Narrowboat Quaintrelle: Canal du Centre: Digoin - St Berain-sur-Dheune (Or, On To Our Third French Canal)

I saw three ships come sailing in..... L-R: Catherine Clark, Lazybones, Quaintrelle at St Julien-sur-Dheune

At Digoin, the Canal du Lateral de la Loire changes into the Canal du Centre. There’s no fanfare, dancing girls, fireworks, not even a simple sign indicating the line of demarcation. It simply says on the map that the canal is now Canal du Centre and so we set off on our third French canal on Friday 21^st. We have still only completed the one, however, the Nivernais, as we joined the Lateral de la Loire halfway along, so we have the other half to do at some point before we can claim it ‘done!’ On the Canal du Centre the locks are automated, so we were looking forward to not being nanny-ed by the lock keepers, “Where are you going, when will you leave, are you finished for the day, are you continuing…..”. It’s nice having them do the locks for you, but it takes away a bit of freedom and spontaneity. However, as we approached the first lock we saw the familiar VNF van and a chap in the blue uniform dotting in and out of the lock cottage. He helped us with our ropes and pulled the start rope and disappeared back into the cottage. We rose nice and smoothly being lulled into a false sense of security that all the automated locks would be as smooth….. At the next lock we were on our own and decided that the chaps at the first lock were actually maintenance and just happened to be there and give us a hand. We’ve had to deploy a different technique when operating the locks ourselves while going up. I steer in and drop Mike at the bottom of the ladder and he climbs up taking the front rope with him – we are too small to be able to see the bollards, never mind throw a rope around them! He then puts the back rope on, pulls the starter rope on the lock, then I reverse back and pick him up at the foot of the ladder so he can man the front rope as we rise. We were getting into quite the routine when we reached one lock where the ladder and starter rope was right at the front…….. As with the UK it would appear no two locks in France are the same. At least some of the automated ones have ground sluices so it’s a bit of a smoother ride. We reached Paray le Monial in time for lunch which we had moored near the Fondue Barge, walked along to the little port, then moved the boat in as there was only one other boat there. Paray le Monial is a nice town and has an interesting history; being a town populated by both Protestants and Catholics living peacefully together back in the days they didn’t and also for being the place where a vision of Christ appeared. He obviously doesn’t start til 1 May, cause we never saw him but we enjoyed a visit to the Basilica and a walk around the pretty town.

Little feeder canal onto the mainline

Automated lock operation: Pull blue to start the lock operation, red to stop it. The blue works quite well so far - haven't tried the red.......

The fondue barge.

Big barge coming through Paray le Monial

The lovely Basilica

The port by night.

Following our weekend special breakfast of bacon butties, we set off about 10am on Saturday to find that the road that had accompanied the canal from the outskirts into Paray now continued to follow our route. There was a small rush hour of half a dozen cars around 12 noon, but it was very quiet other than that and we kind of forgot it was there. Half-way through the morning a nasty, nasty smell indicated that the black tank had reached the top, even tho’ the light hadn’t come on. We pulled over to the side in the middle of nowhere, but it was the road side, and did our first ‘wild’ pump-out. I’m sure the occasional motorist and biker that passed wondered what we were doing…….. It went fairly smoothly with the only nuisance being the lack of a water point to rinse it out, so we bit the bullet and put down a few buckets of canal water. We’ve been told in the past this can make the tank smell, but it can’t be any worse than it was – watch this space…. As we pulled into the little port at Genelard we were delighted to see another bright and lovely narrowboat moored up, The Puzzler – home to Sally, Andy and their cute wee dog Shannon. They’ve been onboard for 8 years in total, covering the canals of the UK, Ireland and Europe. We had a great chat with them, a tour of The Puzzler and then I headed up to the supermarket with Sally for some supplies while Mike listened to York City play badly on the radio. A cutting was built through Genelard to accommodate the canal and the small town has made the most of this feature. I really love how French towns and villages will grasp the tiniest thing of significance and make the most of it – they are very proud of their towns and villages’ histories. The other point of interest in Genelard was the bridge at the lock. During the war, this was the line of demarcation between occupied France to the north and free France to the south of the bridge. It’s hard to believe that little places like this in the middle of nowhere were actually occupied, but they had pictures of the german sentry outside the building they took over as their HQ to prove it. In the evening Sally and Andy came over for a drink and we exchanged stories, experience and picked their brains on boating in France. The eclusier had been to ask what time we were setting off the next morning and we said 11am, to have time for our bacon butties, and we’d have company with The Puzzler deciding to lock share with us for part of the day’s cruise.

The road is still there... Liz, do you think this is the same group you saw???

Lovely countryside

This is only the second or third ducklings we've seen - normally ten a penny at home they seem quite rare here.

Great old ceramics factory with kiln

The cutting at Genelard telling the story along the cutting

The port at Genelard with NB The Puzzler

The last couple of days had taken us through some stunning countryside, the blue skies and sunshine making it even more beautiful of course. We were uncertain of where we would moor, in the next town Montceau-les-Mines, or on the outskirts, but the lock keeper didn’t seem happy to leave us undecided and said he’d see us later when we wouldn’t confirm. He was very smiley – I just couldn’t understand what he was saying.

