Traveling Down the River Saone

Barge Date:  08--2019

Traveling Down the River Saone

Going further south on the Saone to Port-sur-Saone.  Passed by the construction site of a new highway that will run from Paris to Switzerland.  At one point it must pass over the Saone and we could see a great project underway to build the bridge. Where we tied up along the canal there were 30-40 large scale pictures of the various construction works in progress including bridges, both large and small, ramps, highways and so on.

The town of Port-sur-Saone has been the point of crossing the river and 24 hours a day there is heavy traffic and a lot of it is truck traffic.  This will all be diverted when the highway is completed in 2021.  It will be a relief for the town.  During the day as many as 250 trucks can pass through town an hour. Constant.  The lady at a restaurant we used said everyone will be happy to have the traffic go elsewhere.

All this traffic goes over this very well-flowered but very narrow bridge. Continuous flowers from one side to the other. This is the first like it we have seen.  A city worker was watering the flowers as we passed and he said he does this every other day.  As it has been hot the water is important.  It was in the evening when we saw him doing the job.  Both sides I would guess would take him 4-5 hours.

The town of Gray is next on our ports of call.  Gray.  This is not a color in the French language.  It means nothing. When I engaged the lady at the tourist office she could not offer a good reason for why the town has this name.

The town had a nice long wall to tie up to and we stayed for several days.  A food store and Brico were just minutes away.  Had two nice meals on shore and we thought to take in a  concert at the church. Not to speak badly of little kids singing, I never liked the performances at school either, but I went.  For this performance I was able to leave early. See the FB page for Marianne's favorite song of the night.

Walked the town and took in some sights.

The tie-up at Lamarche-sur-Saone worked out well.  Being this is now a river, we are finding good tie-ups can be a problem.  Getting late in the day we made for a location that had mixed reviews.  But we came in slowly and I was able to throw a line over a bollard some distance away - 2 tries.  Drove in a stake and we were set.  Even had old concrete steps up to the top.

After finding not much in town, we continued walking north to what we hoped was a restaurant and finally found it.  I ate small fish caught from the Saone; about 3 inches long an deep fried. Not bad.

The next day we made our way back to Auxonne, our winter port. From here I made final arrangements to have the barge taken out of the water for cleaning, inspection and painting. This will take place in Saint Jean de Losne (SJdL) in several days.  Was able to do some varnish work while we waited.