Canal du Nivernais, travel-report 2003: ninth day

We leave Les Rochers de Saussois this morning at nine o'clock after my mother had her swim again in the river. We are navigating now through an other kind of landscape. It is more open and the canal is playing a game with the Canal du Nivernais. They coincide from time to time, but not for long. They always separate again somewhat further on.

We navigate under two low railway-bridges. In the afternoon we moor in Mailly-la-Ville. We do some shopping and tank water. We meet again the Dutchmen we have seen in Mailly-le-Château yesterday. After lunch we travel together for some time but after two locks they stay behind.

	The wheather is alternating all the time. Sometimes it's good and we take off all sweaters and shirts, at other moments everything is put on again because of the fresh wind. A the lock called Dames, I see a kilometer-peg. We are now already 150 kilometers away from the Loire.
Four kilometers further is the branch to Vermenton, Embranchement de Vermenton Vermenton is situated at a tributary of the river Yonne, the Cure. In earlier days much wood (100.000 m³) was transported by the Cure to Paris every year. After the Cure coincides with the Yonne, the river is very wide.
At one of the last locks we have a very hard wind from aside. I navigate to the lock but I am blown to the right. At the last moment I don't dare to navigate and I plunge in full. We don't touch the lock-walls but somewhat later our boat is caught on the lee-shore. Marga and Pepijn have to push very hard to get it off the bank again.

I navigate with speed into the lock now. I have to speed up to keep course but it's risky. Every thing goes all right, thank goodness. We were lucky for having no such wind at the start of our journey.

The entire journey I am pleased to see how good the canal is taken care of. We pass large sections with renovated banks. This has been done often with style and not with the steel profiles as I have seen so often at other canals. Besides that I see a lot of places where animals can get easily in and out of the water. I see recently planted trees, new picnic tables, benches etc. Also remarkable is the variety in managing mechanisms of the locks. It's different every time. Mostly the slides have to be turned upwards but some of them have to be turned downwards. Usually the handles turn on horizontal axes, sometimes on vertical ones. The way the gates has to be opened varies. It looks as if they have achieved all sorts of rest particals of lock-managing systems.

Initially we moor in Vincelles close to a port with great difficulties on high-shore. It's a disadvantage that some boys are hanging around there watching. So after a short survey of the environment we go a little further. I found a beautiful place to stay close to a weir in the Yonne and a little park with benches and picnic tables..

The children play football on a asphalted football field against two French boys. Holland wins the match this time.

Marga surveys the village but doesn't find much activity. As Pepijn is looking for Marga in the village he discovers a pizza-car which is installed at the train-station square. And so we eat a lovely pizza in the evening. The pizza's are that big that we can't eat them all. We keep them in storage for tomorrow or the day after.