After more than 10 years of dreaming about this, we finally set off from St-Jean-de-Losne to explore the French canals and inland waterways.
We decided to head to Dijon up the Canal de Bourgogne (the Burgundy Canal) as it has beautiful scenery and plenty of locks for us to practice our skills.
We spent our first night in Longecourt-en-Plein. Once we’d moored the boat we set off on our bikes and made a wonderful discovery.
It’s so peaceful mooring the boat in the French countryside. How could you not love this place?
History of the French canals
For a bit of history, the French canals were built in the 1600’s – 1800’s as a way to transport goods around the country. The goods were loaded onto barges which were pulled by teams of horses that walked on paths next to the canals. Those paths are excellent for pushbikes or hikers (that’s me on the bike above). There’s thousands of km of canals and inland waterways in France. They are a great way to explore this beautiful country.
Locks
Many people have asked us about locks so I’ll give a brief explanation. The canal locks are designed to allow boats to go up and down hills, as they alter the level of water. Each lock has an upper and lower gate which is either closed or opened to hold water in place. Basically, if you are going up hill you drive into the lock when it is empty and the water level is the same as your boat. The bottom gate is then closed behind you and the top gate is opened allowing water to fill the lock. This causes the boat to rise. It’s an incredible system and quite easy once you get the hang of it.
Many French canals locks are still operated manually requiring lock-keepers. Each lock used to have its own lock-keeper, but the Canal de Bourgogne now has a pool of lock-keepers who are assigned to particular sections of the canal. We were lucky to have a delightful lock-keeper who spent the whole day with us opening and closing our locks. We were able to practice our French and I was happy to be able to help by closing the gates. It was exhausting and at the end of the day I was knackered. I don’t know how they do this everyday! To say thank you for helping us all day we gave our lock-keeper a block of chocolate.
We continued following the Canal de Bourgogne until we reached Dijon. We moored Laura the boat in the heart of the city ready to explore Dijon the next day.
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