52 best A man waters his week ends geraniums in away Mailly-le-Château, a village beside the . Left The Randle moored for lunch LA profonde Deep in rural Burgundy, a journey by canal boat reveals a landscape of medieval churches and vineyards, where traditional French life still flows at a gentler pace

WORDS KATHARINE NORBURY @kjnorbury PHOTOGRAPHS RIVER THOMPSON @riverthompson

Lock-keeper Clara Gauge mans the lock near . Right A clog-maker’s shop in the hill town of Vézelay

The journey begins and crew member Stéphane Perrone checks the ropes

82 Lonely Planet Traveller February 2017 February 2017 Lonely Planet Traveller 83 CANAL TRIP IN FRANCE

‘It’s traditional to name your boat after your dearest love’

ROM THE TOP OF THE LIMESTONE escarpment, the Canal du Nivernais appeared no wider than a ribbon, the stationary canal barge no bigger than a toy. The only sound was that of the wind in the treetops far below. FHow strange to think that this forest was once an ancient seabed, and that sharks had slipped by at eye level. Because I was about as far inland as it was possible to be, halfway along the 110 miles of canalised river that bisected Burgundy, connecting the valley of the in France’s north with the valley of the in the south. My journey had begun a couple of days earlier in the Gallo-Roman city of Auxerre. ‘Welcome to the Randle,’ Captain Tim Harrold had said as I stepped aboard his barge and adjusted to the sensation of being afloat. I felt much as Mole must have done when he was first brought aboard a riverboat by Ratty. ‘It’s traditional to name your boat after your dearest love,’ Tim was saying, ‘but Randle named his barge after himself.’ Tim explained how the original owner of the barge had sourced the ship’s wheel, the portholes and the engine from an eclectic array of vessels, ranging from a Scottish herring boat to an ocean cruise liner that had seen action in the Falklands War. Tim had moored the Randle for the night, and yet there were still several hours till suppertime, so we returned to the quayside and set off to explore Auxerre. Before long, the evening traffic noise was hushed within a complex lace of medieval streets. Pastel- coloured timber-framed homes reminded me of Hansel and Gretel’s gingerbread house. Gardenias, wisteria and roses reached through cast-iron railings. Chocolate shops and patisseries reflected the confectionery nature of the architecture. A 9th-century abbey and a great Gothic cathedral dominated the skyline. An older Romanesque cathedral still crouched within the walls of the Gothic church. A third church, dedicated to St Pierre en Vallée, The city of Auxerre, rivalled the cathedral with its flying buttresses and tower. with the 9th-century As the heat of the day faded, and the daylight with it, the Abbey of St-Germain streets began to fill with townspeople. rising over the river

84 Lonely Planet Traveller February 2017 February 2017 Lonely Planet Traveller 85 CANAL TRIP IN FRANCE The Canal du Nivernais runs beside the River on its way south to Vincelles An olive tree. Right Sylvie Barbet, waitress and wife of the owner of La P’tite Beursaude, in Auxerre

A woman fetches the bread in early morning, in Auxerre. Below Fishermen along the Canal du Nivernais

