French Inland Waterways – River Saone

We really have not done a lot of boating this year, mainly due to my work commitments. And we have usually wintered Shangri La by end of September, as it can start getting chilly on the waterways in October.
So our final excursion in 2016 was a brief trip down the River Saone to Chalon-su-Saone and back to St Jean for wintering. And it was a bit chilly and wet. But still enjoyable.

We did the usual hectic set of train rides from London to St Jean-de-Losne, arriving on board on Monday evening.
Tuesday was spent removing rest of the covers and generally getting the boat ready. An acquaintance of Karen’s who was cycling through France joined us to hitch a ride to Chalon-sur-Saone.

Ever since we bought Shangri La we have been bothered by the davits on the stern. They are really good davits, but as we do not have a dinghy, they are actuall in the way. Quite why we never did this before, but we unbolted them and stowed them away in the engine room space. What a difference. So wish we had done this long ago.
The best thing is now we can get the stern closer to the quay when mooring at finger jetties.

We set out downstream the following morning. Weather was fine, but a bit chilly in the morning.
The Saone really is an easy river, and with only 2 locks to negotiate, we arrived at Verdun-sur-le-Doubs early afternoon.
Both locks, Seurre and Ecuelles, were big locks and quite deep, 3,75 and 3,20 meteres respectively but presented no problems at all.

They both had VHF channel communication, which gave me a chance to test my VHF set – and it now worked. At last!

(This has been a problem ever since we bought it, as it would not work on Duplex channels. The worst situation was in Antwerp in 2015, trying to report in and out See this post. Eventually, I sent the radio back to Icom in UK, and found out that an internal setting was wrong!)

We tied up stern-to at Verdun, and Karen was thrilled as she could now step off the stern so much more easily, now that the davits were removed.
A very pleasant mooring, right close to the Capitainerie and Tourist office, with electricity and water. Once again though, the wifi was very poor.
We wandered round the town – another attractive old French village, but not really much happening.

The next day – raining! A quick look at the local weekly market, and we carried on, in the rain down to Chalon.

Next – Chalom-sur-Saone, and a train trip to Lyon.

And to find out what Karen thinks of all this, see her blog here.