“Nothing is so difficult but that may be found out by seeking." Terrence [BC 185 - 157] [Roman writer of comedies.]

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Europe Tour 2006, Part 7 - French Canals and Lakes.

June 03, 2006 Saturday. Chalampe, Rhein Bank - France. Summer at last. Cycle ride along the Rhein.

June 04, 2006 Sunday. Chavannes-s-l-Etang, France. This is one of the best Aires de Services in France, with FREE water, dumpsite and yes FREE electricity, even though the power outlets are centrally located in the toilet block and you will need a very long extension lead to connect. Perhaps this is common as we saw several European campervans with extraordinarily long power leads, and multiple leads connected together. So if you are buying a power lead for your camper for Europe, 50 meters is not too much.

I have 20 meters, but it wasn't enough for here unless you really needed power and parked accordingly. We find we don't really need it, as long as I run the engine a couple of times a day to recharge the battery. Because of the vehicle wiring plan it is more convenient to run the computer off the main battery instead of the auxiliary house battery, and once I flattened it, but fortunately was near a campsite power outlet and was able to connect the battery charger for an hour or so to start the van. Now I am more attentive to staring the engine for 15 minutes two or three times a day when we are parked.

June 05, 2006 Monday. Chavannes-s-l-Etang, France. Cycle ride along the Rhin-Rhone Canal from Montreaux Vieux to Bourogne. Well made bitumen cycle paths, occasional seats, but no shelter or public toilets. New parking Aires, new cycle paths being extended this year towards Montbeliard.. There is a popular fishing spot and picnic and campsites along canal near Montreaux- Jeune, accessible by a rough dirt track from the D32 at the first canal bridge SE of the railway line.

June 06, 2006 Tuesday. Chavannes-s-l-Etang, France. Housework and minor fix it jobs before another cycle ride along the canal past numerous canal locks to Dannemarie. A baguette from the locan boulangerie, delicious with french brie chesses past its use by date when it gets better than ever.

June 07, 2006 Wednesday, Chavenes-s-l-Etand, France. Baume Les Dames has been converted from a free canal side ADS to a five Euro a night ADS with parking for about 50 vans with electric and dumpsite, and a caretaker who collects the fees.

June 08, 2006 Thursday, Baume Les Dames, France. Westward past the great SONP of Grosbois. In Besancon the roads are still all dug up as the town corrects its chaotic traffic plan that makes it very difficult to get to Carrefour, or anywhere else. A long way looking for another good SONP before finding a place beside a peaceful lake near Fluans.

June 09, 2006 Friday, Fluans, France. Cycle riding, and exploring the basins .

June 10, 2006 Saturday, Fluans, France. Water at a ADS, lots of canal, few good parking places, except these.

June 11, 2006 Sunday, Cusey France. Cycle ride from Cusey to Villegusian Le Lac. Mix of paved and rough cycle paths. Not enough tables or shelter. Quiet canal with little water traffic, well shaded with old large trees along the banks. In the evening cycled to Courchamp to the south, here the bitumen cycle path is continuous at least as far as La Romagne. The canal forms a cool avenue.

June 12, 2006 Monday, Cusey France. Relaxing and cycling along the canal for exercise to keep fit.

June 13, Tuesday, Lac de la Liez, Langres France.

The morning's activity was a cycle ride around the lake on a very rough and muddy path that takes about 2.5 hours and is more than the apparently indicated 8.7Kms. On the southern shore there are some bush camps set up by fishermen, and numerous small boats left in the bushes around the lake. One very small lakeside picnic area with a shelter shed is accessible by road, but there is only room for one campervan and perhaps a couple of small cars.With the exception of the North shore near the dam the lake is undeveloped and there is access via the rough foot or cycle path to many points on the shore. Vehicle access is very limited. Numerous rest areas along N19.

Langres is an old walled hilltop town with some large parts of the walls still standing. We travelled north along the minor roads following the canal as closely as we could and checked for cycle paths and parking places wherever a road crossed the canal, and eventually came to the small village of Chamarandes-Chiognes near the old town of Chaumont. There is a parking area beside the river which runs close to the canal. We had found only one other place to park next to the canal since leaving Langres and this one was more appealing. Like many of the smaller villages in this part of France there are almost no shops, only a Tabac, a kind of small general store and bar, and a horse riding school, popular with teenage girls who would bring their horses down to paddle in the river near the parking area where we and several other campervans stayed over the two days of our visit. Being now very hot weather many locals would come to the river or the nearby canal to bathe.

