Here we are in Auxonne once again and since we have the luxury of an internet connection not provided by Monsieur Orange (with whom we have a rather testy relationship) you're getting an update. This time we are here on a sunny summer weekend and as the mooring is alongside a water ski/jetski zone we were rocking and rolling and feeling a little seasick this afternoon. However, this is France and so, in civilised fashion, everything suddenly calmed down and all was packed up and quiet at 7pm for the serious business of dinner. Non French take away pizza for us though after a long day and, because it's Sunday evening, no other restaurants are open.
We are headed back to where we started a week or two ago. It's only been a couple of days since we turned around but already we've had lots of dancing around the decision of what to do next. We still want to go to Strasbourg but the route is in dispute. We spent last night in Gray where boats are already lining up and taking advantage of the free electricity to wait out the stoppage before continuing north. The word there was that it'll all be fixed in 3 weeks but just a day ago that was 2 weeks so I wouldn't be at all confiident. We have a couple of options. One is to take the canal entre champagne et bourgogne ( its name mitigates against it) which we went up and down last year. The other is to take the Doubs (which we also went up and down again last year) leading onto the Rhine - which is a little troubling for me. As we zoomed past the entrance to the canal entre champagne etc etc today I felt a decision had somehow been made and no coin tossed.
We tried to stop at different villages on our return south. One was Baulay, a tiny, sleepy place with a proud history of resistance in the 2nd World War.
They did an incredible job of blocking the main line between Paris and Basle by blowing up and crashing quite a few trains in the cutting there.
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| The info board at Baulay |
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| August 1944 - Baulay |
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| Baulay cutting today |
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