Friday
8th August – Monday 11th August Doles/Monday 11th August
- Thursday 14th August Choisey
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| Le Koala moored alongside us for a cuppa on their way through Dole Amarok another Piper barge was moored up so it looked like a mini Piper Rally! |
We
spent a relaxing few days in Dole and we then moved the short distance to
Choisey and stayed there for 3 days enjoying the peace and quiet on the pontoon
moorings there. We spent the days
relaxing and watching kingfishers flying and fishing up and down our stretch of
canal. About half an hours walk from the
mooring is a big supermarket and a bolongerie and Grand Frais supermarket. Amazing how far you will walk for a good baguette!
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| A diving Kingfisher |
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| He's caught a small fish |
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| We were so lucky to have so many kingfishers to take photographs of, they are such a beautiful bird |
Thursday
14th August
Choisey to St Jean de Losne
7
locks 20km 3¾ hrs
We
left our mooring just before 8am and had an easy trip to St Jean de Losne. We were very sad to hand back our control
unit for the locks, it was so nice to be able to set off when you chose and to
be able to start early and to continue to travel through the lunch time. We arrived at St Jean de Losne at 11.40am and
there was loads of space on the quay on the river Saonne. We had electric and we were able to fill up
with water. We booked the lock onto the
Canal du Bourgogne for 9am the next day.
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| Hard to see when you first moor up but there are small rings to tie up to on the steps, you need pretty long ropes |
Friday
15th August
Canal
du Bourgogne
St
Jean de Losne to Breteniére/Epoisses PK 224.5
12
locks 19.5km 6 ¾ hrs inc 1 hour for lunch
We
had a great day on the canal du Bourgogne, it is a very easy stretch of canal,
dead straight. Most of the locks are
manual, all going up for the next 76 locks.
The lock keepers are all very efficient and we enjoyed our trip. We were looking forward to a pizza in the
evening as we had heard about a pizzeria that was near our proposed mooring but they were
closed for their annual summer holiday!
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| Sandra and Harvey passing us, kindly handing us a map of Dijon on the end of a bot hook! |
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| Our mooring after lock 65 |
Saturday
16th August
10
locks 12km 4½ hrs
We
woke up to a lopsided boat! We were
moored between two locks about 0.5km apart and the pound water level had dropped quite a
bit during the night so we couldn’t move, we were grounded. Another cruiser that had moored up near us
who were due to share our locks with us, were also stuck. They are French and they spoke to the lock
keeper and he shut the sluices on lock 65 and opened them up on lock 64 and
within 20 mins we were floating again.
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| Team work to open the gates, the gentleman with Kev was off the other boat in the lock |
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| We came across Jeanine in Dole. The arrived very late one afternoon and shouted to us to move up when they came into moor, which we happily did, then they asked to move completely which Kev refused to do, it was about to pour down with rain and we had drunk wine by then, there were a few cross words but they did moor ok in the end. We had actually moored up well away from the No Mooring reserved sign but we have heard the captain/skipper is rather nervous, and that he didn't like being on the River Doubs going down stream |
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| The skipper has a control box in his hands to drive the boat, no wheel. |
We had another easy trip and we were pleasantly surprised when our last lock just before Dijon stayed open for us to go through at 12.15pm which should have been their lunch break, so were moored up by 12.30pm.
Dijon is a lovely city and we have enjoyed walking around the sights and sampling the wine and food. We love being back in the Burgundy region, we know we are going to enjoy this canal, even with all it's manual locks, 189 of them over 242km!
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| Dijon port lots of hotel barges are moored up here |
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| Palace des Ducs at Place de la Liberation |
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