June 14, Wednesday, Chamarandes-Chiognes France. Bathing in the river next to the canal. Cycle ride to Brethernay. Numerous large fish in the Soane River where the canal crosses it on a canal bridge. A tunnel for the canal at Condes several hundred meters long built in 1888. There are good cycle paths but, in common with many other sections of the French canals, the canal lacks other facilities such as tables and seats and shelter for cyclists or walkers.

June 15, Thursday, Chamrandes-Chiognes France. Today was better for traveling, being cooler, and we moved on the the Aire des Services at Juzenncourt which has a free dump site, free water, free parking and free electricity. There is good shade but otherwise the area is not attractive and the town looks very run down, as do many of the small villages around the area. We decided not to stay but after dumping and refilling with potable water resumed our meandering along the canal in search of nice places to stop.

At Vieville there is a small canal parking area with provision for camper vans, not free but quiet and pleasant and only €1.50 a night to park and the same additional for water and electricity if you want them. Further north the next place to park we found was a small ADS at Donjeaux on the canal, with free parking, but there is no shade, no potable water only flush water for the dumpsite, and it is close to the railway line, so not altogether very attractive. Having heard that the ADS at Joinville a little further north was nice we decided to move on to there and found an excellent place to stop.

The area is new and the trees have not yet grown big enough to give shade, but there is parking for about ten vans, a dumpsite, potable water and electricity all free. Not only that but in the evening a girl from the tourist office comes around to welcome you and give out free maps and brochures about the town and the region. Some even have some information in English. Bravo Joinville!

June 16, Friday, Joinville France.

June 17, Saturday, Joinville France.

June 18, Sunday, Joinville France.

June 19, Monday, Joinville France.

June 20, Tuesday, Joinville France.

June 21, Wednesday, Joinville France.

We drove north exploring along the canals.

June 22, Thursday, Ligny-en-Barrois France.

A pleasant ADS beside the Marne au Rhin canal, Ligny-en-Barrois is a small town beginning to appreciate the boom in campervan and canal boat tourism as the young man from the Syndicate de Initiative or Tourist Office agreed in excellent English as he delivered to our campervan a small very well produced coloured brochure about the town and its small historic attractions dating back to the fifteen hundreds.

The dumpsite is free to use but to get water it is €2.00 for ten minutes, and strangely electricity, free at many ADS in France was offered at €2.00 for 55 minutes, a ridiculously expensive tariff that of course none of the campervans present used. Beside the canal basin there were more hose taps where water was freely available for the canal boats and within easy reach of campervans too as the photo shows. Only missing were the tap handles, but a pair of pliers overcomes such minor impediments very easily.

June 23, Thursday, Ligny-en-Barrois France.

An interesting walking tour of the town using the map brochure provided by the tourist office.

June 23, Friday, Ligny-en-Barrois France. Cycle tour of 20K each way to Bar-le-Duc and on to the small village of Varney along a generally good bitumen canal path that alternates sides between the numerous canal locks.

A fresh produce and general market is held in the small town square of Ligny-en-Barrois on Friday mornings.

June 24, Saturday, Ligny-en-Barrois France. Washed the seat covers from the front seats.

June 25, Sunday, Ligny-en-Barrois France. A picnic in the park and cycling around the town.

June 26, Monday, Ligny-en-Barrois France. A new tyre to replace the old spare was bought in StDizier at a cost of €111.90 for a Michelin 185R14 8 ply, similar to one fitted in Austria for €78.00. Perhaps there are more competitive prices available, or prices are just higher for tires in France, I didn't shop around, but it was still a little cheaper than in England where they cost £75.00 equivalent to about €120.00.

June 27, Tuesday, Lac Du Der Chantecoq. France. The largest lake in France is a main water supply for Paris and hosts several large marinas and sailing schools. There are large parking areas where campervans can park free and we found many around Griffaumont-Champaubert. There are several aires de services with dumpsites and potable water available for a Jeton token purchased from the tourist office which is prominently signed.

There are some tourist restaurants and a small store-bakery but no supermarkets nearby. St.Dizier is the biggest nearby town about 20Km away.

Swimming in the lake and a cycle ride along the dam. The cycle path around the lake is on top of the very long dam walls which rum for many kilometers, it is very exposed with no shade and not as interesting to ride as some of the leafy canal paths.

June 28, Wednesday, Lac Du Der Chantecoq. France.

