We woke to a very wet morning and the plan was a walking tour of Sens but looking outside we weren't sure that any of us would be going, however just after our guide arrived things brightened up a bit and we set off and I am very pleased we did as its a very pretty little old historic City, dating well back to the Roman period. It was quite important standing not only on the junction of two rivers but also the cross roads of two major routes. Its Cardo and Decumanus Maximus crossing in the City itself. The river here splits in two and on the island is the old fisherman’s Church, the main town being on the main bank where we are moored .
There is a self guided walk through the town with little brass arrows set into the pedestrianised streets, however our guide, with one eye on the weather dotted all over the place so that we were inside when it rained heavily, so we only got damp. This is a plaster cast taken from the original bust in the museum and its also engraved on all the self guided walking tour brass road arrows. Beside it is an old merchants house with the pulley wheel to lift goods to the upper floors.
As we walked round the old streets ornate buildings were everywhere. This timber carved building was at one time the property of the tanner which is depicted in the carvings.
And through the small alleyway was the pig yard where pigs were slaughtered.
There is still a good section of the old City walls standing and the construction changes over the decades are quite marked as the wall got higher and higher.
We visited the very large indoor market, you probably got a better feel for the size and beauty of the building with it being closed and no stalls set out. Each of the doors has a large stained glass window above it depicting the produce for sale.
I just love the spade door handles on all the doors.
From here when the heavy rain eased we did a quick dash to the Cathedral. It was the main French cathedral and is very old, it pre dating the Notre Dame by several years. Early in its life one of the towers collapsed possibly due to an earthquake and as you can see the two side are very different to each other.
With the building being so old it is not so large as Notre Dame but building techniques were used here for the first time that allowed later cathedrals to be even larger and grander constructions. The vaulting over the nave and choir was revolutionary, composed of square six-part rib vaults putting all the load on the columns and not the walls. It was in fact the first Gothic style Cathedral ever built.
Following our tour of the cathedral we visited a nearby café for wine tasting, I was more impressed with the cheese we had, quite a strong soft cheese. After this we made our own way back to the boat, thankfully it had now stopped raining.
During lunch we set sail for Montereau-Fault-Yonne, the weather picked up and thankfully stayed fine for the rest of the trip. This little map shows our route, but we didn’t get to Montereau-Fault-Yonne as we had to give way to a commercial boat at the first lock and that cost us an hour so Cannes was closed when we arrived there.
As you can see our cabin window was just a few inches above the water.
Some of the locks are quite unusual as they have sloping sides, this one had a traveling platform to ensure that boats don’t ground as the level falls.
A little further on some of the river bends are cut off with a dead straight canal section with a long weir across the river.The cut is on the extreme right, I don’tknow if there is any traffic control on this section, I didn’t see any signs or lights.
The lock back down to river level is at the very far end of the canal, you can see the wash from out bow propeller, this boat has a pod mounted propeller at each end.
There is a huge amount to gravel and cement trade along this canal loaded straight onto and off ships.
If we hadn’t got caught up with these two we may just have made the last lock.
We moored for the night just above Cannes-Ecluse a sleepy little village. Several of us took a stroll after dinner and one or two locals came and looked at us wandering by their properties, but it was probably quieter than our designated moorings, this was the view.
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