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