We had heard on the grapevine that it would be sensible to bypass Vitry-le-Francois as it had a sizeable and not necessarily agreeable “campsite”.
We shot through, said goodbye to the Canal Lateral a La Marne, dived across the junction with the Canal de la Marne au Rhine and swung under a very low set of railway bridges onto the Canal de la Marne a la Saone.
Or is it? It seems that France is having an identity crisis and is now in the habit of renaming towns and now canals. This canal has recently been renamed the Canal entre Champagne et Bourgogne.
We quite like the new name – just as we rather like the liquid produced in abundance in both areas!
At our first lock we were given a zapper to operate the locks. No more perche or tirette for a while.
The first 9km of this waterway was beautiful and peaceful and bathed in sunshine. Moored at Ecriennes and cycled back 15km for the car.
When we arrived in Belgium we had doubted the boys’ ability to cycle 10km. But they have now become bike fit and make no fuss about our long towpath rides. In fact it is proving quite hard to keep up with them! They have now cycled every bit of our last 60km of canal.
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