July 15, 2008

And so we say goodbye to Auxerre and head along the River Yonne for Migennes. It’s an early start. Last day travelling on the boat and first day of the long journey home; at least for Zak and I. L and C are staying over a few more days in Paris by themselves to see what kind of trouble they can get into.

We are on the river for the rest of the trip except for about a hundred yards at the end when we turn into the basin at the head of the Canal de Bourgogne. River travel is subtly different. Of course it’s a wider body of water and the banks are wilder and less manicured, but much later I realized that life tends to cluster around the banks of rivers and so a feeling of civilization and development underlies the scenery. The canals were much more like tree-lined farmers’ fields — mostly because that’s what they were.

We cast off our neighbours fairly early in the morning. It was one of the longer days ahead for us, and as well I didn’t want to inconvenience any fellow travellers inboard of us. And predictably after the holiday, it was busy on the river. Most of the day we travelled along in a convoy of 4 boats with us in the lead; the locks and speed limits tend to make groups like that. Most of the river locks were huge with enough room for boats on either side of the locks and three or four boats long. I guess that would be for the big river barges coming from (or going to) Paris etc. As well at every lock there would be a weir to help keep the river under control. The rivers of France, and indeed most of Europe, have long been tamed and bare little resemblance to our North American (or at least Western Canadian) idea of what a river is.

One type of weir was made of vertical boards, like 2 x 12s, laid along a rail. when they used to move logs by the river they would pull the boards out and allow the logs to float over the weir then replace the boards to reestablish the weir. An old technology but still in use today.

Gradually we began to hit more and more industrial territory and even passed through a small shipyard with all sorts of boats docked to piers or up on the hard. Eventually we arrived at the last lock to turn onto the the Canal de Bourgogne and waited for it to open. There were a few boats already waiting and it looked to be the biggest (and by that I mean deepest) lock yet. Eventually the huge sluice gates opened and we followed two other boats slowly into the lock. The lock keeper lowered a hook for us to attach out dock line to as the climb would have been impossible.

And then we waited as the lock slowly filled.

Just outside the lock was our ultimate destination and a few minutes later I slowly backed the boat into the pier for the last time. It had been a fabulous trip and I knew then were were definitely going to do it again.

So all that was left was cleaning and packing. We all cleaned up a bit and then Zak and I kicked the girls off the boat and started in on giving it a good scrub down. They headed into Migennes to explore. Later when they returned they were full of tales of double J cups and French lingerie saleswomen so I have some idea of what they were doing. Before we recycled our bottles we lined up the whole trips worth and snapped a few pictures. It was actually hard to let some of them go as we knew we would never see their like again.

That night we ate dinner aboard to use up the last of our supplies and drank the wine we didn’t plan on bringing back to Canada. It was a lovely night with a full moon and a melancholy air.