Friday 2nd June 2017 Choisey to Mailly-le-Port 25.2kms 7 locks

Sparrows catching bugs on waterlilies at Choisey

13.3°C Sunny and very hot again. Set off at 8.15am leaving the large Swiss cruiser and the VNF man’s boat – with a very large range of fishing rods leaning on his boat windscreen – still on the pontoon. Noted the VNF man already had rods out fishing on the end of the pontoon. I untied our bows and shoved off, Mike walked the boat forward along the pontoon and the current down the canal did all the winding – so we didn’t fill the Swiss boat with exhaust fumes (an open cabin window on their boat was on level with our exhaust) like they did with us several times the day before, causing us to shut all the doors to stop setting off our smoke detectors. Down

What a collection of fishing rods

lock 69, Bon Repos, first of the locks with houses less than half a metre from the lock. A hireboat (ex?) with a Kiwi flag was waiting below the lock, a bit too close and the weir was shoving them over to our right, Mike gave them two hoots and passed on the wrong side (starboard to starboard, instead of port to port). We puzzled over where they might have stopped overnight as there was a mooring exclusion zone all throughout the Solvay chemical works. Came to the conclusion that they must have ignored. Noted that there were new factory units to our left beyond the fields that we hadn’t spotted on the way up the canal, one bore the name Stanley, Black and Decker – must be a warehouse. Through the next bridge and the signs forbidding mooring started. Next lock 70

Leaky lock walls at Abergement

Belvoye and there was another uphill boat (the season has definitely started!) a UK barge whose crew exchanged a few words in passing. Down lock 70. A cruiser called Scorpion went past heading uphill as we passed the piles of coal in the Solvay works, no longer delivered by boat – we’ve only seen one péniche and he was German and in Montbeliard heading for the Rhine when we saw him. Considering all the uphill traffic we were surprised to find lock 71 La Ronce was empty and had to wait while it filled – its walls looked dry. A short pound

First hotel boat of this year

1.5kms to lock 72 L’Abergement, again a short wait while it filled. A long pound, 5.8kms, to the next. A Nicholls hireboat from Dole (we said that four were missing from their moorings, three we’d seen upriver, so here was the fourth) was moored under the trees next to the rocky bank. Did he have to moor there because the last three boats we’d seen had been moored at the quay just a few metres uphill of him at Abergement and the quay had been full last night? Another ex-hireboat went past heading uphill. Just before the first of the last three locks a purple heron took off, too fast for us to get the camera set up. Round a big wide bend with channel markers and lots of water lilies and then down lock 73 La Tuilerie. A hotel boat (first seen this year) called Hirondelle

Lock 75 Saône from the river Saône

was extricating itself very slowly out of lock 74 Laperriere, crew busy washing down the decks. Past Bourgogne Marine’s moored boats and into 75 Saône, a manned lock, our last one on the Rhone-au-Rhin. A very dour lock-keeper came down from the cabin on high to collect the locking device in its big box. He just about said bonjour and au’voir without even a shadow of a smile. On to the river and downstream to St Jean-de-Losne to find a mooring and go shopping as the car was already there waiting for us. One big fly in the ointment, not a space to be

Moored at Mailly-le-Port

found on the pontoon or on the stepped quay – and there was yet another funfair. Back upriver and we tried the bank by a DB where we used to moor beneath trees when it was hot like today along with lots of other boats from St Jean. For some reason they had chopped down all the trees and dropped gabions along the bank (big wiremesh cages full of rocks) and we couldn’t get near the bank, which was like a jungle. Nothing for it but to carry on upriver. 7kms upriver of St Jean is the village Les Maillys and an old sand and gravel quay, (long

Moored at Mailly-le-Port

disused) at Mailly-le-Port. The quay is a high stone quay but next to it is a piled bank that comes halfway up our windows and is ideal for unloading the bike off the roof. We moored at 1.45pm and Mike went back to St Jean to collect the car. Decided to leave our trip to Carrefour in Dijon until the following day when the rain should arrive and everything might be a bit cooler, saves shutting the boat up and it getting suffocatingly hot while we’re away.