Yonne and Canal du Nivernais

We spent five days dawdling upstream along the river Yonne and the Canal du Nivernais. The weather was extremely hot, so we only walked for a few hours each morning, starting early. Most of the time we followed the towpath instead of the GRP (Meanders of the Yonne).

The old part of Auxerre

Auxerre was a most interesting and picturesque town with many interesting buildings, chief among them a huge golden clock surmounting an archway over the road. There was also a statue of the local writer Restif de la Bretonne, who was born in nearby Sacy and wrote copiously during the turmoil of the late eighteenth century, on the brink of the modern age, looking back longingly on an idealised pastoral childhood as well as forward to the new order. He was the first to use the term “communism”, which at the time had no derogatory undertone.

The villages on the Canal were typically Burgundian – charming, prosperous, not far apart, full of flowers and well-supplied with cafés for the needy walker. The countryside was benign, despite the heat, with mature crops of wheat and sunflowers on either side of the tree-shaded strip of the canal.