We finished off the northern navigable portion of the Saône on July 28, exiting the final lock (#1) at Corre. Our last lunch on the Saône was a typical nature mooring. Thank goodness we have a master line-wrangler in the crew!
We elected to moor at the small village dock rather than the marina in Corre which turned out to be an excellent choice.
And Corre was in occupied France during the war and, clearly, a hotbed of the resistance.
The next day we entered the Canal des Vosges heading toward Epinal. Lots and lots of locks! In 15 km we did 11 locks and most of them were quite deep (over 3 meters). Near Fontenroy-le-Chateau we met a VNF guy who asked how far we were going. We told him “Epinal” and he shook his head and said something about “bad water”.
Around lunch time, as we were passing through the Fontenroy port de plaisance, several people at the Le Boat base came out waving their hands and shouting that the canal was closed. And so… after confirming with the VNF, Fontenroy was, sadly, as far as we would be going on the Canal des Vosges this year.
This part of France is in a drought and the reservoirs (“etangs”) are very low)so the canal was closed at lock #24.
Not willing to give up (since Roberta had a scheduled hair appointment in Epinal) we rode our bikes (uphill!!!) to the Bains-les-Bains train station and caught a train to Epinal.
We spent the night at a hotel (our first real bed in over two months) with AC!!! The next day we rode our bikes out along the Epinal branch canal (that connects with the Canal des Vosges) and it was nearly dry.
So ended our trip north. After train/biking back to Fontenroy we headed back south to the Saône. We stopped at Scey-sur-Saone our second night back on the Saône. A nice little town with a very strange old building (but a good pizza place for Martini Night!)
And today we ended up a very dead little town, Soing (no boulangerie, no bar, no cafe, no epicerie) but a pleasant mooring. And, of course, they have the Eiffel Tower. So
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