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| Fog delayed our start |
5.1°C Foggy and damp early
morning. Mike looked out and could just see a solitary tree in the field by the
boat. Left it half an hour and then couldn’t see the tree at all! Waited for it
to clear a bit. A pénichette went past and Mike was about to back up to the
turn-pole when the lock lights went to red/green. There was a VNF man in a van
at the lock, 4 Conflandey, so Mike asked if there was a problem with the lock.
No, he said, just keeping
an eye on the hireboat! 7.8kms of winding river to
the next lock. Mike spotted a fisherman sitting in a floating armchair not far
below lock 4 and took a photo. A canal section through Port-Sur-Sâone is home
to a large port-de-plaisance and the hire base of Franche-Comté Nautic. A
pénichette and a British cruiser called Fizz were on the quay. Down lock 5
Port-Sur-Sâone,
dropping down a further 1.7m. 4kms and a short lock cut to lock
6 Chemilly, a shallow one at 1.1m. A pair of red kites were circling as we went
down another 4kms reach with a canal section into Scey-Sur-Sâone. More floating
armchair fishermen before the canal section. Another marina on the canal in
Scey, this one had a Locaboat hire base. Down lock 7 Scey (1.5m) and Mike took
a photo of the notice about the St Albin tunnel passage – they want us to wear
lifejackets, carry a waterproof torch and put navigation lights on – for a
tunnel that is only 681m long! There was
also a warning that we were under
video-surveillance. Through the tunnel, lit throughout with sodium lights, Mike
tried putting our headlight on – waste of time – the orange lights gave more
than sufficient illumination. At the end of the canal section we dropped down
another 2.9m in lock 8 Rupt with British cruiser Fizz and back on to the next
(3kms) river reach at Rupt-Sur-Sâone. Down another 1.9m in lock 9 Chantes,
again sharing the lock with Fizz. 8.3kms of river to the next, except for some
unknown reason we had to work through the stop-lock at Cubry-les-Soing where
VNF were around the lock. As the water was on a
level (and didn’t NEED to be
worked through) we reckoned the VNF digging holes in the bank had something to
do with it. (Never understood why there was a floodlock there in the first
place as there is no weir on the river section that the short canal section
cuts off.) Mike wished the crew of Fizz au’voir – they’d been running alongside
us and chatting as we went downriver and were off to get through the next
tunnel at Savoyeux before they stopped for the night. They were soon out of
sight as we trundled on downriver at 6kph. Down less than a
metre in lock 10
Soing and turned left to run back upriver to the weir at Soing where there is a
nice wooden landing stage. Amazed that it was empty – there were two boats on
it when Mike dropped the car off there. We moored on the upriver end, leaving
space for others in front of us. Then we couldn’t get satellite TV through the
trees so we had to move forward, to overhang the downstream end of the landing
stage. Eventually Mike got it. No French TV again though.
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| Below lock 4 Conflandey |
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| A floating armchair fisherman Conflandey |
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| A floating nesting grebe |
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| More floating armchair fishermen |
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| What to do when navigating a tunnel. |
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| St Albin tunnel and cutting |
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| Castle and church at Rupt-sur-Saone |
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| An extra lock - flood lock at Rupt |
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| Moored at Soing |
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