Rangali Adventures: Paray le Monial to Digoin

Tuesday 25^th August to Sunday 30^th August

We spent an enjoyable 5 days at Paray le Monial. The weather developed into another heatwave and we ended up roasting again!! We were pleased that we were on electric so that we could run our air-conditioning to our hearts content. It certainly helped with sleeping at night.

We did some sight seeing, ate out in a few restaurants, carried on with re-varnishing the wheelhouse and some of our deck furniture, and we went to the market in Paray on the Friday morning, which was a lot bigger than we’d expected. The mooring had lots of comings and goings, but was pretty quiet by the weekend.

The mooring at Paray is very good, for our size boat it cost us 13 euros a night, which includes water and electric. The downside was that there is a big park next to the mooring where they had been a huge event over the summer and they were in the process of dismantling the marquees, which took all week, with clattering and banging, and revving of engines of cranes, high lift platforms and forklift trucks. Some days they started at 7am not finishing until after 7pm and worked all over the weekend. It can’t have been easy for them in the high temperatures.

On Saturday we decided we would take the train to Auxonne pick up our car, where it had been since we got back onboard in July. Paray has a good train service to Dijon and then onto Auxonne. We had a very nice scenic drive back via Beaune and the vineyards. We enjoyed the drive because of the scenery and the air-conditioning as it was another very hot day.

On Sunday we drove to Roanne, to leave the car for a couple of weeks as its where we are wintering Rangali. We’d looked on line to see that there was a train service from Roanne to Paray for only 9.30 euros. When we got to Roanne railway station to buy our train ticket we found that we would be on a TGV ‘autocar’, which is a very posh coach. It was actually very nice to be on a bus, we had the front seats and had a great view. We also had the pleasure of a local radio station and 70’s/80’s music, which you certainly don’t get on the train. The bus goes eventually onto Le Cruesot where it then links with the TGV train service.

This was being dismantled over the week we were at Paray
quite noisy at times

We saw more monks last year walking around the town
but I did manage to spot one!

Stunning lighting at Paray

Views of the vineyards on the train from Paray to Auxonne

A very quiet Paray at the weekend

Monday 31^st August

Paray to Digoin

13 km 4 locks 3 hours

We woke up to another sunny morning, after a very hot and humid night. We left Paray at 8.40am, and slowly made our way to the first lock. We’d booked it for 9am, and sure enough the VNF van was there and the lock was ready for us, as was the second lock, with the same VNF man waiting for us. As he’d been present for the first two locks, we assumed he was going to be at the next lock, which was the final lock on the canal du Centre, but when we arrived, the red light was showing and no sign of any VNF van or man. We hung around for a while, thinking maybe another boat was coming in the opposite direction. Eventually we got fed up with waiting and rang the control centre. We told them which lock we were at and that the red lights were showing. A few minutes later a chap walked out of the lock keepers cottage went into the lock office and he set the lock into motion for us. We don’t know what went wrong with their very efficient management of the locks, they’ve been excellent all the way along the canal.

We arrived in Digoin at 11.30am. We decided not to stop at the port du plaisance as we didn’t need water or electric. We had planned to stop after the aqueduct that goes over the Loire but we knew there were trees by the mooring and there was a big thunderstorm and heavy rain forecast and we didn’t fancy being covered in leaves. So after the port du plaisance at Digoin we looked out to see if we could moor up and we found lots of space and no trees. No bollards but the steel pilings have holes in them that we were able to thread our ropes through.

The forecast was correct and at around midnight we had a terrific thunderstorm, with very heavy rain. No hailstones, which we are pleased about as we’ve been told it’s the vineyards worst nightmare and they are just about to start their harvest. We are staying in Digoin until Wednesday as the forecast is not good for Tuesday.