Travels with Forty Roses: L'Escaut et Le Canal de Saint-Quentin

In my last blog, devoted to the Braderie in Lille, John was concerned that I had not mentioned our summer and our arrival back at the boat. Here goes! We had a busy and brief summer it seems. June 10 to August 20 at the lake was simply too short a time to squeeze in all the people we wanted to see and the things we wished to accomplish. However, given the situation with our visas which expire on September 12, we had to be back earlier or so we (I) thought! To make a complicated and long story very short…we only had to be back a few days before the 12^th. Next year we will know better unless the rules shift again. So, we made an extra and early trip to Toulouse where we are registered. But it was good to be back in that lovely city and enjoy a place we know well for a couple of nights.

On Wednesday the 6^th of September, at a very early hour, as we readied the boat for departure from Wambrechies, who should come sauntering along the quay but Monsieur Chiron, our friend and keeper of the boat this summer. He was there to toss the lines off and wave us goodbye as we turned south down the Deûlemont and began our journey toward Auxerre. Earlier that morning we found a note in a plastic bag taped to our window from Philippe, Valerie and Lucien wishing us Bon Voyage. It gave me a lump in my throat to have Bernard there to say goodbye and receive notes from the lovely little French family for which I dared to cook dinner. The one thing I wish I could go back for is a photo of Bernard. How foolish of me not to take one. He is the kindest man and we hope to go back some day to see him.

Tonight, we are tied up at Honnecourt sur-Escaut in preparation for an interesting day tomorrow. We will traverse the Souterrain de Riqueval, a 5670M tunnel. We are to be towed through in a convoy of boats. The convoy will be rather small as we understand there are only two other boats to go with us. This has been a beautiful trip so far with many locks so we have become experts. Well almost. It is a totally mechanized system. At the beginning of the L'Escaut/Saint-Quentin in Cambrai we were given a remote-control device. At each lock, there is a signal. Simply point the remote to have the lock empty and open and once tied up inside click the remote for the gates to close and the lock to fill. When the gates open off we go to the next. And we have seen only 3 other boats which is rather amazing given the beautiful area.

As we bicycled through the town of Cambrai I was most interested to see that François de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon, more commonly known as François Fénelon (1651-1715) was a French Roman Catholic Archbishop, theologian, poet and writer. As the Archbishop of Cambrai, he served for many years. During the War of the Spanish Succession, which produced many refugees Fénelon opened his palace to those fleeing the ongoing conflict. His belief was that all wars were civil wars. Humanity was a single society and all wars within it the greatest evil, for he argued that one’s obligation to mankind was always greater than what was owed to one’s country. Oh, for more of this thinking today!

Some of you know I was born and raised near Fenelon Falls in the Kawartha Lakes. Our little town was named after François’s half-brother, Father Fénelon. François de Salignac de la Mothe Fénelon (1641-1679) was a Sulpician missionary in New France. He was ten years older than his half-brother François Fénelon, Archbishop of Cambrai. Why they shared the same name is difficult to understand and the reason lost in history. They were of different mothers but they were both born at the Château de Fénelon in Sainte-Mondane, Périgord, Aquitaine, in the Dordogne river valley and both were educated at the Séminaire de Saint – Sulpice in Paris. I do wonder if the little community of Cambray close to Fenelon Falls is somehow a derivative of the French Cambrai where Father Fénelon’s half-brother was the Archbishop. Is it not a small and interesting world?