Unexcused Absences

September 4 to September 11, 2016. Our time in Clamecy was way too brief, since we needed to get back to Auxerre to meet my Dad and put the boat away for the winter. We had a terrific visit with Luc, who owns the Caves du Val d’Or wine shop. We’ve been buying wine from Luc for years, although we missed a couple years when Après Ski was wintered in Lorraine.

Moored near Mailly-le-Chateau

The highlight of our half-week cruise back to Auxerre was a Wednesday night picnic dinner with some of our French friends. We parked for an evening at the end of the branch canal at Vermenton, and Marianne and Jean-Pierre drove up from Dijon (in the middle of packing up for their move to the Riviera). Marianne’s daughter, Justine, and her boyfriend, Alexandre, who live nearby, also joined us. We had a lot of fun catching up, but time ran out as darkness descended, and we had to pack up our picnic by flashlight.

Picnic with our very good friends

The next day we stopped for lunch in Accolay where we visited one of our favorite restaurants in France, the family-run Hostellerie de la Fontaine. It was the owner, during our charter boat trip on the Nivernais before we purchased our canal boat, who first introduced us to the king of cheeses, Epoisses. He was quite amused when we showed him a picture of his “cheese chariot” from our visit in 2009.

A manual lock mechanism on the Nivernais Canal

We spent Thursday night tied up just outside of Auxerre on the edge of an enormous park. The local running club showed up in the late afternoon and did a big stretching session followed by several laps around the park and through town. It was all very exhausting to watch.

The Auxerre running club

Once tied up in Auxerre we started our well-tested shutdown procedure; do all the laundry, winterize the engine and boat systems, pack all the clothes and linens in giant plastic zip-lock bags, and clear out the fridge and pantry with multiple meals of “left-over surprise”. One thing out of the ordinary was a Saturday afternoon gathering of vintage Volkswagen cars that took place in the field right next to our boat.

Lots and lots of Volkswagens

Dad arrived a couple days later, just as Après Ski was coming out of the water for her winter storage. The three of us drove south about 40 minutes to a cave near Arcy-sur-Cure (central Burgundy) that has the second oldest cave drawings in the world (and the oldest that can be visited by the public). They did not allow photos of the drawings (for obvious reasons) but they were remarkably clear, and we got a nice look at some 30,000-year-old cave art.

The cave itself has been a tourist attraction for over 100 years, but it was only in 1990 that the drawings were discovered, completely by accident. A TV crew had set up their lights inside the cave for an interview with a scientist, and one of the lights ended up pointed at the ceiling, and everyone there could suddenly see the faint drawings through the thin layer of calcite sediment that had covered the cave walls since the drawings were made.

The following day, at sunrise, the boatyard crew moved Après Ski to its final winter home inside their giant storage shed. It was hard to get over the sight of our boat moving slowly through the streets of Auxerre in the morning light. The driver expertly maneuvered our boat around the parked cars about a quarter mile to the shed.

Après Ski cruising down a street

Mid-morning the three of us drove 25 miles south-west from Auxerre to an interesting tourist attraction. About 15 years ago, someone started building a medieval castle in the French countryside, using traditional construction methods and tools. The combination paid and volunteer workforce is in the process of creating quite a masterpiece. The reasonable entrance fee pays for materials and salaries, and the whole thing is quite fascinating to watch. It’s pretty remote from anywhere, but if you find yourself in western Burgundy you should definitely plan at least a half day to see Château Guédelon.

A craftsman at Guédelon

Stone masons

Dyed yarn

The partially finished château

From the new/old castle we continued westward and spent the night in Amboise on the lower Loire River. Amboise is famous for a number of reasons. Over the centuries, Joan of Arc passed through on her way to Orleans, Mary Stewart (Queen of Scots) lived there for much of her early life, the chateau was home to the French royal court for a number of years, and none other than Leonardo da Vinci spent the last years of his life (and died) in town.

The next morning we visited the famous “ladies’ castle”, Château de Chenonceau. The castle was built over the river Cher and is one of the most popular tourist destinations in France. It was originally built by the Marques family in the 13th century and re-built 200 years later by Thomas Bohier, but afterwards was owned by Diane de Poitiers, Catherine de Medici, Louise de Lorraine, Louise Dupin, and Margerite Pelouze (hence the “ladies’ castle” nickname). It is a strikingly beautiful building.

