Unexcused Absences

For the past three weeks we’ve been loosing altitude lock by lock ever since we left the summit pound at Baye on the Nivernais (at 250 meters/820 feet above sea level). Moret-sur-Loing, near the confluence of the Loing and Seine rivers and where we spent Saturday night, is 45 meters/148 feet above sea level. From here it’s mostly uphill, with a short downhill patch just north of Briare, all the way back to our winter port of Baye, an altitude gain of over 200 meters (~650 feet).

Après Ski and her sister ship in Moret-sur-Loing

Sunday morning, we biked to the nearby town of St. Mammès and visited the street market, where we picked up some very special cheese (Tentation de St. Florentin, more on that later, it’s also covered in my cheese post from last week). Back in Moret, we may have found the best baguette in France at Au P’tit Pétrin, at least the best we’ve had since Maison Oliviera in Toulouse, all of which lead to a truly excellent happy hour on deck a few days hence.

Nemours

Sunday afternoon we drove south to Nemours, a large town with a quiet port and a free mooring including electric and water. Heather made her patented – and always well-received – smoked salmon and onion pasta for dinner. Monday we walked around Nemours, visiting the beautiful church and the grounds of the local chateau, and then drove to Nargis where we camped out at a rural mooring spot just short of a lock. The canal in this section at this time of year is definitely less traveled, so we make appointments with the lock keepers in advance each time we start out. We set up our departure for 1:30pm the next day.

Camped in Nargis

Tuesday morning we rode our bikes a few kilometers east to Ferrières, where we met up with Michael and Katherine, the Technomadics, after arranging a meeting over the internet. They have quite the story; originally from Australia, they went to Europe and bought a small RV, and have spent the past few years camping around western Europe and England and doing art (Katherine) and writing apps for the iPhone/iPad (Michael). We have been following their blog for close to two years now, and used their experiences as part of the inspiration for our decision to purchase Après Ski. It was really interesting to finally meet them in person, after a couple years of reading their stories. They are a real delight to hang out with.

Église Saint Pierre - Saint Paul

We explored Ferrières, filled with a network of small waterways and a very old church. Much of the structure is from the 13th and 14th century, but the area where the altar now sits is from the 9th century, and the foundation for the bell tower outside is from the 4th century! We gathered up the Technomads and lunch supplies, including a pastry/chevre/spinach/crème fraîche thing from the local boucherie (butcher shop) that was just delicious, and all enjoyed lunch on a picnic table in the port. This one one of many spots we’re starting to see along the canal with a couple bollards and a picnic table. A very nice gesture by the local villages to encourage boats to stop by.

Cruising with the Technomads

That afternoon we kept our lock appointment and launched southward with the Technomads – who had never been on a canal boat before – onboard. Fortunately most of the locks were manual, so they got the full experience of working for their travel. Just north of our stopping place, Montargis, we passed the branch canal to Orleans, unfortunately now out of service, and then entered the Canal de Briare.

Old house on the Briare Canal

The Briare Canal, we discovered later, is the oldest summit canal in Europe (a “summit” canal passes up and over a hill, whereas a “lateral” canal follows a river), and the oldest canal in France. It was completed in 1642, almost 40 years ahead of the Canal du Midi, which everyone (including us until this week) assumes is the oldest canal in France. By the time it celebrated its 100th birthday, the canal was a major commercial waterway, with over 500 péniches (barges) hauling wine (Sancerre, Beaujolais, and Mâcon), timber, coal, iron, pottery, and fruit north from the Loire Valley to Paris.

Some kind of bike race occurring near Montargis

What a fun city, Montargis! The canal passes smack through the middle of the city, so we had lots of spectators while we negotiated the two locks. The port is clean, safe, and very close to the action. We ended up spending two nights there, and could have spent more. We had happy hour with the Technomads and then helped them find their bus back to Ferrières, only to discover that their bikes would not fit in the cargo space, so they had to ride back to their campsite. Not a huge deal, except that the sun was very low in the sky! They made it safely, but it was well after dark.

Dwarfed by Herkelina in Montargis

Wednesday morning at the market in Montargis, we bought some great cheese from Fromagerie Le Cendré. Studying their wrapper we noted that they also attend the Friday market in Châtillon-Coligny, which is about where we hoped to end up in two days. Wednesday afternoon was the weekly boat-project-and-laundry day, I got some more windows caulked and also waterproofed the three outside window cover tracks I could reach. That evening we scored an invite to happy hour from the nice couple on board Herkelina, a 1906 Dutch iron barge they’ve lived on for about five years. Tom and Lou have quite a story (don’t all canal boaters?), they lived on a sailboat for a number of years and then bought their 23 meter canal boat. They are an absolute hoot to hang out with. Also present was John, from Sweden, who had actually sailed around the world on a sailboat (Tom and Lou never quite made the full circuit). A fun, fun evening. This was the night, by the way, that we enjoyed the spectacular, and somewhat rare, cheese that we had picked up Sunday, Tentation de St. Florentin. It was a huge hit.

