed to create quite a flow of water backwards and forwards, so there was quite a bit of creaking on our ropes.

A good mooring to stop at to give you a launch pad onto the river Saone
It took us about 1 hour 20 mins from here to get onto the river

Friday 10^th July

Abergement la Ronce to Auxonne

21km 4 locks 3 hours 50 mins

We set off at 8.30am and had a very easy trip back to Auxonne where we were leaving Rangali while we popped back to UK for a few weeks.

We arrived back to Auxonne on 31^st July and we had a very busy few days doing cleaning and maintenance jobs and creating sun shades for the boat to keep us cooler in the hot weather we’d been experiencing.   We did quite a bit of shopping at home to help us keep cooler onboard Rangali.  We did think we’d return to rain and cold weather now we’d bought all this stuff but luckily its still been great weather, except for one rainy day.

We met up with Sally and Charles on Bluegum and their daughter for dinner on the Friday night and had a great time yet again.  We will be sorry to see them disappear off down south.

On a very wet Tuesday we drove over to Choisey to visit the Grand Frais supermarket and bought loads of fresh fish, fresh fruit and vegetables.  We popped down to the mooring at Choisey just to be nosey, to see if anyone we knew was moored up there, there wasn’t but we did manage to see a fisherman with his young son looking at their catch, a huge catfish about a metre long, they’d only caught it with a small fishing rod….the sort of fishing rod Kev had been fishing with in the same spot when we’d been moored up at Choisey.  I think if Kev had caught a fish that big I’d have run a mile…it looked huge.  I do hope they were going to eat it as it was obviously very dead lying on the side of the canal, very sad to see. 

Wednesday 5^th August

36km 4 hours 2 locks

Leaving Auxonne, a great port to stay at

After a foggy start to the morning, we Auxonne left at 10.30am.  The day ended up being very hot again, with clear blue skies.  The river was quite busy with boats, we are definitely in the middle of the holiday season.  We stopped off for an hour at the campsite pontoon at St Jean for lunch.  The pontoon was empty when we arrived but soon filled up.  It’s a very nice mooring, with what looks like a nice little restaurant.  We’d got lots of fresh food onboard from our recent Grand Frais shopping trip, so we wont be eating out for a while!

A very nice pontoon mooring at the campsite at St Jean

As we went past St Jean de Losne we saw Bluegum moored up but no one onboard.  There would have been space for us on the quay but we’d booked a mooring at Seurre so we carried on.  

Bluegum at St Jean, surprisingly there would have been space for us

Approaching the big commercial lock at Seurre, the first one we've done this year
All nice and easy, bollards in the wall, we just used one middle rope as we gently dropped down

Exiting the lock to arrive at Seurre

We arrived at Seurre around 3.30pm.  We phoned the captainaire, as the mooring we thought we’d be on (a long pontoon on the river) was full, he directed us into the port du plaisance to moor up on the hammerhead end of a pontoon.  It’s a very nice quiet spot, off the river.  We are staying here for two nights.

A very nice mooring, perched on the end of a pontoon
mooring with water and electric 23.5 euros a night
although they forgot to switch on the electric point for us last night so we used our electric splitter on
an electric point being used by a boat moored up near us, so we could use the air conditioning in our bedroom last night

Shade Sail by Kookaburra 3mx2m bought on Amazon when we were at home
Idea pinched from Ettie and Tesserae!
The shade sail lets air through it but stops 90% of UV rays
We were lucky enough to find white straps in the bricolage in Auxonne

My sun shades I ran up on the sewing machine using a Kookaburra shades sail (3m x 3m) I'd bought on offer on Amazon.
We went to see Wilson Covers who made our back awning when were in UK and they made us some metal tubing
for the shade sail on the dogbox, and gave us some spare zip and sliders so my shade sails fit perfectly into the awning, much smarter and cooler
than the beach towels we were using to block the sun.

Choisey to Dole back to Choisey

Tuesday 30^th June

Choisey to Dole

3km 2 locks 55 mins

On Monday evening we cycled into Dole to see what mooring space was available on the quay.  We thought we’d look after 7pm once the locks had finished for the day so no boats would arrive and take our space before we got there early on Tuesday morning.  The space on the quay where we had moored last year was full with barges but a new space had appeared, because a large peniche that had been permanently moored up was no longer there.  So we checked out the depth and decided we’d be fine.  We then went for dinner in a new restaurant called Le Local, we had a great burger and chips.  The food was very good but the service had a feeling of being disorganised, but the setting is lovely and I am sure they will get better over time.  We booked a table for Saturday as we have friends coming to see us for the weekend.

Tuesday morning we were up early and off by 7.45am and we were moored up where we had planned to be by 8.40am.  It’s great when a plan works.

Arriving in Dole

Safely moored up....what a great view from our galley window

Dole is such a pretty town

Le Local restaurant, a new venture in Dole
it is in a great position, great food, and service hopefully will improve over time!

We stayed in Dole until Monday, and we spent 7 days roasting in a stupendous heat wave, we’ve never known anything like it. 

Every Thursday during the summer there is a communal BBQ

Town BBQ - bring your own meat and salad or you can buy it off the stalls
selling local produce set up around the park

We had a fabulous weekend with our great friends Marion and Phil and we were really sad to see them go very early on Sunday morning, the time went far too quickly. (Luckily for them they had booked into a hotel in Dole as they would have been far too hot to stay with us on the boat, we were cooking!)

