Met up with Jennifer and John without any trouble in Auxerres, glorious medieval town with buildings and little narrow cobble streets. People just going about their business, cars, people living normal lives, rock and roll blaring out from within 17th century houses!!! Every place we go through has a town built around 1 or more magnificent churches with more history than one can possibly comprehend and little cobbled streets with modern cars literally zooming around them.
Each morning we do a “Boulangerie” run for breakfast, croissants, baguettes and little tarts for a treat later on. On our first day we bought three amazing cheeses because we could! Not aware that there was already a fridge full of cheese….the cheeses we bought were a speciality of the town, wonderful, very rustic, each time we open the fridge the smell nearly knocks you over!!!!.......Lesson…there is no need to buy in bulk here!!!
The river/canal system is great, you navigate into a lock (John gives us our orders), we tie up, and l’ Eclusier (lock keeper) does his thing, letting water in or out of the lock depending on where we are in the river, John gives us more orders and we cast off and are on our way again. Everything closes for an hour at midday and last Sunday, everything closed for 2 hours because it was the election! We wait patiently at locks until l’ Eclusier has had his lunch hour. Fishermen sit along the sides of the river and from time to time you see clumps of wild iris, little or large château’s, forests, wheat fields and wild flowers growing everywhere, very beautiful, occasionally you catch a glimpse of a road or train, then you drift into yet another charming village or town to explore. Swans, ducks and swallows seem to follow us and the other day we saw an otter and several turtles basking in the sun. One could do a lot worse than doofer around on a canal boat in France………………..
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