The gardens at Chenonceau

The “new” building and the old keep

The chateau spands the river Cher

After Chenonceau we drove a few hours westward to Nort-sur-Erdre, in Brittany, to rent (of all things) a canal boat with some friends. Details of that trip will follow in another post.

France 2016 Cruise – Week 9

• Engine Hours: 14
• Kilometers: 59
• Locks: 31
• Moorings: 13.40 Euros

France 2016 Cruise – Total

• Engine Hours: 146
• Kilometers: 782
• Locks: 248
• Moorings: 364.50 Euros

All-Time Europe Cruising Numbers (73 weeks over 6 seasons)

• Engine Hours: 1,281
• Kilometers: 6,376
• Locks: 2,168
• Moorings: 2,014.60 Euros

France 2016 – Week 9 Route

The church in Accolay

Winterizing the engine

Heather’s “galley view” in Auxerre

Arriving in Auxerre from the Nivernais Canal

Billboard for excercise equipment; “Change Buttocks”

A statue in Mailly-la-Ville

Après Ski parked in Auxerre

Après Ski leaving the waterfront…

… and entering the storage shed

The Auxerre running club warms up

The great hall at Chenonceau

Craftsmen at Guédelon

The Auxerre skyline at night

August 28 to September 3, 2016. For a week that was supposed to cover as much distance as possible, and it was the most we’ve ever traveled in one week, we still saw some lovely scenery and took time to meet a few fellow boaters.

The tiny town of Champagne-sur-Seine, where we spent Saturday night, clearly has a fun streak. In this village I saw two excellent business names; the first was a hair salon named “Coupe de Champagne” (coupe translates as either “cup” or “cut), and the second was a bakery called “Champ Pain” (field of bread in French).

Commercial barges docked in St. Mammes

From Champagne we took a longgggg day’s cruise further up the Seine, past the commercial barge port of St Mammes, to Pont-sur-Yonne. The town has free floating docks for passing boaters, but the one restaurant in town was closed, naturally, on Sunday evening.

The lower Yonne River

Monday we continued upstream (south) to Villeneuve-sur-Yonne. It’s a very old village with a pretty waterfront park and a beautiful view across the Yonne River. We met a Swiss couple on their boat, and what made it particularly memorable was that the wife was a wine distributor, so she insisted that we come over to try three different Champagnes she was evaluating. Well, ok, but only because she asked nicely.

The bridge at Villeneuve

On the way to Villeneuve we stopped in Sens to visit the terrific weekly market. A thousand years ago Sens was a town of enormous power. About eight hundred years ago the Cathedral (more it in a minute) hosted the wedding of Saint Louis (King Louis IX) and Marguerite de Provence. The cathedral also hosts the crypt of the parents of the last three kings of France. At the height of its influence, Sens was the seat of a province that included Chartres, Auxerre, Meaux, Paris, Orleans, Nevers, and Troyes. There are those who claim the Archbishop was second in power only to the Pope. Unfortunately for Sens, the Archbishopric of Paris was created in 1622, robbing the local Cathedral of its power.

A very fine cheese indeed

Fish vendor at the market

Some ironwork in the Sens market

The Cathedral itself has quite a story to tell. In 1130, Archbishop Henri Sanglier decided to scrap the existing church and construct a magnificent building using the latest architectural techniques. Although the Romanesque style was still very much the norm, he used a new technique, the ribbed vault, plus another modern marvel, the flying buttress, in his design. While the individual styles had been used elsewhere, locals claim this was the first time they were put together all in the same building. Thus, Sens claims theirs was the very first true Gothic Cathedral, although the Basilica of Saint Denis is generally regarded by historians as the first. Unfortunately, the designer of the Sens Cathedral is on the way to being lost to history; the Wikipedia entry for Gothic Architecture doesn’t mention Sens at all, although the book “French Gothic Architecture of the 12th and 13th Centuries” contains a nice description of his innovations.

The Sens Cathedral and weekly street market

The next day we did another long cruise, past the entrance to the Burgundy Canal at Migennes, and tied up outside a small, family-run outdoor restaurant in Moneteau, on the outskirts of Auxerre. A small group invited us to their table for an afternoon, and we had a fun chat with a French local guy, whose parents were from the middle east, plus a local French woman and her colleague, originally from Morocco. They all loved to travel, so we talked about fun places we’ve been and they were curious to hear all about America and the orange guy running for President.