The fountain looked very inviting to jump into to cool off

We walked to the river Doubs near the campsite in Dole
The weir is a great place to have a swim
Phil and I braved it, it was fantastic to cool off

The pictures can't convey how hot the weather was

Marion and Phil went home early Sunday morning, they stopped by at 7am to drop off 12 bottles of
mineral water for us, saved us lugging it back from the supermarket.  We've been going through so many bottles (of water!).
It was great that I was up early to see Phil and Marion because I saw lots of balloons take off just near the quay.

Early morning take off

On Sunday, late afternoon/early evening, a large 1927 23m Luxemotor barge called Nomadisch arrived into Dole.  There was no space for them to moor up on the quay, so we said they could moor alongside us.  The capitaine and his female crew of two, did an excellent good job of mooring up.  We then had people arriving at the quay to come onboard Nomadisch; a young couple and a little boy of about 3 yrs.  As he was so young, we let them walk through our wheelhouse to be able to clamber more safely onboard Nomadisch; then two young ladies arrived, one was carrying a racing bike on her shoulder and they came onboard our boat, still carrying the bike, to get onto Nomadisch. 

Our new, young neighbours

Makes our boat look so small
Rangali is 18m - Nomadisch is 23m

Later in the evening the young family and the original female crew of two, left to go home and we ended up chatting to the young Capitaine Jean Luc and the two girls who had arrived in the afternoon.  We found out that the old barge was a new venture for Jean Luc and that he had picked the barge up from Beziers on the canal du Midi, and had been travelling up the Rhone and Saône since 15^th June with a variety of crew and that he was on his way to Besançon where he was going to do up the barge up as a live aboard.  Today we had just witnessed a changeover of crew.  The two girls who arrived with him this afternoon, had only been on the barge for two days, never having been on a barge before in their lives!!  We joked that if we’d known Jean Luc and his crew were so inexperienced that we wouldn’t have let them moor alongside us!! 

The new crew were two Spanish girls and were friends, one now lives in Besançon, and she knew Jean Luc, the other girl lived in Barcelona and knew him as well as we did!  Neither had been on a barge before.  Kev was very impressed that Jean Luc managed to get so many young women to crew for him. (I think Kev was wondering where he had gone wrong being stuck with just me!!!)

While we were chatting to them, we invited them to look at our boat to see what a new boat was like and one of the girls said that Jean Luc’s barge was ‘disgusting’ and that our boat was better and bigger than even her apartment in Barcelona!!  We ended up having a drink with them on our back deck and had a very interesting time talking to them.  The girl with the bike had cycled that day from Besançon, about 62km (over 3 hours) in the searing heat.  She said normally the Velo route was very popular and very busy but because of the heat wave she hardly saw anyone.  We don’t know how she managed as it had been in the high 30’s/low 40's all day.  The other young lady had travelled from Barcelona using a website that organizes car shares and she amazingly found someone who was leaving Barcelona early that morning who was travelling to Dole.  We do meet some interesting people.

Monday 6^th July

Dole to Choisey

3km 2 locks 55 mins

We luckily weren’t in a hurry to get going this morning as we had to wait for Nomadisch to depart before we could move.  Jean Luc had to do his training session for his new crew before he could safely continue on his journey to Besançon. 

The two new girls are having their instruction

They are looking very concerned

Kev making sure they don't damage our paintwork.....all was fine

Jean-Luc concentrating hard

Au Revoir Nomadisch

We set off at 10am hoping to moor back at Choisey and luckily there was plenty of space for us and we were really pleased to see Tesserae moored up on the pontoon.  Tesserae is another Piper 60’ barge built the same year as Rangali.  We had a cup of tea with Louise and David and caught up on our news and they kindly invited us back for drinks at 6pm. 

So lovely to see Tesserae and also great to have lots of space to moor up

Sisters

Later that day Détente, a steel cruiser arrived with Frank and Gill who we’d met at Migennes in April. Louise and David also knew them so we all met up at 6pm onboard Tesserae and we had a really lovely evening. 

Tuesday 7^th July

Choisey

We think today had been the most unbearable day, heat and humidity wise, our bodies were just sprouting water, we just couldn’t cool down.  We had a short, very heavy downpour, late afternoon due to a thundercloud going over us but the air afterwards was still very humid and then the sun came out again, so it didn't cool us down at all. 

We had everyone over to ours for pre-dinner drinks and we had a great evening…..I am not sure if we were a bad influence but we had everyone over for 6/6.30pm and we were still all drinking at11.30pm!!!  6 bottles of Cremant/wine and one 1.5l wine box later!!!!!  Dinner seemed to have been forgotten!

Wednesday 8^th July

Choisey

The heat wave is over……hurray!!!! We got dressed in our normal shorts and t-shirt when we got up this morning to realise we were actually feeling COLD!!!!  This is what we had fantasized about all week, suddenly you feel you can function properly.  It’s not really cold but its down to around 22-24 degrees C which is over 10-15 degrees cooler than it has been for 8/9 days.  Tesserae and Détente moved on today to Dole.  Tesserae may go on further depending if they find a suitable mooring in Dole.  We decided to stay at Choisey.  We walked up to the Grand Frais supermarket to buy bread and fresh salad and fruit.  We’ve decided that Grand Frais is our favourite supermarket, their selection of fruit and veg is amazing.

Hopefully we will see Tesserae later in the summer before they go down to the South of France

Détente tucked in at the end

We were so glad we saw Frank and Gill again this year