We drove back into St.Dizier for supplies and called at a campervan dealers to see if they had a tap set with micro switches to replace the faulty one in the van. They had a unit almost identical to one I tried in Germany at the start of this tour. In Germany it was € 31.00, here in France € 46.00 was the asking price. It still didn't fit because of angled entry pipes, which would require cutting larger holes in the bench top, which I wish to avoid if at all possible. So I will try again to get one in England when we return.

Apart from the large lakeside parking areas around Gifffaumont-Champaubert popular with many campervans, there are a number of more secluded places to be found off D153a on the road to the Stade Nautique and around the northern shores of the lake at Presqu'ile de Nemours.

June 29 Thursday, LacDu Der Chantecoq. France. Drove to Verdun along several canals but failed to find any suitable parking places with cycle paths. Finally as it was getting on for six PM we opted to stay the night in the Cora supermarket car park, after stocking up on some French wine at the ALDI store which along with LIDL stores have the best range of inexpensive but very nice wine from various regions of France.

June 30 Friday, Verdun. France. More exploring of the canals, no good bike paths here but we found another free, for both boats and campervans, canal gem at Consenvoye. It is popular with canal boats, seven spent the night there, but we were the only campervan. We made friends with a Belgium couple who invited us on board their small yacht which had the mast removed to use as a canal boat, to have quite a lot of evening drinks. Boat people seem to be very friendly as a group and we have had a number of pleasant social contacts over the past several weeks.

July 1 Saturday, Consenvoye. France. A leisurely morning to recover from the night before spent with a Belgian couple on their boat sampling pear liquor they bought from a French canal lock keeper, and Cherry liquor made by a local friend of theirs. In the morning they had driven their car to another village to buy a baguette and had bought one for us too, as a small gift which they presented to us as soon as I went outside the van to extend the awning to provide some shade. It was another hot day and again I wore only bathers most of the day.

Then we followed the canal north to Dun-s-Meuse where there was supposed to be another aire de services at the port fluvial. It had no shade or dumpsite, but water, a WC and showers for € 3.40 per night for campervans, however we didn't stay there but opted for the other side of the river-canal where there were dirt roads leading to fishing spots with good shaded parking places. There are no cycle paths along this canal which is a bit disappointing as we have found several excellent free places to park for a few days. Lots of people go fishing, but although we can often see many big fish in the rivers or canals we haven't seen anyone catch any.

July 2 Sunday, Dun-sur-Meuse. France. They were having a fete in Dun-s-Meuse and we were able to buy some wine glasses for €1.50 and a stainless steel kitchen vegetable grater for 50 cents.

Then we followed the canal north to the ADS at Stenay where it is 6 Euro a night to stay.

Some shade but not near as attractive as the free spot we found opposite the port fluvial at Dun-s-Meuse. The area has a number of small lakes used for fishing where camping and caravanning is not permitted according to a sign, but along the canal road is public and here we stopped.

There were no cycle paths along the canal, only some sections of rough tracks.

At Mouzon the ADS at the port fluvial was not at all attractive with no shade and they want 7 Euro a night, perhaps that was the reason there were no campervans there. However the dumpsite and water are free.

Still no cycle paths so we travelled on to Charleville-Mezieres where there is a free parking ADS at the port fluvial. However it has campervans parked very close side by side with no shade at all and although there were vacant places we opted for the Municipal Camping nearby where a site cost €11.10 sans electric. Very nice shaded sites divided by hedges as id common in French municipal camps.

July 3 Monday, Charleville-Mezieres. France. Charleville-Mezieres is an attractive old town and the municipal camping and the adjacent free ADS (Aire de Services) are well located close to town with direct access via a footbridge. A rough dirt cycle path enables one to ride around the small river island where they are located. The free ADS has no shade and the sites are not level, but still all 8 places were occupied by camper vans last night.

Exploring around town on our bikes and a trip to the LIDL store for supplies filled in the day.

July 4 Tuesday, Charleville-Mezieres. France.

Two nights in Charleville was enough as there were no cycle paths along the canal except for a dirt track around the island where the campsite and ADS are located. After leaving Charleville we explored along the Ardennes Canal as far as Rethel finding several good SONPs at Attigny and noting where there were cycle paths. The day was very hot into the high 30's and we found a swimming spot along the Asnie River at Seuil.

Rethel has a Port Fluvial, but no place for campervans as the canal side parking is barricaded with posts, probably to keep Gypsies away as we noted a Gipsey campsite on the canal bank near the town.

July 5 Thursday, Perthes. France.

A roadside rest area on a quiet D road near Perthes became home for the night. They vary a lot in appeal but this one had good shade tables and rubbish bins, and we have noted hundreds of such places as GPS way points in our travels throughout France in 2000, 2004, 2005 and 2006. Aside from the Aires de Services for which we also have hundreds of way points, rest areas like this provide excellent free overnight stopping places. France is campervan heaven.

There are many smaller roadside parking places adjacent to the traffic lanes that we do not record as they are not suitable for overnight parking. France has the best and most numerous rest areas of any European country, although you also find some in Austria, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands.

In other western European countries such as Spain, Portugal and Italy, rest areas are far less common although you can find a few suitable ones. In Eastern Europe where we have traveled this tour into Czech, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia and Croatia they are even rarer, but occasional gems are to be found, and those we noted are in the way point files.

England, in fact all of the UK, rates alongside Eastern Europe when it comes to roadside rest areas, they are few and generally very meager with only isolated exceptions. However even in the UK we usually find places to park overnight free, and have progressively built up a database of places from our own observations, by trawling Internet web sites and from campervan related news groups.

July 6 Thursday, Mareuil-sur-Ay, France. A complete change in the weather brings some welcome relief from the recent heat wave.

July 7 Friday, Mareuil-sur-Ay, France. Cycle ride into Epernay along the canals. 26Kms.

July 8 Saturday, Mareuil-sur-Ay, France. Took a number of photos of canal boats moored nearby, just in case our interest develops and we decide to buy one in a few years and tout the canals.

July 9 Sunday, Mareuil-sur-Ay, France. Cycle ride along the Marne canal to Conde-s-Marne and then Canal de L'Aisne to Vaudemange. 40Kms.

July 10 Monday, Mareuil-sur-Ay, France. We decided to move on to a spot on the Canal de L'Aisne we had cycled to yesterday, just off the D19 near Vaudemange. Unfortunately it was alive with march flies and after having lunch behind our fly screens which kept us safe from the biting beasts, we decided to leave them to it and returned to Mareuil-sur-Ay, confirming in the process that it is the only good campervan parking place in the area.

July 11 Tuesday, Mareuil-sur-Ay, France. More hunting along the canals for good places to stop finds only a couple of small rewards.

There are many places that have excellent potential as campervan stops, if the local villages were to develop them a little with some tree plantings and minor ground surface works. It is notable how variable is the standard of design in Aires de Services and canal ports, and clearly many have just happened without much understanding of what campervanners really want in an Aire de Services. Basically some shaded or partly shaded almost level parking area where vans are not jammed in cheek by jowl, but separated by a couple of meters with trees. The parking should preferably be sealed with bitumen but grass on a suitably stable and well drained earthen base will do too in less intensively trafficked areas. A dumpsite for gray water consisting of a strong metal grate set into a concreted depression over which vans can drive is the best simplest and most inexpensive type, which is not easily damaged as are some of the expensive fancy plastic installations often seen. A dump for cassette toilets waste with a means of flushing with a short length of hose and a simple metal lid is all that is needed. A water tap of the 19mm threaded hose tap variety is all that is needed. The complete facility can be completely made by local trades men with minimal materials and cost if well designed. The least effective installations are the plastic "bourne" units seen all over France which are frequently damaged or don't work properly. No doubt they are far more expensive than the few basic plumbing fittings and small amount of concrete required for a robust locally made installation. I have seen many of the fancy plastic and fiber glass gray water drains broken because they are simply not strong enough for the job.

Last years tour had revealed a good SONP and we headed for that.

July 12 Wednesday, Chamouille, France. Gradually heading for Calais and the end of our holiday, we continued to explore the canals, this time investigating more thoroughly some of the area we had passed through last year on the return leg of our tour to Portugal. By criss crossing the canals on minor roads through small villages we located a number of overnight stopping places that we had missed last year including several at Halts Nautique or canal ports where there are various levels of facilities for canal boats, and often a nice parking place for campervans where fresh water is available.

July 13 Thursday, Etreux le Guard, France. Drove to St.Quintin to shop and buy a blood pressure monitor for €24.99 at LIDL, check your own blood pressure for less than the cost of a single visit to the doctor. Smart bastards those Taiwanese. Explored along another canal and found the Aire de Repose of Lehaucourt above a canal tunnel portal.

