WB Avalon: Condé-sur-Marne to Dormans

8 Locks, 1 Swing Bridge, Day 1 11 Miles, Day 2 15½ Miles, 7½ Hours

We set off from Condé-sur-Marne about midday after taking a walk with the dogs into the largely shut village.

Condé-sur-Marne

With a right turn we were on new water heading towards Paris.

The cruise for the day was fairly unremarkable, accept of course you can still play ~~Eddie Stobart~~ Norbert Dentressangle being the French version.

The half plan was to moor in Epernay but at €36 a night for us we decided that was just a bit too much so we moored for the night just past Dizy, for free on a nice quiet stretch of green bank, ideal for the dogs.

I took off the town on my bike, but once in there, there was nothing of great interest for us. I did meet another English couple with and Airedale called Teddy and an Autotrail Motorhome.

Next morning 8th May, we set off about 11am. We woke at 9.30am having gone to bed at 10.30 the previous night. We all slept 11 hours! A few minutes later we arrived at our first lock for the day, which also marks PK 0 on The River Marne. Once through this lock we found ourselves bowling along at 12kph on just over tick over.

At lock 1 Cumifrès we were furnished with a very posh remote control. This one beeps, has messages on the screen and best of all it has a lights duplicator on it.

The locks so far today have been the taper sides with floating pontoon.

2km later we moored for shopping and a liquid lunch at Damery. At first I tried a downstream approach, I knew however that we would need to turn and moor into flow, but it was worth a try just for practice sake.

Having safely moored we wandered in to the town we got 3 types of bread and some general perishables. See Debs blog for the very strange shaped loaf which is a local type.

The town was marking VE Day with a marching band.