Canal du Nivernais, travel-report 2003: second day

We are moored this evening in Châtillon-en-Bazois. We are situated in a somewhat desolate port close to the castle of Châtillon. We have a view on the castle and the surrounding garden which is bounded by the Canal du Nivernais. A heron is flying round above the port to land in the castle garden at the edge of the castle-moat. Châtillon is a village at the Aron. A busy motorway, the D978, is crossing the village. In town I have a beautiful view at the spot were the Aron runs through town.

We started this morning in Cercy with an extra passenger. Yesterday afternoon a girl of six years old called Zoë had asked us to navigate some time with us. She stepped on board with a rucksack, a camera and a bag of sweets. Her grandma and an other woman made about 10 pictures of our boat. Zoë enjoyed the trip and disembarked at the next lock.

We are still traveling through this wonderful landscape. We can't get enough of it. On our left the hills and at our right hand side the valley of the Aron. On our left some chateaus and distinguished farms situated on top of the hills. On the other side the Aron meanders sometimes close-by the canal sometimes at some distance.
We navigate until the lockkeepers lunch pause to l'écluse d'Anizy. In this section Aron and canal coincide again. As we are navigating Pepijn had prepared the lunch for us so we have lunch when we are moored at once.
	After lunch we travel on. The landscape is still beautiful. Nature is wonderful. It seems as if the trees get more ;leaves every hour. When we started this boating holiday green leaves were hardly noticed. Now almost every tree is decorated in fresh green.
At lock 21 (Fleury) we see a lockkeepers house transformed into a pancake restaurant. We decide to take a pause to have a drink on the terrace. Robert, Pepijn and Maarten have an ice-cream. I take a look at a weir built in 1817 and restored in 1987. It is empty now but the water can be dammed up en pass by a half-round overflow.

On all lockkeepers houses the year they were built is engraved, usually 1837. The Canal du Nivernais was finished in 1841 with the breakthrough of La Collancelle (highest point).

After the spontaneous stop we navigate on to Châtillon-en-Bazois. The canal is meandering along the hills as a snake. The Aron, no more than a little brook now, doesn't give way to the canal. There are also less buildings now. At some places the canal and Aron coincide. One notices that from the view we have. We then have a look from the lowest point of the landscape. The landscape is still half open, predominantly meadows with groves and hedges with sometimes a yellow cole-seed field in between. Between lock 16 and 17 the canal is somewhat wider but not very deep. We grate over the bottom and I see the mud grubbing in the water behind us but we don't have any problems to navigate on. The navigating now goes perfectly by the way. Robert, Pepijn and I are steering the boat into and outside the locks without any difficulties.

The sky was cloudy this morning but the temperature was still very comfortable. We enjoy it and our skin can rest for a while after all the sunshine of the past days. In the afternoon there is plenty of sun anyway but in the evening it become cloudy again. We even feel a drop of rain but we can still eat outside. We are having a simple diner today. We bought some pizzas in Châtillon and they taste excellent. The children have found a football field in town again and are playing over there before and after dinner.