Lots of fireworks in the distance tonight as the French celebrate Bastille Day, an event in what they think was the "French Revolution" for "Liberty Egality and Fraternity", but which was in reality another capitalist inspired coup, which almost totally destroyed the French state and culture, and replaced it with a reign of bloddy terror. Like all recent revolutions it was no more a popular uprising than was the English, German or Russian revolution, the latter also a capitalist inspired and funded coup to take over Russia.

If this all sounds strange it is because you haven't read any REAL history, the views you see on television are the elite establishment's propaganda that they want you to believe. The REAL history of the world, over the last couple of hundred years, is found only on the internet, and in lesser known scholarly historical works, mostly unknown to the masses outside of a few highly specialist historians. The Internet permits the truth to be published for the first time to be available to all. Don't just believe what I say, research it for yourself and then you will know the truth of the matter.

The French Revolution was a Jewish capitalist coup against the French monarchy, no popular uprising but a well planned, financed and orchestrated coup, with the masses stirred up by propagands and used by paid agents provocateur. The only ones who thought they were having a revolution were the lowest level of gullible French peasants who were mere pawns in the game. You don't believe it, neither you should from just my say so! Read and research for your self, then you will know real history, for knowledge is power. When you find the truth for your self you will believe.

A starting point. "The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte", a book by Sir Walter Scott, the only one of his works not to have ben reprinted many times. Published in 1827, within living memory of the events of the late seventeen hundreds, before modern propaganda clouded the realty with its own mythology, Scott tells the real story of who and why.

There is a new paperback edition of Volume 1 published in 2003, [ISBN-13: 978-1410204837] available on Amazon, but the ORIGINAL was in nine Volumes, and had never been reprinted for 176 years because it tells the REAL story of the French Revolution, that the elite powers still in control of the world don't want you to know. I am unable to say if the new paperback contains any of the important revelations about those wealthy financiers behind the so called French revolution. Only when the internet had revealed epserts of the details of its content was another partial edition possible. Copies of the original edition were still available several years ago on Amazon or on Ebay. The knowledge is out there. Truth is stranger than fiction.

July 14 Friday, Lehaucourt, France. Having spent the night quietly we allowed a couple of hours to clean up the site, collecting rubbish and broken glass and placing it in the bin. In the evening along came four noisy young bastards playing rap crap "music", far too loud, so we left and returned to the relative quiet of Etrux.

July 15 Saturday, Etreux le Guard, France. A cycle ride along the canal to Vadencourt, where there is a small but neglected canal port which has no suitable area for campervans,

July 16 Sunday, Etreux le Guard, France. A day of exploration where we discovered several nice parking places along canals near Landreces. We went as far north as Bavay to check out the Aire de Services, which is useful but not at all appealing except perhaps as an overnight stop. There is very little shade and there appears little of interest in the area. With the temperatures well above 30 degrees shade is a desirable attribute for any parking place.

July 17 Monday, Catillion-s-Sambre, France The night was too noisy because of traffic crossing the opening canal bridge nearby which clatters when heavy trucks pass over it. On e would be better of parking along the canal at the back of buildings on the opposite side of the highway, and only coming to the actual aire de services for water or the dumpsite. We did some more canal exploring and while we found good cycle paths there there were no new good SONPS found so we headed for Billy Berclau where the large regional park with lakes and forest provides lots of cycle and walking paths and several good shaded parking areas. Very popular with school children on excursions for hiking cycling sailing and archery.

Noticeable is the small number of fat children and teenagers compared to Australia. The vast majority of French teenage girls look like girls, slim, well stacked and sexy, not like the walking energies of Donald Duck as do such an alarmingly increasing percentage of Australian girls, and boys, as they are fed the junk food, highly refined sugars and carbohydrates, and saturated fat rich oils that have become such a major part of prepared and fast foods, heading in epidemic proportions for what was once called mature onset diabetes but which is now starting to affect our over fed fat children as young as six years. Viva la France

July 18 Tuesday, Billy-Berclau, France.

July 19 Tuesday, Billy-Berclau, France.

July 20 Wednesday, Calais, France.

"There are only two men in history to whose graves I have made a pilgrimage, Mozart and Beethoven. The third and only other, to whom I would accord such an honor, is Adolph Hitler, but alas he is denied the honor of a burial place, lest real history reveal the true humanity of this martyr to the progress of the human condition, who saw the Jewish problem of the world and met it head on, and accord to him in posterity the hon our the Jews denied him in life."