Moneteau in the morning

From Moneteau we made a brief stop in Auxerre to meet the folks who will be keeping Après Ski safe over the winter, then continued south into the northern Nivernais Canal and parked for the evening below the Caves de Bailly. We’ve stopped here numerous times over the years, so I won’t bore you with details, but the Caves are a local cooperative that produces Crémant de Bourgogne (bubbly wine from Burgundy) using the methode traditionnelle de Champagne even though they can’t call it “Champagne”.

Entering the Nivernais south of Auxerre

From Bailly it was four hour cruise to Mailly-la-Ville, a small village with three nice floating docks for visiting boaters. We took a jog (Heather) and a bike ride (me) in the afternoon, then settled in to organize our wine cave in preparation for our visit to our favorite caviste (wine merchant), Luc, one long or two short days away in Clamecy.

Clamecy’s old quarter

Clamecy is one of our favorite towns in France, and we have visited at least three times by boat and twice by car. The old village perches on a hilltop, with narrow alleyways and staircases leading to the main square, and the new village spreads around three sides of the hill and ridge, crisscrossed with a number of small streams and waterways.

Clamecy was famous two centuries ago as the gateway to the Morvan, a heavily wooded area in central Burgundy that provided firewood for early 19th century Paris. The loggers would dump their cuttings into the Yonne River, and teams would assemble the wood into giant rafts in Clamecy, above the dam. Once the rafts and the “navigators” were ready, they would release the floodgates and the whole assembly would careen down the Yonne, hopefully making it to the navigable part of the river downstream of Auxerre before the water levels returned to normal. This system of navigation had mixed results.

The Nivernais Canal near Clamecy

In the mid 19th century work began on a series of locks and canals with the purpose of creating a proper waterway to Paris, right about the time that the city switched to coal for heating. The canal saw some minor use for cargo boats carrying cattle or wine, but by the mid 20th century the canal was abandoned. An enterprising Australian (Ted Johnson, who still lives nearby and runs a boating supply business out of his house) and his buddies took a small boat through the Nivernais Canal in the early 1960’s, hacking and chopping their way through the weeds and the overgrowth, and supposedly made it to the summit pound in Baye. They opened a couple of boat rental bases nearby, sold one-way cruises to the British, and thus was borne the concept of pleasure cruises on the canals of France. At least according to Ted.

France 2016 Cruise – Week 8

• Engine Hours: 36
• Kilometers: 183
• Locks: 59
• Moorings: 6 Euros

France 2016 Cruise – Total

• Engine Hours: 132
• Kilometers: 723
• Locks: 217
• Moorings: 351.10 Euros

France 2016 – Week 8 Route

A hilltop chapel along the Yonne

The town of Joigny

An old cast iron sign on a lock-keeper’s house

August 21 to August 27, 2016. Where to begin? Paris is so amazing, and during our 8 days parked at the Arsenal marina we literally just scratched the surface. As I mentioned last week, the Port de Plaisance de l’Arsenal marina, where Après Ski was parked, is à côté de (next to) la Place de la Bastille, very convenient to numerous metro and bus lines. It gave us excellent access to everything Paris has to offer.

The Seine River in Paris

Sunday morning we met someone from Paris Greeters, a volunteer organization that pairs native Parisians with visitors to give a real sense of the place, not just a quick Louvre/Eiffel Tower/Notre Dame look at this incredible city. We wanted to get a closer look, from a local’s perspective, of the Marais, the area north of Île de la Cité. Our guide grew up in the Marais in the 1960’s, so she had some interesting stories about how things used to be.

Section of old city wall in the Marais

Piece of the old Bastille foundation in the Metro

Tower at Place de la Bastille

Seine River and Notre Dame at dusk

The most interesting thing we discovered Sunday was on our own, after sunset. I had run down to the Seine to take some twilight photos, and heard music from across the river. It looked like there was quite a party going on, so I called Heather to join me and we crossed to la Rive Gauche (the left bank). Once there, we discovered a whole series of public dance parties, each with their own music (swing, classical, salsa, etc.) and each about 75 meters apart, along the banks of the Seine. In chatting with some locals, we discovered that pretty much every evening from mid June through mid September, someone brings a sound system and people gather at about sunset and dance until midnight or later. I challenge any other major city to have something this cool (and spontaneous).

Dance party on the banks of the Seine

Monday we took a half-hour subway ride north to Montmartre, a large hill to the north of the main Paris downtown. The area is of course famous for the snow-white basilica Sacré-Coeur (sacred heart), although arguably more interesting is the fact that the older church, Saint Pierre de Montmartre, claims to be where the Jesuit order of priests was founded.