Contented lock-keeper Laurent Jupiter. Below A dozen snails at P’tite Beursaude ‘We dined in a whitewashed, We dined in the tiny and appropriately named La P’tite NCE WE’D LEFT AUXERRE, THE Beursaude – one whitewashed, wood-beamed room with lock-keepers and fellow barge dwellers a red-terracotta tiled floor – and so small it would have were the only people we saw for hours wood-beamed been easy to miss but for the blue painted door and at a time, although we enjoyed the baskets of pink geraniums outside. A waitress wearing companionship of grebes, mallards, herons, traditional dress, with wide lace sleeves, brought swans,O Canada geese, butterflies and dragonflies. room with a us an amuse bouche of oeufs en meurette – tiny quail’s The first three lock-keepers we met were students. This eggs cooked in bourguignon sauce, and a speciality of the was the most sought-after holiday job in Burgundy. ‘I like house. Two identical twin men, wearing identical paisley being in nature,’ Elise told us, ‘chatting, and not being red-terracotta shirts, were applauded by their companions as two stuck behind a till.’ She was studying publishing and identical bowls of steaming snails, cooked in Chablis loved the opportunity to read that being a lock-keeper wine, arrived in front of them. offered her. Her laughter bounced across the water as she On our way back to the Randle we stopped at a bar and wound the iron handle of the lock gate. Further upstream tiled floor’ ordered milky absinthe, while a band dressed in jellabas we met Laurent, an ex-security guard from Martinique. played French-Moroccan fusion, the bass line performed ‘It’s calm and beautiful here,’ he said. ‘People are good.’ on a euphonium. As we returned to the quayside, the They were sentiments that we heard many times on the great cathedral of St Étienne blotted out the stars, its canal: the desire to be close to nature, the calming effect windows glittering with their reflections. The music was of the water, and the pleasure of providing a public still audible from the riverbank, and a trace of cigarette service. When the lock-keepers stopped for lunch, closing smoke mixed with the improbable scent of candyfloss. the canal from noon till 1pm, we too moored the Randle. In the morning, I woke to the squeals of starlings as they There were few villages along the canal, and we ate turned in arcs above the quay. We were moving! The lunch on the boat, enjoying goat’s cheese and a local rosé. Canal du Nivernais was not a canal in the sense that I was We were moored just a few miles from Chablis, where used to. In 1784, the River Yonne’s curves were modified some of the finest white wine in all of France is made. As by a system of locks and weir-like barrages to enable the we were finishing the meal, Tim’s friend Franck Chretien river traffic to reach the higher ground upstream. As a stepped into the wheelhouse. Franck had exchanged his result of this, the canal, for the most part, runs along one job as a printer in Paris for the deep silence of Burgundy, bank of the river. Its original function was to carry and he made his living giving tours of the vineyards. firewood to Paris, in a process known as flottage du bois, Franck drove us along an empty road through woods and in its heyday the river was clotted with timber bound and arable land, until the farms gave way to vineyards. into wooden rafts until there was no more wood left to We reached Chitry, where our rosé had come from. We A rose-covered cut. The great forests that surround the river today have walked through a cool, quiet wood. When we emerged doorway in the sprung up from the stumps of thousands of acres of felled from the trees I could see the ancient village of Chablis. sleepy village of trees. In later years, grain, stone, wine and coal replaced Below us the vineyards glowed like green silk. Franck Mailly-le-Château. Right Coffee the wood as cargo, although today the only traffic is pointed out the different slopes and described their aboard the Randle that of leisure boats. various microclimates, the topography of each slope

86 Lonely Planet Traveller February 2017 February 2017 Lonely Planet Traveller 87 CANAL TRIP IN FRANCE

A crisp Petit Chablis at lunchtime. Right Relaxing on the Randle’s sun deck

‘We swam in the river below the hilltop town of Mailly-le-Château’

