Golden Morning in Haute Marne

This morning is one of those golden mornings, the only sounds are birdsong and the occasional cough from one of our neighbours in the small mooring area.  A port would be too grand a name as is is just a collection of about five boats of various shapes and sized moored alongside one another in an area where the canal widens just before a winding hole followed by a bridge and lock.

There is a small orchard and cherry and apple trees are also dotted within the picnic and camper van area alongside the canal.  Too late for cherries and too early for apples unfortunately!  We must wait for autumn and the bounty of free walnuts and fruit. Two camper vans currently keep company with our boats.

As we moored here yesterday at 4pm, we nodded to an American couple in a wide beam boat next to us (named Ce Que Sera Sera) and asked if they minded us squeezing in beside them on the end.  They did not.  Two men, one French and one German I think, appearedd from no where to take front and back ropes and to bang in a stake for us - there were no mooring bollards.  Along with the beauty of the canal you have to accept that there is little attempt to cater for boats and few opportunities to buy provisions.  You see past attempts in the form of old electric points and water facitities, but you are lucky if you find these working. Having some flour and yeast left over from last time we were cruising I have just started making a loaf of bread and currently waiting for it to rise.

We are at Dommarian on the Champagne and Marne Canal.  This is a deeply rural area of France, the Haute Marne.  The villages are unspoilt by rashes of modern lego block houses, although there is the odd shockingly bad conversion of former house or barn to modern living accommodation. In the main the existing fabric of the village dwellings has remained in a comfortable, more or less crumbling state of repair, and occasionally you see where real money has been lavished on one or two old manoires restoring them to former glories, only to shut them up for most of the year.  Back to earn the money to pay for it I guess.  For the majority of the village houses, shutters need a coat of paint, a wall here or there has collapsed, but the old openings for horse and cart or in some cases carriage have been retained and sympathetically incorporated within the current living space. The church bells chime the hours, the churchyards incorporate former military burials but in such a pictureque and poignant fashion, alongside their relatives with ceramic flowers, photos and ornate tombs.

We notice that there is a plant nursery in the this village so we will take our bikes and panniers over there this morning.  Later we will take a longer 40km bike ride to some open gardens and a castle.

We will stay here for two nights, so one full day before continuing on through a 3km tunnel to Langres.  A walled town on a hill.  Mooring is at the bottom - of course!