Inside Sacre Coeur

Non-standard view of Sacre Coeur

The “standard” view of Sacre Coeur

The area is also famous as a major center of art during the Belle Époque (beautiful era), and at the turn of the 20th century counted, as residents, Salvador Dali, Claude Monet, Toulouse-Lautrec, Piet Mondrian, Pablo Picasso, and Vincent van Gogh, among many. While the south-west side is completely overrun by tourist shops and restaurants, just one block east of the basilica is a lovely, quiet street full of local restaurants, and we found a delicious crêperie suitable for a long lunch.

A classic French car in Paris

The next afternoon I took the subway and a bus line out to Le Bourget, home to the Paris Air and Space Museum. It’s not very well known, and was practically deserted when I went, but it’s really quite nice. They have two (!) Concordes, including one of ones used for the pre-production test flights, a full-sized Ariane 5 rocket, a Boeing 747, and an entire hangar full of trans-sonic and supersonic experimental aircraft from the 1950’s.

Paris Air and Space Museum

The Ariane 5 rocket and a 747

Experimental trans-sonic aircraft

Of particular interest to your correspondent was a mint-condition, World War II era C-47, the same aircraft that sits in about 6 feet of water at Norman’s Cay in the Exumas. We snorkeled this plane wreck back in late March during our Bahamas cruise earlier this year. The only real flaw with the museum was that for about half the aircraft on display, the sign only identifies the plane, but gives no other information. But, they’re in the middle of a multi-stage renovation, and the signs in the renovated sections are much more informative.

An atypical view of a 747

A VERY experimental jet aircraft

Experimental fighter planes from the 1950’s and 60’s

Back at the port, we shared a couple meals with a couple originally from Annapolis, Maryland, not far from Washington DC. They were originally sailors but “retired” from boating in the USA to live full-time on their canal boat in France.  We also took two pleasure cruises on the Seine River, one early in the morning (no tourist boat traffic!) and one at sunset (lots of tourist boat traffic). Our French friend Marine, who has spent a couple Christmases with us in Virginia, joined us for the dinner/sunset cruise.

Our morning cruise on the Seine

At the Tour Eiffel

Passing under Pont Alexandre III

On our evening cruise we noticed numerous people lingering on the banks of the Seine, either picnicking, or relaxing with friends, or both. One night we joined the fun and took a baguette, a slab of rabbit terrine, and some wine down to a stone quay on the right bank not far from Île St. Louis. We were both quite impressed to see how many young, friendly Parisians were taking the time to enjoy the outdoors in their beautiful city.

Dinner on the banks of the Seine

After 8 days in Paris it was time to move on, so we locked down out of the Port into the Seine, took one final scenic lap around Île St Louis and Île de la Cité, then pointed south (upstream) and cruised several hours to the waiting quai downstream of lock #9. From there it was a six hour drive to Melun, the biggest town on the upper Seine River.

Notre Dame towers at night

Notre Dame towers at twilight

Returning to the Arsenal marina from our evening cruise

Melun’s main claim to fame was as a stopover on the Roman road south-southeast of Paris, used to provide fresh horses to official couriers. Nine hundred years later the town became home to the Capetian kings. At this point we are attempting to cover serious distance, and are not lingering very long in any one spot, although we did take time to visit the very nice street market and covered market before continuing our cruise, so I’ll pick up the narrative again in my next post.

France 2016 Cruise – Week 7

• Engine Hours: 14
• Kilometers: 84
• Locks: 7
• Moorings:  91.8 Euros

France 2016 Cruise – Total

• Engine Hours: 96
• Kilometers: 540
• Locks: 158
• Moorings: 345.1 Euros

France 2016 – Week 7 Route

A factory on the Seine south of Paris

An innovative car parking arrangement

A colorful cargo barge

Église St-Paul in Paris

Candles in Sacre Coeur

The Conciergerie in Paris

La Tour Eiffel

An iron bridge over the Seine

Another Paris bridge

One of the earliest jet fighters, a Heinkel He 162

Douglas C-47 like the one at Norman’s Cay

The pilot sits inside the intake to this experimental ram-jet aircraft

An innovative way to wash your dock

Seen at a wine shop; “My favorite weapon is a corkscrew”

A cargo barge barely squeezes under a bridge at Melun

August 14 to August 20, 2016. We continue our story where we left off, at the enormous street-and-covered-market in Meaux (pronounced, like many French words, by dropping most of the letters, then changing the sound of the remaining ones, so you end up with what could have been written, “Mo”). We spent a few more days enjoying the sights and tastes of the town and our American boat neighbors. Eventually, we ended up at the Meaux WW I museum.

Cathedral and bishop’s palace in Meaux

In 1914, the German advance was literally stopped at the gates of the city in the First Battle of the Marne, which allowed the French forces to regroup and push the invaders back to a line roughly through south-western Belgium and northern Champagne. The Musée de la Grande Guerre du pays de Meaux was built in 2011, and is based on the incredible private collection of Jean-Pierre Verney. The visual centerpiece of the museum is a reconstructed battlefield, with a typical French trench (characterized by wooden walls and supports) and a German trench (done in concrete) facing each other across a no-mans-land. The detail is exquisite, down to canteens, spent shell casings, mortars, and field glasses.

Museum of the Great War in Meaux

Another section gives the visitor a sense of life in the trenches. The slideshows, photographs from the front lines, are projected on the walls of a narrow passage, and the floor is a gray-brown vinyl covering over low-density foam. With each step you take, speakers play the sound of boots squishing in the mud. The side rooms have vintage film footage of the battles in progress, and the whole thing is just terrifying to imagine taking part in.

A pigeon-carrier truck

The German mobilization order from WW I

Recreated German trench

Impressive display of military shells

The museum did a fantastic job of covering all aspects of the war, not just the military hardware. There were sections devoted to front-line medicine, home-front rationing, propaganda, and a temporary exhibit on the types and purposes of the different obus (shells) used in the conflict. Throughout the museum were paintings by soldiers who had lived through the conflict. Meaux is just a quick train ride from Paris, so if you really want to get a sense of what things were like 100 years ago in France, make sure you take a day to visit this museum and its beautiful town.

A soldier’s painting from the Great War

From Meaux it was a short 8-hour cruise over two days for Après Ski to reach the Port de Plaisance de l’Arsenal, a ~200 slip marina located just steps from the Place de la Bastille in downtown Paris. Entering the city by boat was not quite as we expected. The Marne River was very shaded and tree-lined right up until it joined the Seine, only three kilometers upstream of Île-de-la Cité. We had expected an industrial river. Once on the Seine, though, the scenery was continuous factories and industry that gradually changed over to 19th century architecture as we approached the city center.

Approaching Paris on the Seine

Half a kilometer upstream of Île Saint-Louis is the entrance to the Arsenal marina, and we called on the VHF (channel 9) and locked up into possibly the coolest place to park your boat in all of Europe. The marina is served by two subway stations and numerous bus lines just steps from the boats, and the Gare de Lyon train station is a couple blocks away. It is a 15-20 minute walk to Notre Dame, and the eclectic Marais quartier (neighborhood) is less than a 10 minute walk away.

The Port de Plaisance de l’Arsenal marina

In usual Kent & Heather fashion, we had a busy schedule right from the start. The first evening we had a dinner rendezvous with Stuart, son of Tim & Heather (Chamamé), who lives in Paris. We last saw him during the luncheon of the boating party in Ay, Champagne, a few weeks ago.

Paris!

The first item on our tourist agenda the next day was to visit the Paris Catacombs, a large network of spaces carved out of the rock 80-100 feet down. The original chambers were excavated in the 12th century, in what were then the distant suburbs, to extract limestone for buildings. As time passed the now-empty chambers were forgotten. Then, in the 18th century, a series of cave-ins occurred in areas that were now part of Paris proper. So, King Louis XVI established the Inspection Générale des Carrières (Inspection of Mines) service to map the Parisian underground.

The reinforcements added in the late 18th century

At the same time, back on the surface, the Paris cemeteries were becoming overcrowded. Skeletons were piling up at an alarming rate, and to make room for the newly dead, the old bones were exhumed and stashed wherever they could. It was then that scientists were becoming aware of how infectious diseases were transmitted, and they realized that the stacks of skeletons and densely packed new corpses weren’t helping matters, from a health perspective, so they attempted to pass decrees limiting the use of existing cemeteries. This, you might be surprised to learn, didn’t work very well.

A few of the 6 million skeletons in the Catacombs

Meanwhile, the authorities were finishing up the mine mapping and reinforcement campaign, and the Prefect Police Lieutenant-General Alexandre Lenoir, who was nominally in charge of both the mines and the cemeteries, decided to combine the two efforts. It was decreed that all the surplus bones, close to 6 million complete skeletons, would be stored, in an orderly fashion of course, in the now reinforced mines.

One of numerous walls of bones

The Catacombs have been a tourist attraction ever since the first famous visitor, the Count of Artois (who later became King Charles X), visited in 1787. Tours were occasional up through the 1860’s, then monthly, then bi-weekly, and by popular demand they became daily events by the turn of the 20th century. Now it’s one of the most popular tours in Paris, and tickets are not sold in advance, so one must brave a 1-3 hour line that snakes around the Denfert-Rochereau Metro station. Even the current name is clever; d’Enfer is French for “Hell”, so naturellement you enter the Catacombs through the pavilion of the former Barrière d’Enfer (Gates of Hell) city gate.

The famous “barrel room”

Next, we took the obligatory walk through Notre Dame, a lovely cathedral in the center of old Paris. A short walk to the west is the Saint Chapelle, the private chapel of King Louis IX. The building represents the end-game of Gothic architecture, in that, at least from the inside, the structure appears to be made almost entirely of glass.

La Sainte-Chapelle

The Marais, the neighborhood north and east of Notre Dame, is famous for being the original Jewish quarter of Paris. Today, it’s a mix of falafel stands and stylish shops, interspersed with a few kebab restaurants. Thanks to Trip Advisor, we found a most interesting kebab place. The basis for their signature dish is roasted cauliflower, which is then augmented with diced tomatoes and peppers, and drizzled with a salty bean purée, all stuffed into freshly baked pita bread.

Lunch at Miznon

The next item on our Paris program was to climb the towers of Notre Dame. Friday and Saturday nights in the summer the towers are open until 11pm, and we figured a sunset view from up high should be pretty good. Unfortunately, scattered rain showers prevented a colorful sunset, but the view from the top as the lights of the city came on was easily worth the 10 euro entry fee.

Looking east from Notre Dame

As part of our ticket to see La Chapelle, we also got to visit the Conciergerie, which was the Parisian version of the Tower of London. It was here that many of the nobility were kept prisoner after the French Revolution, including their most famous “resident,” Marie Antoinette. The museum has restored one of the old cells, complete with a mannequin in a black veil, to show her living conditions before getting the chop. The room is surprisingly well appointed, given how much everyone seemed to hate her.

Marie Antoinette’s cell at La Conciergerie

At this point, Saturday night at the end of Week 6, we are four nights into our eight night stay in Paris. There will be much more about Paris in my next post.

France 2016 Cruise – Week 6

• Engine Hours: 8
• Kilometers: 47
• Locks: 8
• Moorings:  137.40 Euros

France 2016 Cruise – Total

• Engine Hours: 82
• Kilometers: 456
• Locks: 151
• Moorings: 253.30 Euros

France 2016 – Week 6 Route

Mobile kitchen from WW I

Heading west out of Meaux

Paris has a LOT of bridges

Death visits George Washington?

Not sure how to caption this

Frieze at Notre Dame; “sinners, this way”

Speaking of sinning…

Detail at Sainte-Chapelle

Hôtel de Ville de Paris (city hall)

Gargoyle at Notre Dame

Wood panel at Notre Dame

Bells in the south tower

Ceiling at La Conciergerie

August 7 to August 13, 2016. After only one week in Mareuil-sur-Ay we really didn’t want to leave, but Paris was calling, as was our flight home in about six weeks, so Sunday morning we bid a reluctant farewell to Tim and Heather of Chamamé, plus the locals Zeno and Vero, Jeremy, crazy-man-who-owns-three-boats Jérome, and Antoine.

Cumières, just west of Mareuil-sur-Ay

Our first stop was Damery, where we ran into a couple we had met in Chalons-en-Champagne two summers ago, Chris and Karen of Moonglow. We stayed just long enough to spend the night and get a couple of baguettes from the boulanger opposite the church. The next day we had a nice cruise to Dormans, where we moored in front of Peter and Pam of Arianne, last seen in Bar-le-Duc a few weeks ago. They had their hands full with their friends onboard, a couple from Switzerland plus two teenage girls.

A freight train passes through Dormans

The next day Après Ski entered new territory again, and we continued downstream (west) on the Marne. Our Tuesday stop was Chateau Thierry, site of two major battles, in 1814 during the Napoleonic Wars and in 1918 between the US and Germany. The WW I battle was one of the very first actions of the American Expeditionary Forces, which were formed and sent to France to help end World War I.

