Unexcused Absences France 2014 – Week 1 Recap (he said)

France 2014 – Week 1 Recap (he said)

by Kent 15 Jul 2014

After our beautiful Saturday evening dinner (grilled marinated duck breast) with Marianne and Jean-Pierre under clear skies, we woke Sunday morning (albeit at almost 10am) to low dark clouds. The rain held off most of the day until we were two locks and about 3 km from our stopping spot, an abandoned grain elevator near the town of Montigny. The averse (cloudburst) hit right as we pulled into a lock, so we had no choice but to brave the downpour and moor up in the lock basin. By the time the lock cycle finished, less than 10 minutes later, we were soaking wet, the rain had slowed to a drizzle, and we motored the last half hour in intermittent rain. Sunday evening was a home-cooked meal followed by the first half of Star Trek XI on the laptop.

The beautiful, if very rural, Canal entre Champagne et Bourgogne

At this point I need to explain a bit about the Champagne-Burgundy canal. It is rural with a capital “R”. We were warned by the guidebook and numerous other boaters that there is a whole lot of nothin’ on the southern half of the Canal entre Champagne et Bourgogne. So we had stocked up on groceries back in Auxonne on Friday, and had mentally steeled ourselves to weather one (or more) days without fresh bread. Readers from the US will scoff, but in France bread is meant to be consumed within 6 hours of baking – none of this “buy some loaves of bread for the next 5-7 days” silliness like we have back home. And with such a rural setting, we figured we would have to go as much as 36 (or even 48 – gasp!) hours without fresh bread.

Little (lock-keeper’s) house on the prarie

But destiny (or at least an enterprising boulanger from the next town) smiled on us, and while on our morning stroll through Montigny we happened to be in exactly the right place at exactly the right time. This village, which did not have a bakery, did have a mobile bread delivery truck. And we just happened to be walking by as it made a delivery to one of the local houses. We asked, with much groveling, if we could avail ourselves of one of their loaves (désolé de vous déranger, puis-je acheter une baguette?), and the young lady (boulangeuse?) kindly sold us a loaf. Whew, at least one more day with fresh bread.

Château de Fontaine-Française, rare sunshine near Montigny

At our next stop, Piépape, a similar stroke of luck happened. There was indeed a baker in town, but when I appeared Tuesday morning he was just finishing loading the truck for his delivery rounds. Sixty seconds later I would have missed out, but fortunately I was able to buy a baguette (still warm from the oven). Bread emergency averted.

The tunnel with very little light at the end

During the day’s drive we reached the summit of the Champagne canal, passed through a 4.8 kilometer tunnel (!), and started down the long descent along the Marne River. Our stopping point was the walled city of Langres, which has a very nice free mooring quai with free water and electric. It goes without saying that there were a bunch of Dutch boats parked here (the Dutch love free moorings), but there was plenty of space for us, and we pulled in mid afternoon after a long day’s drive of 14 locks, 4.8km of tunnel, and 15km of canal. Conveniently, Langres has a big Intermarché supermarket complete with laverie automatique (laundromat).

Langres inhabitants showing World Cup fever

Wednesday we took a full day to explore Langres, which is just over the border from Burgundy in the Champagne/Ardenne region. The small city is quite the regional attraction, with an almost complete set of restored ramparts, gates and guard towers, as well as a long religious history. Readers Digest, that renowned authority on all things European (hmmm…), has declared Langres one of the 50 most beautiful cities in France. Langres sits on a plateau about a thousand feet above the valley, and has a gorgeous view over the surrounding hills and lakes. And of course Langres is home to the A.O.C. cheese of the same name, a slightly bitter, orange rind, creamy concoction.

A portion of Langres’ intact ramparts

The town is also known for its antique and thrift stores, local artists and art galleries, the local lake with its sailing and boating club, and the Roman arch that was incorporated into the ramparts (but whose center was bricked up because it was not as defensible as the “modern” gate designs of the middle ages). The area has been fortified since Gallo-Roman times, and has been continuously upgraded right up through the 19th century, after which modern warfare and its lack of strategic location (at least for the last 70 years) made it irrelevant as a military outpost. But the city caters nicely to tourists, without being a tourist trap, and if all that is not enough it was also the birthplace and home of philosopher and writer Denis Diderot, who, in a boon to door-to-door salesmen everywhere, invented the Encyclopedia.

Après Ski crosses the upper Marne River (in the rain)

The one flaw with our visit to Langres was the weather – since Sunday, as noted above, it’s been raining off an on, and by Wednesday it was more “on” than “off”. Our self-guided walking tour of the city walls and the old quarter was interrupted several times, although during one downpour we explored the Saint-Mammès Cathédral and during another we found a fantastic restaurant (Le Crémaillère – the cog train) for lunch. This restaurant was completely decked out in soccer regalia and a big-screen TV, and would have been a perfect place to watch Germany destroy Brazil 7-1 in semifinal World Cup soccer action later that evening, if it hadn’t been a) starting at 10pm, b) a strenuous 30 minute walk up hill from our boat, and c) pouring rain. If only the cog train were still in business.

“Marauding” for blackberries (in the rain)

Thursday morning called for one final trek up the long road to the city, as the nearest boulangerie was over a mile and 1000 vertical feet from the canal port. In the cold rain. But the quest for a fresh baguette does not allow for hardship, and I resolutely ventured forth. Fortunately my favorite wife recognized my bravery and cooked a delicious breakfast of fried eggs and hash-browns, with a slice of home-made apple cake she made the night before as an excuse to fire up the oven – in addition to the continuous rain the past few days, the temperature has not gotten out of the low 60’s over that time; ahhh, high summer in France!

A beautiful lock-keeper’s house (in the light rain)

We got under way around 10am, and proceeded down the canal about a dozen km to Rolampont, a small village with a nice free parking quai (along with free water and electric points, but curiously no Dutch boats) and one essential local business – a boulangerie. And not just any boulangerie, but the best of the big chain boulangerie in France, “Ronde Des Pains” . And in another miracle, it wasn’t fermé vendredi (closed Friday).

Baby swallows/martins get their morning meal

Friday morning we dutifully got our fresh bread in Rolampont, although this “expedition” was a level four-minute walk, unlike Thursday’s marche forcée de trente minutes et la montagne de 350m dans la pluie et le froid (roughly translated as the Bataan Death March). Baguette in hand, we continued down the canal and stopped in Foulain, a Rolampont-sized village, also with boulangerie. Somehow, likely through better luck than good management, we had survived the sauvage (wild) part of the Champagne/Burgundy canal every day with fresh bread, without having to resort to eating our cheese accompanied by bits of the cardboard boxes that hold our wine supply, as we had been led to believe.

From Foulain it was a short two-hour cruise Saturday to the medium-sized city of Chaumont, the administrative center of the Haute-Marne départment. We moored up in the town’s halte nautique (marina) and, for the first time in almost two weeks, paid for a place to park Après Ski. One thing about the Champagne/Burgundy canal, the local municipalities (other than Chaumont) are very good about providing free parking spots every 15km or so – it’s a wonder the Dutch have not established this canal as a suburb of the Netherlands. And with that I’ll wrap up this week’s wrap-up. More on the historic city of Chaumont in next week’s recap.

France 2014 Week 1 Numbers: