Barge Date:  05-27-2019

Auxonne, Brussels, Atlanta, Thomasville, and St. Petersburg

We made it to Auxonne. After the last lock on the Rhone au Rhin we turned north on the Saone to travel up river to the port.  We needed to pass through one lock and for the first time we used a new, for us at least, way to call for the lock.  In other canals you might find a rope over the canal to pull to open the lock.  On this river you twist a rubber hose. It doesn't seem  possible to twist a flexible hose enough to move a switch, but it worked, nonetheless.

At first glance, Auxonne is somewhat of a disappointment.  A good number of closed commercial stores downtown. We were hoping for a lively restaurant market.  Would have liked the food stores to be closer. The newly minted young lady at the tourist office gave us some advice which was mostly wrong.  She'll learn. But we will get by.

Purchased fast train tickets online with some difficulty, but we will know better next time. To get home we are going through Brussels to visit the family. Then on to Atlanta and Tallahassee.

We had a treat from our number one host in Brussels.  We were taken to an abbey that still has a beer product, albeit it is made off the property by a commercial concern.  They also are still involved in cheese making but just the aging of it, otherwise it too is made off site in France. We had a wonderful tour arranged just for us with a gentleman that taught history for 40 years at the abbey school and who now in retirement marshals three other guides. We heard a lot of details that might not be offered to the typical tour group.  A lot of history about symbolism in church history. This abbey has a very large library as it received many books from other abbeys that have closed.  The library is not open to the general public. One problem the abbey has is not enough monks. The youngest is 40 but the median age is something north of 60.

Sisters

In Atlanta we meet up with daughter #1 who is coming to Thomasville as part of the graduation party that will travel on to St. Petersburg for the big event.  Good planning would have had all of us on the same plane to Tallahassee but we missed the boat. So she arrived an hour after us.

Graduation went well.  Started at 8AM to beat the heat. The event was outdoors at Eckerd College under a big tent.  The big girl will now be off to China to live and work for at least 15 months.

As I write this blog we are just a day away from returning to France.  Stay tuned.

Barge Date:  09-05-2019

The run to Auxonne

To say the weather has been terrible for the past 2 weeks would be an understatement.  Cold, wet, rain, snow.  Does not give a person the desire to venture off the boat. In addition, the second half of the Rhone-au-Rhin leaves a lot to be desired in terms of stop-off points.  The one exception has been Besancon.

This is a very old city that is situated on the inside of a large loop of the Doubs River.  See GE picture for how this looks. Normally we would miss doing a loop around the city because there is a tunnel

shortcut, but since I made a navigation error we went through the tunnel so had to come back around the loop and upstream to get to the mooring we wanted.

Not such a bad detour.  Came to the only manual lock on the canal and the first manual lock we had to operate by ourselves.   With a little bit of instruction from a man sitting on his boat we got the job done.  There may be more of these coming up this summer.

I found Besancon to be different than other French cities I have seen. Perhaps not a single individual building or house, just long blocks of attached buildings.  Probably mostly apartments above.  The city does extend outside the Doubs loop so I was only looking at the city center, but it was definitely different. No new buildings. Not many people after work hours.

The city is also the home of some notable French figures.  Victor Hugo and the Lumiere brothers had early homes on the same square.  The city was also an early technology hub with watch making key to early success.  Prosperous, I would say.

Not shown in the picture above is the Citadel of Besancon which dates from the 17th century. And because of its history with watch and time pieces there is an interesting museum about, what else, Time.

As we continue on the Rhone-au-Rhin, we are again on and off the river. Although there has never been a hint of troubles with the river current I continue to be concerned that when we come off the river that we don't somehow make a goof and end up on the wrong side of the turn-off.  Other than river signs - and what we get from the navigation system - there are no barriers to prevent a boat from  going over the falls

Today we arrived in Dole. Didn't know the French loved Bob so much to name a city after him. The canal is situated just below the city center which is anchored by a large cathedral.  Rough mooring with some metal scraping.  And rain.

Tomorrow it is on to Auxonne where we will leave the boat for 2 weeks.

Dole

Barge Date:  05-05-2019

Mulhouse to Baume-les-Dames

We have been running every day because the towns can be seen in an afternoon or because I would rather be on the move if the weather is not in my favor.

The Rhone-au-Rhin has a good number of locks.  Going west from Mulhouse, we continue to rise on the water, but from Dannemarie on, we are going downhill until we get off at the Saone.  The number of locks we do a day are high numbers for us, but until May 2 we had a lockman traveling to each lock to get it ready for us so we could make some good time. We lost the lockman on May 3 and picked up a lock remote.  This means we may have to wait for the lock to fill before we can descend so slower progress.

May 1: 22 locks, 2 bridges
May 2: 15 locks
May 3: 11 locks, 1 bridge
May 4: 12 locks, 2 bridges
May 5: 13 locks

Some of the locks were just ahead, so out of one and into the next. Other than when the weather was bad, it is just a process and not hard.

Since Mulhouse we have been traveling off and on with a Brit barge, Sabrina of London.  Owners have a lot of ocean sailing in their background, so all this on the canals must be mild medicine.

Yesterday we had simultaneous surprises towards the end of the day.  At the last lock the rain turned to wet snow which did not want to let up. Coming into L'Isle-sur-le-Doubs there was some difficulty in seeing well, and of course that is when we got the second surprise: here comes a 39-meter barge, empty, riding high, and seemingly heading right towards us. No wheelhouse on that barge, so there was a forward lookout who had not been looking out.  He was the eyes for the helmsman.  Upon seeing our boat, he ran to the stern waving his hands to announce his surprise. We were able to pass without contact, but we were close, and all this through slush and snow coming down. The deck was quite slippery from the ice.

Yesterday and today we are on and off the Doubs River.  When we are off, we are on a canal that mostly runs alongside the river.  But it is nice on the river - much wider than a canal and much better views.  Plus we are coming into some nice landscape that reminds me of the upper Meuse in Belgium. The current gives us a speed boost of 3-4 K which makes travel faster. But be careful to take the arrow off the river or the nearby drop will do you in.  See picture below.

Have made the decision to make our final stop (before returning to the US for graduation) in Auxonne.  About 125K from where we are now.  This is our winter port so leaving the boat there saves us some money.  But we will have to keep moving.

Click on the pictures to make them larger.

See the bee?

A sunny day and France was out walking, biking and having a drink in the sun.

Old Pill Box

Missed this bollard for all the dirt around it, so I dug it out.

These are always next to a lock; don't fall asleep and miss the turn.