Canal du Briare, April 28-May 5

Our first stop after a grueling 2 hours underway was the small village of Ouzuer-sur-Trézée. We stopped here last year on our way down the canal and its a very nice easy mooring with free services. Since we had just left with full batteries and water tank, we didn’t need the services and the weather was pretty bad. We did leave the boat in the afternoon for a quick stroll around town but the weather was so ugly we just stayed inside “reading.”

Monday morning we got underway about 9:30 (the weather was a little better) and headed up the canal to Rogny les Sept Ecluses. We didn’t stop here last year and just took pictures of the old lock staircase from the boat as we waited for the locks. This year we stopped at the halte at about 2 pm and had time to wander about town and visit the new park surrounding the old locks.

At it’s busiest, as many as 3,000 barges a year traveled up and down the staircase. 

It was finally replaced by 6 new locks separated by small pounds in the 1830’s.

Tuesday morning it was off to our next stop, Montbouy. We used this as a lunch stop last year and it looked intriguing so we planned it for this year. Also, May Day is a big holiday in France and the locks are closed that day so we’d be spending a couple of days. Luckily, those days coincided with some passable weather so we did some cycling on Wednesday. 

A mooring all to ourselves.

The village church looked very old and we wanted to visit but the door was locked. We went to the boulangerie across the square to ask if we could get access and the helpful woman there gave us the key. Quite a key it was!

A very old church door.

During our Wednesday ride along the canal, signs led us to the ruins of a Roman amphitheater. Thousands of people attended performances and religious services here in the BC years.

Leaving Montbouy on Thursday morning we put in about 3 hours travel time to a mooring just after the last lock before the town of Montargis. We needed to do some grocery shopping and there was a big supermarket close to the mooring. The tie up was also close to Les Tanneries, the modern art museum we visited last year and we wanted to return to see what they were up to this year. One exhibition covered the floods of 2016 (when we had to turn around a Briare because of a canal breach) and another, by the Belgian artist Ante Timmermans, was titled “Rien/de Nier/de Rien”. Once again, we enjoyed our visit.

Friday shopping completed we left just before 2 pm and negotiated the two locks in the center of Montargis to reach the town’s commercial and residential moorings on the north side of town. We found a spot to tie up and hunkered down. Saturday was market day and the weather was supposed to turn really bad. We’d stay put until Sunday when we’d enter the Canal du Loing.