Vincelles to Mailly-la-Ville

This morning we were up bright and breezy for 8 o'clock breakfast, the crew all wished Diana happy birthday, they must have picked it up from the booking form, then off in the mini bus back to Auxerre to visit the cathedral. All the streets are cobble which is not original, they ripped up.the tarmacadam a few years ago and laid them to go with the timber framed houses, which made walking rather uncomfortable.

Needless to say the cathedral was at the top of the hill, once close to it we spend some time looking at the exterior features and Mathew, out tour manager talked us through how they told the story of the Bible, starting at lower left and working up and to the right, also how they were disfigured in the religious wars with all faces and hands removed from the carvings . The decision has been made not to restore these to as new but keep them in the disfigured state.

Starting from the bottom left-hand corner the figurines describe the Old Testament and working up came into the New Testament. We went into the cathedral some of the paintwork is still visible on the walls especially where they removed an old confessionary. The roof is also painted just like all the walls were at one time.

The Cathedral is probably best know for its stained glass windows one of which is the Bible in pictures.

 

The old organ was removed and sold to be replaced by a more modern one and due to lack of space the pipes were mounted both vertical and horizontal, I have never seen another like it .

There is a small Old Church adjoining the right hand side of the cathedral that was the original small church on the site well before the cathedral was built. The tiny cube building.  

 

 

 

From here we walked into the centre of the old town where before leaving us, Mathew pointed out the old astronomical clock  mounted in the gate tower. This was fully restored during the Covid period. Its unusual as it has two large hands, one solar that does a full rotation of the face in 24 hours the other Lunar which rotates more slowly. He also pointed out a red British Telephone Box. This was a gift to Auxerre from Redlich which is their twinned town in Britain.

 

We were now free to go our own ways, to get a drink at one of the cafes and visit the loo.
There are some very old buildings as you can see by the roof line and the infill in the wood framing.

Mathew had given us a rendezvous point and time to meet him down by the river rather than retracing our steps to the carpark and spot on time he pulled into the layby right behind the public toilets. From here it was only about 20 minutes back to the boat for lunch.

   After lunch we set sail up the river and several short canal sections that cut off some of the river bends. Some of the old lock cottages are still lived in and well kept, one of them supporting some interesting drawing

One of the locks is notes as the iron work is painted pink and also has an old lift Bridge across the tail also with pink iron work, The story behind is that the last éclusiers to work here were a pair of lesbians and they painted it pink and so it has remained.

We passed this chap cooling his toes, I was expecting him to get his fishing tackle out, but no just sat and chilled on the edge of a weir.

The VNF are installing new weir controls very similar to the traditional system of paddles often used on rivers in the past, you can see one behind the chap in the picture above, but they now have an overhead gantry to draw them,

For our boating friends who know of the Shroppi Shelf, well its not a patch on over here where you have no chance getting ashore without a plank.

I mentioned earlier that today was Diana’s birthday, I thought about it and decided not to say a word but the boat crew picked up on it from the booking and at dinner we had a special desert.

Auxerre to Vincelles

We hadn’t been on board long before we cast off, the crew were taking us just out of town for the night. We looked back and waved Auxerre goodbye. The water was like a mill pond with little wind, just  it would be most of the week when the temperatures hit that magic 100°F. The Americans didn’t do Centigrade.

We would be returning to visit the Cathedral later in Auxerre later in the week
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After a good nights sleep we were ready for breakfast at 8am.
Today we were cruising in the morning and were away a little earlier than planned, because the crew had heard that the hire boats behind saying they we're going to set off early and that would have put us behind them at the first and every other lock of the day, so we left about ten past eight and had to wait the first lock at 9AM, This mean we were first through the lock and no waiting at any of them all day. One of the crew members would hop off at the locks and give the éclusier a hand. The barge is a very close fit in the locks with  probably only 150mm clearance. One thing that struck me with these locks, unlike the UK and other locks I have encountered in France, here you wind the paddles down to open them and up to close.  

 

 

There is a good reason why there are signs on the boat telling you to be seated while passing under bridges, some of them are quite low and if you were standing could make it a contact sport.

      
We passed this lovely old mill, I suspect its now a private home. The reflections on the mirror like surface were wonderful.

We were able to walk along the tow path between locks on the canal section as the boat moved quite slowly on the confined narrow channel, but you had to board and alight when the deck was level with the lock side, my idea of level and theirs differed by about 6”.The river has short canal section bypassing the shallow parts, only maybe a foot of water  and at one point only a wall separate the river from the canal. where we did travel on the river in places less than half was navigable and marked

       off with Buoys. The bank side was very shallow so the crew had to be handy with the mooring lines lassoing the bollards.
Most of the properties we saw looked shut up, but we have seen this before where they close everything down to keep the heat of the day out
We moored up just before lunch at Vincelles and had our first lunch onboard.

   In the afternoon we setting off on our first excursion to visit a quarry, this is normally closed on a Monday and is opened exclusively for European Waterways.I suspect this was originally a Roman road as its unlike the others we have come across in the river valley. This was not a large hole in the ground but a very large cave I've never seen anything like it. The blocks of lime stone they took out where about two meters by one meter by one , they were cut by hand using hammer drills and saws, then were pulled out first by horses and later hand winches. On the roof you can still see the soot marks from the candles the workers used to light their works.

After the quarry closed it was used as a school for apprentices and some of their works are still on display from when they became highly skilled masons standard. 

After that we visited yet another quarry, although it was still a cave we drove straight in in our mini bus and parked in the underground carpark before going to the underground winery for wine tasting. The whole operation is in the disused quarry from making the wine , bottling and storage to tasting and selling.

This was the end of our adventures for the day and we returned to the L’Art de Vivre for cocktails and nibbles, a bit of relaxation before getting changed for diner.