defining the wine that each produced: Grand Cru, traders of religious artefacts. I stopped at a bar and Premier Cru, Chablis and Petit Chablis. ‘In early summer enjoyed the murmur of voices. The magnet was the there was a frost,’ he said, ‘an alarm sounded to announce basilica at the top of the hill where remains said to be the temperature was falling, and everyone ran to the vines those of Mary Magdalene were stored in a glass reliquary. with oil lamps, they had to work so fast!’ I tried to imagine I arrived at the Romanesque church just as vespers was the hillside covered in flaming torches, the image both beginning. Young monks and nuns dressed in chalky blue magical and frightening: livelihoods were dependent on habits kneeled before the altar, their unaccompanied the outcome of the work. Franck picked up a lump of clay voices rising in exquisite plainchant while the afternoon from the foot of a vine. It was full of flint and fossilised sun filled the nave. In the Middle Ages Vézelay was shells – the reminder of that ancient seabed again. ‘This is established as one of four starting points for the Camino why tastes of salt,’ he said, ‘and also a little de Santiago, and this 1,056-mile pilgrim route is still bit of gunpowder – because of the ocean, and the flint!’ followed by thousands of people of every creed and none. But while the pilgrims travelled onward to Santiago AYS AND NIGHTS ON THE CANAL de Compostela in Spain, my own journey was ending expanded, slowed down. We swam in the in nearby Clamecy, a pretty town embraced by the river below the hilltop town of Mailly-le- rivers Yonne and Le Beuvron. Many parts of the town Château. We traced the constellations. today date back to the 13th century, including the One morning, I cycled ahead of the Randle, church of St Martin. Indeed, for 600 years – from the Dwaiting to embark at one of the locks. A horse stepped out fall of Jerusalem in 1187 until the French Revolution of the mist; roses scented the air. I saw school children – Clamecy was the unlikely home of the Bishop of waiting for a bus, attended by a family of geese. They Bethlehem. And for 400 years Clamecy was a centre for were the largest group I had seen since leaving Auxerre. flottage du bois. It was curious to reflect that this was Just before reaching the village of Lucy-sur-Yonne we why the Canal du Nivernais had been brought into passed a flower-filled marina inhabited by a community existence in the first place. To carry firewood to Paris: of boat-dwellers. Mary had lived on a canal barge all her a journey of many days by river, and today just a few adult life and both her sons had been born on her boat. hours’ drive away by car. I stepped ashore for the last She reckoned her great Dutch barge was here for good. time and glanced at a pair of fat brown trout, just below ‘What would you do if you won the lottery?’ I asked. the waterline, nibbling at the hull of the Randle. It felt ‘Oh my goodness,’ she said, but the pause was strange to be leaving the boat; it was astonishing how momentary. ‘I’d buy a smaller boat! And then I’d sail quickly I had made the water my home. the canals of Europe. All canals are wonderful to me.’ At Lucy we moored the barge and followed a zigzag Katharine and Tim swim in the lagoon road through arable land to Vézelay. A wide, cobbled Katharine Norburyis the Wainwright below the fish ladder street lead from a gateway up a conical hill where shops Prize-shortlisted author of The Fish Ladder, at Mailly-le-Château selling Burgundy wine and local sausages vied with out now (£9.99; Bloomsbury).

88 Lonely Planet Traveller February 2017 February 2017 Lonely Planet Traveller 89 90 Lonely Planet Traveller February 2017 £60 return; eurostar.com).£60 Paris Gare du Nord (from PancrasInternational to St London Eurostar from Alternatively, take the £80; easyjet.co.uk). (from between Paris and the UK airlines fly Numerous (from £59;sncf.com). around anhouranda half with direct trains taking city Frenchfrom the capital, historic get tothe easier to Dijon andParis butitis equidistant from is Auxerre ESSENTIALS

GETTING THERE CANAL DU NIVERNAIS lonelyplanet.com. (£2.99) from chapter Burgundy download the (£17.99)guide or in ourFrance region com. Read about the burgundy-waterways. and see france.fr Formore onthecanal, FURTHER READING MAKE ITHAPPEN offers whole boat charters in the offersboat charters whole and Vézelay.of Chablis nearbytowns Edge Charter between Auxerreand Clamecy, with daytripstothe along the firstamble third ofthecanal, gentle a took Formiles fromthis feature, .we Auxerre to its entirety,100 In Nivernaiswends the Canal du BARGEHIRING YOUR for(franceavelo.com). three days Bicycles can behired in Auxerre from £40 (leboat.co.uk). vesseltwo-cabin fora £875 for section ofthecanal fromsame rents onthe Boat Le who want alonger trip and don’t mindself-driving, and pick-up from Paris (edgecharter.com). For those a chauffeursurrounds, away forfrom trips thecanal bicycles toexplore wine, thecanal meals, including £5,315people) fromnights full-board, forfour three the Canal du Nivernais at at the Canal du Nivernais The (sleeping Randle (sleeping Randle putters along MAP KEY Château Vézelay Mailly-le- Lucy-sur-Yonne Decize Clamecy Chitry Chablis Auxerre a leisurely pace

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MAKE ITHAPPEN

CANAL TRIP INFRANCE

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