Messing about on the river

Hello and welcome to the latest blog from The Olivia Rose Diaries on June 19^th 2025.

You join us this week as we continue our journey south, joining the River Saône at it’s junction with the Canal entre Champagne et Bourgogne. We shall be on it for just over 200 km until it merges with the Rhône at Lyons. And there are only seven locks!!!!

This river had been in flood the first time we came down it, seven years ago, in the early spring of 2018. We had to wait five days for the waters to drop around nine feet at which point the authorities felt it was safe enough to allow boats back on the water. The levels may have dropped but the flow was still strong and we were on constant look-out for the trees and large branches that were in the river, sometimes submerged and difficult to spot, carried there by the widespread flooding. The banks were covered in oozing mud, a clear line showing the high-water mark. The trees hadn’t yet shaken off the winter and were still bare. I had read that this was a beautiful river, but at that time it wasn’t looking beautiful. It looked stark, like it had been drowned in mud, and it felt dangerous.

This time it couldn’t be more different.

There is a well-known school of thought amongst writers that if you want to keep your reader engaged you need an element of drama, of conflict, something to keep those pages turning. It’s easy to see how this works in a crime or adventure novel, but it is also true in non-fiction writing such as travel memoirs. It’s human nature for our attention to becomes more focused when things start to get a little challenging for our intrepid traveller.

Apologies in advance then because over the last ten days we haven’t had any dramas. Nothing has gone wrong. We haven’t even had a run-in with any fishermen stealing our moorings. It’s just been us, floating serenely downstream on a truly beautiful river, doing nothing much at all. We do a lot of looking at things: we count the herons, stationed at regular intervals along the banks, perched on overhanging branches, staring intently down at the water. This river is renowned for fishing and so there are plenty of fisherman’s tents stationed along the banks as well. We can’t help but notice that the heron is far more skilled at catching fish.

We heard a golden oriole singing in the trees next to a lock, and Michael actually spotted a pair of bee-eaters. We watch the reflections, seeing how they tremble and dissipate as the wind ruffles the surface and blows them away. One of the most exciting things in our day is when a big fish jumps clean out of the water right in front of our eyes. We wander into the town or village closest to our mooring in the evening, when the heat of the day has lessened a little. Not that it seems to drop much, June is shaping up to be an overly hot month. If it becomes too intense we either swim in the river or stand under the hose. And we do ordinary everyday things like food shopping and washing our clothes. Definitely no drama there.

No doubt there will be some excitement before too long, but for now this peaceful interlude is fine by us. See you again soon.

MJ