Canal du Nivernais, travel-report 2003: final day

Today is our last navigation day. We left at ten o'clock from Auxerre and we arrive almost immediately at at large lock in the Yonne. From here we lock through this enormous locks. They are 93 meters long and 8,30 meter wide. The lock is opened at the wrong side (for us). We make a turn on the Yonne during the waiting. It lasts a quarter of an hour before the lock is ready for us.

The waiting is repeated at the next three locks. A boat is navigating half an hour before us in the same direction. The last lockkeeper gets wind of it and apologizes for the bad coordination.

It 's twelve o'clock when we are in the neighborhood of the village Monetau. We can't pass the next lock before lunch. Just around a corner I see a beautiful mooring place. It's at a park with picnic tables and -very important to our family- football fields. I am heading for this place immediately. Just before the landing-stage we touch the bottom of the canal a moment. Only then I see the sign which says that the dept is only 70 centimeters. The draught of our boat is 85 centimeters. The water is clear and I can see by a light strike on the bottom of the river where we navigated. In the middle of the landing stage is enough draught and after some prickle with the hook I find out how we can leave easily.

We are eating in the shade of the trees near the picnic table. The sky is all blue. It is very warm today.

As I am playing football with the boys after lunch, I see an other boat coming. It is navigating exactly to the most shallow place. As it touches the bottom it speeds up. That makes it worse. It got stuck. I see a lot of people on the boat, they appear to be South-Africans. I offer them to pull them out after my lunch pause. I think it's to risky to pull them out directly. Than I have to moor my own boat also an other time.

After the finishing our football match we have a swim. I survey the depths around the boat of the South-Africans and around my own boat. I tie two ropes to each other and then I can pull the South-Africans easily from the sandbank. They are very grateful and we exchange some addresses for the pictures.

The locks are almost all situated next to a weir in the Yonne. Only between Gurgy and Bassou a canal section can be found on a place where the Yonne is meandering very much.

The wheather on our holidays was good all the time but today exceeds. It's very hot. We are walking half naked on our boat and, at one of the locks, I wittingly choose a place in the shadow. We are passing the slow locks with four boats. That's efficient. Besides that the locks are all ready for us to go in. At the branch to the Canal de Bourgogne two boats turn off but I see a boat coming out of the lock which will join us. We navigate with the three of us to Joigny. Some kilometers before Joigny there is a section where one is allowed to do water-skiing. One is practicing and passes us closely pulling a great water veil behind him. It's very spectacular to see!

At the same time I look a the water-skier as an exponent of our fast and hectic world we are entering now again. On the Canal du Nivernais we lived in the world of yesterday. The speed of life is dictated by the slow navigation tempo and the pauses of the lockkeepers. We are in nature all day and free to moor wherever we want to. The only thing that matters is the availability of water and bread. Life can be that simple!

We were navigating today through a wide river in a flat environment. Only near Joigny we see some hills. We moor in Joigny a couple of hundred meters after the base. We have to bring our boat at the base the other day between eight and nine. We don't choose to stay our last night on board at the large landing-stage between all those other boats. Just one night sleeping on a quiet spot in nature to finish our trip in style. My mother takes the initiative again to go for a swim. She experiences the results when she is out already and the children make water-bombs before her opened window. She closes the window but the boys manage to open it again and again. They swim until they shiver with cold. They take a shower together. As almost always we eat on deck with a view on the water. It was a beautiful holiday.