I'm camped at Les Ceriselles
which sits beside the Canal du Nivernais.
At a 174K it's not exactly a waterway of note for its length or its rise
and fall. Work to build the canal began
in 1784, however, five years later when the Bastille was stormed and the
revolution began, the project was abandoned.
Initially, a feeder waterway to move timber from the Morvan to the
already established Flotteur's route along the Yonne to Paris, when building
work resumed in the 1820s, the canal had evolved into a full navigation route
for barges and other traffic. It became
the most direct link between the Loire at Decize and the river Yonne at
Auxerre.
From the campsite, there is
direct access to the canal, and the old tow-path is mostly tarmac and well
kept. The camping is about halfway
between locks 74 and 75. Just after
lock 75, the canal rejoins the Yonne at Bailly - râcle de Bailly - and
the path continues beside the river. As
I cycle, I'm joined by a grey heron. He
was clearly a grumpy guy, as every time I stopped to get a photo, he took to
the wing. He can't have been that
bright either because he always flew off in the direction of my travel, so
meeting again was inevitable. He just
didn't quite get that!
In the silence and shade of the
trees, I find myself thinking about a story I need to finish. There's a French connection, but I can't
decide how it fits with the very English and very Yorkshire beginning. I pass a large property on my left, and a
snippet of conversation pops into my head about yellow curtains. All I know, at this point, is that the
conversation is between a mother and her child.
I continue through locks 76 and
77 with still only the heron and the silence as companions. At lock 78, the path becomes the narrow
riverside road that runs through Vaux, and that snippet of conversation keeps
crossing through my mind. By lock 79,
the heron has finally given up on his fishing trip, and I'm joined by a pair of
swans. These two are much friendlier,
and they follow me for a short while.
By the time I reach lock 81, the last before Auxerre, the canal has
traversed through 4 further râcles in less than 6Ks. A bizarre thought strikes me. All that chopping and changing from canal to
river and back again may have given the Nivernais an identity crisis! As I take a long look at the city of Auxerre,
I reassure the canal that it has done its job.
Lunch is a pain au chocolat, by
the river with the boats and the cathedral for a view. I also finally decide how to finish that
story and how to make the connection between Yorkshire and France.
That story became 'A Raven's Gift' in the second Miss Moonshine anthology which, along with the first book, is available in e-format for 99p/99c on Amazon until Feb 20th.
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