Saturday
21st June
Canal
du Rhône au Rhin
St
Jean de Losne to Choisey
8
locks and 19km
We
went to the Post Office in St Jean again to see if the package had arrived, it
hadn’t. Yesterday we had managed to
purchase the same part at the chandlery at St Jean so we decided not to stay
and wait for the parcel to arrive. It
was supposed to be a 48hr delivery by Parcel Force, we believe it will be sent
back to the sender if not picked up within 15 days. We didn’t want to wait any longer at St Jean,
there is not much there and it can get expensive wandering around the two very
good chandleries!
We
left just after 10am, we went back through the St Jean lock down onto the river
Saône and travelled 5km up the river to the entrance to the Canal du Rhône au
Rhin. The red light on the lock was showing and there was
a boat already going up in the lock so we had to wait our turn floating in the river. The river was very gentle, not much flow at
the moment so it was easy to hold our position and pretty easy to get onto the lock,
but we imagine it would be a bit of a challenge if there was a flow on the
river.
There was a lock keeper there to
take our ropes, and he gave us a control box with full instructions to work all
the automatic locks. The
lock system seems to be very good, and it is truly automatic, so you don’t need to let
the lock keepers know of your next stop, or when you are moving on, which makes
a makes a nice change.
It
has been busy on this canal. Not too busy, but busier than any of the other
canals we’ve been on so far this year, there is a Nichols boat hire centre at
Dole, so we have seen a lot of their boats around.
We
stopped at a place called Choisey, an attractive old village. It has a smart floating pontoon, picnic area
and a drinking water tap in the car park to fill up bottles.
We
cycled the 0.75km up a hill to a big supermarket and bought some fresh fish
thinking we’d eat it that night. Our
plans changed because after taking our shopping back to the boat, we then
cycled the 3km along the canal cycle route to Dole. It is a national music Festival this weekend and
the town was full of musicians and bands setting up to play all around the
town, so we stayed for the evening and drank beer in a bar and got a chicken
burger takeaway that we were allowed to eat while drinking our beer. The chicken burger was delicious, and exceeded
our expectations; we never thought we’d say that! (I have to admit we drank quite a bit of beer
so maybe that influenced us!) We had an
easy cycle back to Choisey, just as it was getting dark, being bombarded with
insects, but managing not to swallow any.
We were pleased we didn’t moor in Dole as it would have been really
noisy in the port.
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| 5km up the Saône we came to the lock entrance to the Canal Rhone au Rhin |
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| The lock getting ready for us to enter as we float around on the River Saône |
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| The control unit we were given to operate the locks |
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| A band setting up to play in the evening at Dole |
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| Beautiful windows in the Church |
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| The pub is called Northwich, Dole is twinned with Northwich UK |
Choisey
We decided to stay another day at Choisey, it’s a lovely spot, with water lilies lining the canal, frogs croaking, (they do make a bit of a racket at night), constant bird song, and there is a church clock that rings on the hour, and then repeats 5 minutes after the hour, day and night.
We walked back up to the supermarket with our jerry cans and trolley, and we bought 40 litres of fuel. The fuel station is open 24/7, but the huge supermarket was closed; it is so nice to see that Sunday is really a day of rest in France.
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| Choisey |
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| Our mooring at Choisey, more boats arrived later |
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| Another view of our mooring at Choisey |
Choisey to Dole
2 locks and 4.5km
We got up fairly early and left Choisey at 8.30am to arrive at Dole an hour later.
There was plenty of space to moor for us along the sloping quay, but as the day has progressed more and more boats have arrived. As it is Monday most of the shops are closed, as well as most of the restaurants, but we found a one open that is in an old chapel, with a beautiful vaulted ceiling and we had a very nice lunch. We had another good walk around the town, it was much quieter today without all the musicians and bands playing.
Early evening a barge called Beauregard arrived, there was no space for them so we offered for them to moor alongside. They stay a few minutes and we chatted introducing ourselves, and then a space behind us became available so we helped them move their boat back. We later invited Gary and Robin, (from Australia) onboard for a few glasses of wine and we had fun talking about boats, Roanne and people we knew in common from Roanne, as they winter their boat in Roanne.
We are now sitting on the back deck with quite heavy rain falling, we are not unhappy about the rain as it will cool the air, and we have heard that some of the canals are low on water so we need some rain or we might not make it up the canal de Bourgogne at the end of the summer to our proposed winter mooring at Migennes
.
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| After a short section on the River Doubs, and a left turn to go into the lock |
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| Beautiful flowers in Dole |
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| Dole is the birthplace of Louis Pasteur |
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| Our mooring at Dole |
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| Our extra long gang plank has come in handy |
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