Life is Locked in with a Pirate

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Life is Locked in with a Pirate



We finished cruising the Nivernais Canal at Auxerre, with hindsight we should have gone a lot slower but were concerned about finding somewhere to spend the winter and allowed some time to go down the Burgundy Canal if necessary.

The Nivernais was just delightful, very pretty scenery and outstanding in places, we will probably do it again one day. The locks were fun and mostly hand operated, we prefer the smaller locks to the very large ones on the Yonne which are all press button.

We thought about wintering in Auxerre but decided against it, although the river has not flooded for 30 years, you never know this may be the year!

Auxerre is a fascinating city, we spent days just wandering around going ooh and aah, great medieval timbered buildings everywhere, a splendid Cathedral that we went back to a couple of times, funky streets with some weird and wonderful shops, lots of outdoor eating places with a great range of food and of course local wines, Chablis is about 5 minutes away!

The Yonne so far is a very picturesque river, autumn is starting to take hold and the trees are turning golds, bronzes and it is almost as if someone has set a timer on each type of tree as they are all changing at different rates.

We have been so lucky with the weather, we have not used the inside steering position yet, it is cool in the mornings but by 11 ish we are in tee shirts and shorts. Today we had some serious fog, we started off but decided to pull in until it went away, as it looked as if it wasn’t going to we carried on very slowly; our first lock was so long we could not see the other end in the fog.

We have just toured around a town called Joigny, again a fascinating old town with lots of timbered houses; the town square burnt down and was rebuilt in 1534!

The reference to a pirate is self explanatory in the photo, it did give us some concern as it was entering the lock, usually commercial barges are supposed to go in first but we did not know it was coming behind us . No worries though there was at least 250 mm between us, we were on a floating pontoon which slid sideways down and out into the lock, coming closer to the Pirate all the time.

When we were in Briennon in July we talked to an Aussie on a motor boat who recommended Briare as a place to spend the winter in, it seemed so far away then we didn’t pursue it. Since, we had sent them some emails but never got a response so assumed they were full. We checked again this week by phone and there is a place for us for the winter in the commercial port, this we have booked andill get there towards the end of October until March.



We have been looking at small caravans to tow behind Tilly but are still undecided how to spend our winter, local touring may be enough, we will decide later.

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