The river view upstream of Château-Thierry

The town was also one of two sites of the famous Paris Gun, employed by the Germans during the summer of 1918 to lob shells at Paris from 75 miles away. The gun wasn’t that useful from a strategic standpoint, as during the shell’s three minute flight time it was subject to both wind and the Coriolis effect, but as a psychological weapon it caused quite a panic. The projectile reached a maximum altitude of 25 miles, making it the first man-made object in history to reach the stratosphere.

Château-Thierry

There are some nice memorials to and restored battlefields from the US Army’s efforts during WW I, but the weather was sketchy and it would have been quite a bike ride, so we will have to visit them some other year. Instead we met our boat neighbor, Chris, of the 90-year-old Dutch barge Esme (his wife Diana was out of town). He has cared for the boat incredibly well and in fact is still in touch with the children and grandchildren of the original Dutch owner.

Geert and Simone’s barge “Sanne”

Next up was a tiny pontoon, only big enough for one boat, in Pont-de-Charly upstream of the lock. The town had both a Super U grocery store and a street market the following morning. Our market light has been on “low” for a while, since the last market we visited was in Chalons-en-Champagne several weeks ago. From Pont-de-Charly it was on to La Ferté-sous-Jouarre, where we double parked against the hull of Sanne, owned by our new friends Geert and Simone (and the dog Tara), from Holland.

Charly-sur-Marne

La Ferté had a nice street market the next morning and we took full advantage of the fresh fruits, vegetables, and meat. La Ferté is famous for supplying millstones throughout the world. A millstone needs to be soft enough to cut and shape to the proper size, but not so soft that it dissolves into the grain you’re milling. La Ferte´s stones are apparently juuuuusssst right.

Street market in La Ferté

From there we continued downstream to Mary-sur-Marne, and its one-boat pontoon. The local restaurant was on conges annuel (annual vacation), but fortunately the town was big enough to have a boulangerie up the hill near the church. We have had no bread emergencies yet this year, and have no intention of starting now.

Grapevines in the Marne valley

And then it was on to Meaux, famous for their cheese, Brie de Meaux. As we pulled into our slip at the town dock we saw that the barge next to us was American (it had a US Coast Guard registration number in the window). In addition, there was an American flag flying from a boat a couple slips away. And before we even got organized, a sailboat pulled in also flying Old Glory. So in our sixth summer of cruising the French canals, where we occasionally will see one other American boat at a time, there were now four parked in a row in Meaux.

The Marne river in Meaux

We invited everyone over to “our” dock and spread out the tables for a big pot-luck happy hour, which sort of morphed into a dinner, as these things tend to do. Present were Diane and Jean-François of the sailboat Seatern, Don and Sam of D’Eerste, and Anna cruising solo on the biggest barge in port, Isabelle. Anna lost her husband a few years ago but continues to live in France on her barge, spending most of the year in the Paris Arsenal marina except for a couple months in the summer when she parks in Meaux. I believe she is the deputy “mayor” of the Arsenal.

Metal sculpture celebrating the vineyard workers

I need to share a story that’s close to my heart. The French believe that cheese is to be eaten sparingly, a bite here or a nibble there. Our French friends definitely look sideways at us as we consume cheese by the kilo. But in a little market, somewhere along the Marne, we came across a locally-made cheese called “La Tentatrice” (the temptress). And at the bottom of the label was written, in French, “to be consumed without moderation.” Finally, someone in France understands us (and knows their audience).

“A consommer sans modération”

The next morning we visited our third street market in four days, but I’m getting ahead of myself because it’s now Sunday, and technically part of Week 6. So I’ll be back with more of our visit to Meaux in my next post.

France 2016 Cruise – Week 5

• Engine Hours: 18
• Kilometers: 137
• Locks: 13
• Moorings: 2 Euros

France 2016 Cruise – Total

• Engine Hours: 74
• Kilometers: 409
• Locks: 143
• Moorings: 115.9 Euros

France 2016 – Week 5 Route

Speed Rabbit Pizza

Planet Chicken (Halal Restaurant)

McDoner’s Kebab Shop

Church in Damery

Bollard on a commercial barge

Putting the “château” in Château-Thierry

Church tower in Dormans

House and vines

Boat harbor in Meaux

Approaching La Ferté