Rural scenery on the Briare Canal

Thursday we set out for Châtillon-Coligny, and found a nice mooring run by the town tourist office, but unfortunately the services (water, electric and shower) had been shut off for the season about a week ago. Next morning the street market was on, as advertised, and we found our ladies from Fromagerie Le Cendré, who recognized us from a few days ago. They were excited to hear we were traveling by boat and that we had searched them out for a second round of cheese. We also scored some potatoes cooked under the roti chicken from the same vendor as we bought them from in St. Mammès last Sunday. He, too, was happy to see us search out his cart again. Favorite wife picked up supplies for cold-weather cooking (ie., things you can make in the oven), now that autumn has finally arrived. We now have a fridge stuffed with all kinds of goodies, since as of last night France has decided to put on some seasonal autumn weather. For the past 10 days or so we’ve had clear blue skies and highs close to 80, so we were probably due for the more chilly weather pattern that’s settled over France.

Camped out in Dammarie-sur-Loing

Friday afternoon we took a 1pm lock appointment and continued south, heading for Rogny-les-Sept-Écluses, but stopped short at the town of Dammarie-sur-Loing when we saw a very scenic rural mooring with not only water and electricity (free!) but a beautiful pastoral view. At one of the locks en route, I noticed some apples floating in the water, suggesting that there was an apple tree next to the canal somewhere up ahead. Sure enough, just upstream of the next lock was a huge apple tree hanging partially over the water. I nosed us in and Heather, from the deck of our boat, scooped up an armful of big, ripe apples, which she promptly made into a baked apple brown sugar butter cinnamon oatmeal crumble cake. Any excuse to use the oven since it’s cool and damp outside!

Food porn; Heather's amazing Friday night dinner of sausage wrapped in bacon wrapped in veal

Later that evening she created a magnificent, only-in-France dinner; the main dish was spiced ground pork, wrapped in bacon, enclosed in a thin veal steak, with a strip of helpful fat bound to the outside. The whole thing was pan fried, and then finished off with roasted potatoes and a caper-parsley-cream sauce. All those ingredients separately are delicious, but the combination was truly stunning. Coupled with a bottle of Moulin Gimie Chardonnay 2008, and then finished off with another helping of apple cake and some Floc de Gascogne, Friday was quite the decadent gastronomic experience, considering we were parked all alone in the middle of nowhere. One of the top ten meals of my lifetime, to be sure.

Saturday morning we broke our rule of “up and out by 11”, and by 8:30am the motor was on and we were cruising towards the town of Rogny-les-Sept-Écluses. We needed to get to a town of some size so we could find a cafe to watch the quarterfinal match of the Rugby World Cup, England vs. France. And because the games are played in New Zealand, the come on at a distinctly uncivilized hour here in Europe. A bit surprisingly, France dominated the game, and will move on to the semifinals next weekend.

The "sept écluses" of Rogny

Rogny-les-Sept-Écluses is home to an historic feat of engineering, a seven lock staircase (les sept écluses) that was put out of action by the expansion of the French waterways system to a larger lock gauge in the mid 19th century. We lingered in Rogny through lunch, then showed up for our 1pm appointment at the first of our 12 locks today, and cruised to our stopping point, Ouzouer-sur-Trézée, in tandem with a nice French liveaboard couple. Halfway to Ouzouer we crossed the summit pound of the Briare Canal, and took the final locks of the day going downhill.

Saturday evening Heather created another masterpiece of culinary engineering (using the oven, of course – still cold outside), a roast-beef-mushroom-garlic-creme-sauce bit of tastiness. We’ll continue for a short strech downhill tomorrow to Briare, then turn back uphill on the Canal latéral a la Loire. We expect next week’s recap to include stops at Sancerre, Chatillon-sur-Loire, and Pouilly.

Oh, and if you notice a distinct decrease in photo quantity and quality, it’s because Canon’s planned obsolescence has kicked in right on schedule. The LCD display went blank at ~17,000 photos, and the exposure/white balance/aperture sensor is now completely haywire at ~19,000 photos. By 20k photos I expect the camera (just about 3 years old) to be completely useless. I’ve had to do everything in complete manual mode this week, and even then it’s a roll of the dice, because sometimes the aperture just shuts all the way closed, even if I set it to 4.0 or less. Ah, for the good old days when an SLR lasted for decades.

Inside driving

One other note about this week, somewhere along the way we “rescued” a real, live, Bourgogne escargot (Burgundy snail). He (or she, it’s never clear with escargot) was attempting to cross a medium-sized road in a little village we visited, so Heather scooped him (or her) up and took him (or her) back to Après Ski, where she (Heather) placed our new pet on the flower pot holder. We had big plans of taking him (or her) on a grand tour of western Bourgogne by boat, possibly cementing his (or her) place in escargot lore, as the trip would certainly make history as one of the longer voyages by a snail – at least as a tourist, as opposed to as a future meal. We caught sight of him (or her) the following day, enjoying the shade on the side of one of the flower pots, but later, when we went in search of him (or her) to photographically document his (or her) journey, he (or she) was nowhere to be found. Our escargot had gone escar-missing, and in fact had become escar-gone. So unless he (or she) turns up soon, we’ll have to assume that our new (and apparently temporary) pet has rejected the tourist life and prematurely jumped ship. Just how a snail could jump is unclear, and is a topic I may research further for a future post.

Fall 2011 Week 4 Numbers:

• Kilometers: 101
• Locks: 48
• Engine Hours: 22
• Cost of Moorings: 16.80 euros

Fall 2011 Total Numbers:

• Kilometers: 334
• Locks: 160
• Engine Hours: 79
• Cost of Moorings: 71.30 euros

The nicely restored châteaux in Nemours

The church in Nemours

Nemours

Chatillon-Coligny

More from Nemours

The Technomads' RV, "Nettle"

The cargo barge Monique fills the lock

Fall 2011 Week 4 History