We made the detour to get a sense of travel on the wider, less uniform river, and to visit one of oldest and most beautiful medieval towns in France, called Joigny. Six of us set out to explore rural heartland of Europe's favourite destination country, on the liquid, languid back of waterways built two centuries ago for commerce not yet served by railways. While still open to commercial trade, and dotted by occasional large manufacturing plants, Le Canal de Bourgogne as we saw it in our ten days' journey seems to have slipped into arterial semi-retirement as a tourist playland. Travelling high watered, thirty meter-wide canals through fields and villages, while gazing into the rural backwaters and villages in the distance provides high leisure more than high adventure. Yet canaling in France provides visas unmatched by road or train travel.
Canals pull one farther off into a France undiscoverable by the most remote roadways.
Treelined, pathed waterways beckon to the next lock, the next portal signaled by a cascading wall of water and concrete walls and steel gates. Since we travelled up-canal most of our journey, we rarely entered a lock from its high, filled side. Beside the lock, a stone cottage, a garden and the inevitable dog and its rustic owner would offer access to the next few kilometers of liquid paradise. As first up on this morning, I set off up the parkway alongside the canal for the village street, turning off just before the bridge, heading along a narrow, closely curbed street to stooped stone buildings containing an assortment of residences interspersed with a few shops. After the merry bonjours on both sides, I assay my powers of the local vernacular.