Канал во Франции: от источников до Сона

Canal in France
Leaving Ravières there is an extremely difficult pound which suffers from intense growth of aquatic weeds and which can cause fouling of the propeller. Immediately after is situated the small village of Cry sur Armançon, site of the Acrobatix Adventure Park. After passing through Aisy the canal enters the Côte d'Or department. It then runs through Buffon past the great ironwork forge built by the Comte de Buffon in the 18th century. It is then merely a short trip until arrival in the town of Montbard. Nearby is the Abbey of Fontenay. The canal is now running through the wide, flat plain of the river Brenne. Eight locks and 13 km after Montbard the canal arrives in Venarey les Laumes situated close to the village of Alise Sainte Reine thought to be the site of the Battle of Alesia. At this point the geography changes dramatically. The railway carries on straight towards Dijon, climbing the steep Burgundy escarpment which it crosses by means of a long tunnel at Blaisy Bas. The canal on the other hand has to divert southwards passing through 40 locks in the space of It then reaches more friendly ground before the final approach to the summit at Pouilly en Auxois. Here there is a large, fully equipped port close to the centre of town. The canal then runs through a tree lined cutting before entering the 3 kilometre long tunnel. Boats must be fitted with a fixed or hand held spotlight to pass through, following a fatal accident a number of years ago inside the tunnel itself. Emerging near the village of Créancey the canal begins to drop, passing close to the A6 autoroute, past the villages of Vandenesse and Châteauneuf before meeting the river Ouche at Pont d'Ouche where there are moorings for boats wishing to lay up for the winter. Nearby is the small town of Bligny sur Ouche where there is a butterfly museum and a narrow gauge railway built on the trackbed of a line leading from the mining town of Epinac to loading staithes on the canal. The canal now changes direction from SE to NNE running through the valley of the river Ouche as it makes its way towards Dijon, the capital of the Burgundy region. On arrival in Plombières lès Dijon the canal turns SE passing close to Lac Kir, a man made lake used for leisure activities, named after Canon Félix Kir, a former mayor of Dijon and after whom is named the white wine and crème de cassis drink known as Kir. On leaving the port of Dijon and running past the SNCF depot at Perrigny and the airport at Longvic the canal enters the wide and relatively flat valley of the Saône. In the final 30 kilometres the canal is totally straight apart from a slight turn near Thorey en Plaine and the main activity of the area is now farming. Shortly after passing by Brazey en Plaine the canal reaches its end at Saint Jean de Losne, the largest inland pleasure port in France, where it joins the river Saône.

Construction of the canal was already under consideration as early as 1605, during the reign of Henry IV. Difficulties were foreseen in crossing the Morvan Massif, however. In addition to the route finally selected, studies were made for various other routes, all of them passing further to the north. In the end, however, it was decided that the canal should follow the valleys of the rivers Armançon and Ouche. Louis XV signed an edict for the canal's construction on 7 September 1773. In 1774 it was stipulated that the crown would pay for the section running to the Yonne while the other half, towards the Saône, would be funded by the Estates of Burgundy. In 1775 the total cost was estimated at 7.18 Million French pounds. Work began in 1777 on the Laroche Tonnerre section. In 1781 work started from the other end, between Dijon and the Saône. During the early years of the French Revolution, between 1790 and 1795 progress on the construction slowed and then stopped. Work resumed only in 1808 after a Napoleonic degree announced the sale to private companies of four major existing canals in order to finance further canal construction. 1808 saw the opening of the section between Laroche and Dijon, thereby providing access to the Saône and so, indirectly, to the Rhône valley. At this time the challenge of how the canal should cross the Drainage divide between the Saône and the Yonne valleys was still being argued, but in 1812 the adopted solution involved a tunnel and the creation of reservoirs to feed water into the higher pounds of the canal. The tunnel was built between 1826 and 1832, and in 1832 the entire canal was opened for navigation, although work on the important feeder reservoirs was not completed till 1840. Between 1879 and 1882 work was completed, where necessary, to increase lock sizes to conform to the Freycinet standard, after which it became possible to move barges of up to 250 tonnes displacement, and up to 38.50 metres long on the canal.

Commercial barge traffic is restricted to the two extremities; between St Jean de Losne and Dijon in the south and from Migennes to Brienon in the north. Otherwise traffic is restricted to three types of user: privately owned boats (now the most important user group), hire craft, in decline due to the closure of several hire bases in recent years, and hotel barges, mainly centered on the Ouche valley in the south, although three hotel barges remain operating on the northern section.