Canal de Bourgogne: Saint Jean de Losne to Dijon and Back

Wanderlust escapes.

As of the time of this writing it looks like we will lose the 2020 season to the COVID-19 pandemic. Since the trouble-plagued 2015, Wanderlust has not had a full season of cruising, having lost much of 2016, 2017, and 2018 to the legal dispute and repairs. In 2019 additional repairs and a water shortage cut short the season. We had grand plans for cruising, and more paintwork for Wanderlust, in 2020. But those seem to be lost for the time being. With luck in 2021 we will finally be able to enjoy our first full cruising season in six years, as we imagined when we laid down the money for Wanderlust in 2013. But for now we’ll just relive our 2019 season….

Canal de Bourgogne: Abbey of Fontenay

Inside Fontenay Abbey’s church

We first visited the Abbey of Fontenay in Burgundy France in 2010. It was the first Cistercian abbey that we visited. It still ranks as our favorite.

Canal de Bourgogne: Château de Bussy-Rabutin

Château de Bussy-Rabutin

Roughly 9 kilometers from the mooring in Venarey-les-Laumes is Château de Bussy-Rabutin. It is reachable by bike, as are several other notable destinations in the area. We missed this one when Wanderlust transited the Canal de Bourgogne in 2016 and only found it by chance later in August of 2018 when we visited the area by car.

France: Burgundy, Wine Festivals

Domaine Faively at the festival in Nuits-Saint-Georges

The French regularly drink wine. There’s little doubt about that. But where do they buy the wine they drink?

2018 Cruising Season

Wanderlust’s only lock of the season.

Wanderlust’s 2018 cruising season was brief. She moved under her own power just twice covering maybe a kilometer and passing through one lock. It wasn’t what we had planned, but so it goes….

The Winter of Our Discontent

Wanderlust on the Thames not long after launch

There was little certainty for Wanderlust’s future as we retreated to San Francisco for the 2016-2017 winter. On the repairs side, the legal dispute with the builder had frozen our ability to have the needed work done on our boat. There was no end to the dispute in sight. Indeed, if anything, the two parties had moved further apart.

The 2016 Season

The 2016 season started with high water in Auxerre.

Towards the end of the 2015 cruising season we started to consider our 2016 route options. Though we had just cruised 2,295 km including 734 locks, there were still plenty of water in France and Europe left to explore. Indeed it seemed that 2016 was the right time to make a first foray into Belgium and Holland. We wanted to explore the north before we became too entrenched in the waterways of France. The boaters that we talked to say that it is lovely up north. We wanted to see for ourselves.

Canal de Bourgogne: Dijon to Saint Jean de Losne

We met our friends Dave and Wendy from Barge Blue Belle on the way to Saint Jean de Losne.

It was difficult for us to get sufficiently motivated to leave Dijon. We like it there. And the longer we stayed the stronger our psychological dependence on Dijon’s covered market became. Dijon’s marché couvert is our happy place. Only with effort were we able to force ourselves to continue on our way to St. Jean de Losne.

Canal de Bourgogne: Dijon, Mustard turns High Tech at the Teletech Campus

The Teletech Campus, near Dijon

On the way to the port in Dijon we saw this building alongside the canal. We quickly dubbed it the “QR Code” building from its outward appearance. And indeed, when we came back to take a closer look, we saw that the building it does in fact have QR or Quick Response codes on its facade. Check for yourself using an app on your phone.

Canal de Bourgogne: Dijon, the Palais des Ducs and the Musée des Beaux-Arts

Portrait de Jeanne de Montaigu (Maître de Saint-Jean-de-Luze)

The longer we stayed in Dijon the more it appealed to us. With a little over 150,000 residents, the commune is more happening than the mostly rural villages that we had passed as we traveled along the Canal de Bourgogne. Between the restaurants, the wine, and the tourist attractions, there was motivation to linger past our penciled in departure day.