Barging in Burgundy – The River Saône

After two nights on the Canal du Centre, the second full day of our trip got us onto the Saône River, which was beautiful, but in a different way from the canal.  It was wide, it had more activity, and it was somewhat intimidating – we had to pay more attention to what we were doing.  One of the nice things about the canals in France is that you can pull up anywhere along the banks to moor your barge, but this is not the case on the rivers in France.  They can only be moored at designated ports, which means that you have to be a bit more serious about getting to where you need to be, when you need to be there.

Some of the locks were a bit intimidating also, sometimes requiring the wearing of life jackets.  In hindsight, we couldn’t see the need for the lifejackets – some of the locks may have been very deep, but the water was released so slowly, that it was hard to understand the lifejacket requirement.

One of our favorite stops on this trip was the city of Chalon sur Saône, where we wandered among the half-timbered houses, perused the exhibits of the inventor of photography at the Musée Nicéphore Niépce, and had a great dinner at Le Bistro (31, rue de Strasbourg, tél: 03.85.93.22.01).

Another stopover along the River Saône was in the small town of Tournus with steep, narrow streets, and town houses built in the early 16^th century.

Fortunately, we had no problem finding a spot to moor our barge in the designated area in Tournus before heading out to explore the village.

Tournus is home to one of the oldest monasteries in France, the Abbaye Saint-Philibert - a roman monument with a façade dating from the 10^th and 11^th centuries.