Just like home...... except it's warm!

Waiting for a big barge to clear the lock.

Cute sculpture.

NB The Puzzler leaving the lock.

By our last lock, we had decided we would moor in the port in Montceau itself and the lockie was delighted. As we pulled away he was on the phone to let the bridge operator know we were on our way – there are three automated bridges to get into the port.

We weren’t sure what to find at Montceau as people seemed to have mixed opinions about it. The outskirts reminded us of coming into Castleford, or Casvegas as Mike calls it.

French Casvegas

First bridge...

Second bridge adding a bit of variety in case you're getting bored with bridges at this point.....

And the third, a foot bridge, rises up vertically.

As we moored up, some French people chatting on their boats told us that the Capitainerie was in fact closed, so we couldn’t register with them just now, as the building was being used as a polling station. It was an important day in France and we were keeping a close eye on the news.

The polling station......

Lovely square at Montceau-les-Mines - shame it wasn't market day ;(

This was fine but it meant we couldn’t get the code to get back into the port if we left as the French people had now disappeared. Thankfully we found another one who gave us the code and we went for a wander. We even got into the polling station!! But were too scared to take a photo. As well as being the Capitainerie and the local polling station, the little building is also the Tourist Information Office and one lady who had just cast her vote insisted we go in to get what maps, brochures etc we needed. We both would have loved to be fluent in French at this point as the people going in and out to vote were very animated and excited and it would have been great to speak with them. We did manage to ask one man who will win and he laughed loudly and said we’d know this evening.

When the results came out later that day, we weren’t altogether surprised but we were glued to the BBC News channel til quite late on to get the gossip.

As law-abiding EU citizens (for the time-being), Mike went up to the Capitianerie first thing on Monday and paid our 3euros45 for the mooring – much cheapness, but we hadn’t used electric or water so fair do’s.

We cruised about 1km and did 1 lock then stopped at the mooring outside a Leclerc supermarket to stock up. (Don’t worry, we told the lock keeper we were taking a ‘pause’ before heading onto St Julien-sur-Dheune for the night). It was a huge, lovely, new Leclerc with a great little proper wine cave inside. It had everything the world could want - except brown sauce, and an electric hand pump to replace the one that had melted when it was tidily squirrelled away next to the hot exhaust pipe……. We were able to take the trolley back to the boat so we loaded up with fizzy water, milk and, of course, wine.

Monday was the day we crossed the summit of the Canal du Centre and the scenery was just fantastic. Not stunning in anyway but just really, pretty countryside and we had a lovely long cruise to St Julien which brought us down the lovely flight off the summit with rolling, green countryside as far as the eye could see.

On the way up the summit, the west side, the locks are numbered and named Ocean, so 1 Ocean, 2 Ocean etc. Once you are over the summit the numbering starts again but the name is Med, so 1 Med, 2 Med. This was because the canal was to link the Mediterranean Sea with the Atlantic Ocean.

Cute old fire engine in an old boatyard.

Bet they went down cos they couldn't afford the window-cleaning bill.....

Top of the flight - it's all downhill from here....... And Liz, no it isn't as good as yours :)

Floating bollards for this deep lock - just over 5metres.

The port at St Julien-sur-Dheune

Lazybones' pet tortoise enjoying the sun.

In St Julien we caught up with the barge Catherine Clarke who we’d briefly seen in Digoin and WB Lazybones, who we had met and chatted with in Auxerre in March 2016. We had a look round the pretty little village and then had dinner outside as it was a lovely evening, only hampered by a poor internet signal.

Just a short hop today, of 8 locks and 9KM to St Berain-sur-Dheune, where we finally got moored up at 1pm. There were moorings shown on our guide above and below the lock and we had opted for below, and having passed through the little village (and nice moorings) to go down the lock, were looking forward to seeing it on foot. Below the lock the moorings proved to be collapsed and overgrown with small trees making it impossible to get anywhere near the one bollard we could see, so we turned around to go back up the lock to the nice ones we’d seen above. This is where we don’t understand the automated locks but perhaps explains why you still get nanny-ed along by the lock keepers. After we’d come down, the gates had closed and the lock reset itself for the next boat coming down. We thought if we went towards it from below, it would sense us and make the lock ready for us to go back up. It didn’t. We sat a while waiting but nothing happened and the boat behind us above the lock had gone into the little bar for lunch and would likely be some time before coming down. So we backed up, turned again and decided St Berain-sur-Dheune would have to wait for another time. Then half a km on, round the bend, was a mooring; a big, high wall with bollards on it, with a slightly lower wall next to it and a bollard on the ground before it. We pulled in there, so are sat looking at some long grass and brickwork for the evening. We had some lunch and walked up to see the village and got back to the boat just before the rain settled in for day. With it being so wet the other boats appear to have been racing to their next stop and have passed us at high speed leaving wakes for us to rock in for the next 20 minutes. Mike has gone out and put a spring on to steady us, I’ve gone out to get some logs from the gas locker for the stove. It looks like Britain outside.