Briare/Chatillon sur Loire

 Tuesday 12th August

We were moving on today, but first we wanted to visit the Church of St. Etienne and the Musee de la Mosaique et des Emaux.  So glad we did, because we learnt a lot about Jean-Felix Bapterosses who, in C19 started a factory making buttons and later, tiles and mosaics.  He doubled the population of Briare (with workers!) and took a personal interest in making their lives comfortable.  Also after 30 years of planning, he used the local people and their skills to build their church - it took just 5 years till 1895.  Mosaics are used everywhere, to depict the local area of industry, farming and the waterways and for Christian symbols.  The ones on the floor of the aisle are 4 of the ages of life (photo of the old age one!!) and 5 of the senses represented by animals (photo of touch).  It was pointed out that these symbols were easily understood by people who couldn't read or write.  In the museum there are some amazing pieces of mosaic work and display banners of beautiful buttons.  No photography allowed unfortunately.  We did wonder about owning a mosaic, but we decided that a 3 inch square picture (all we could have afforded) would look a bit silly above our fireplace!
Briare has been a fascinating and beautiful place to visit.

 

Moving on meant driving 7k upstream (south) to Chatillon-sur-Loire and another campsite by the river.  (Writing this on Wednesday morning with rain lashing down and the river rising, we wonder if this was a good choice!)

Using the bikes in the afternoon, we did a Geo tour of the river, the old Canal and the new Canal Lateral. This section of the river saw the crossing of the old canal from one side to the other. (The new one crosses over on the aqueduct at Briare.) The two river locks are not opposite but about o.5km apart. Two levees were built in the river to canalise that section and allow boats to use anchors and the flow to get them across. It took over 4 hours to make the crossing! Later steam launches were used to drag them over and even then in flood conditions it took over 6 hours to make the upstream crossing. 

Wednesday 13th August

Rain, rain and more rain - through a lot of the night and all morning.  The people in tents looked a bit sorry for themselves, but nothing blew down.  So we spent a very lazy morning indoors until the sun came out about 1.30.  So armed with a 'discover Chatillon' leaflet we walked over the long suspension bridge into the small town.  Three small rivers flow through the town aiming for the Loire and all were in very full flow and each one flowed through an old lavoir.  We should have found a geocache at each of them, but only one was reachable in these conditions.  We couldn't look in the church because there was a funeral going on, so we thought we'd find a Salon de The.  We spotted the smart-looking Mairie and guessed a cafe should be nearby.  Yes - opposite was the Cafe de la Mairie - but what a let-down (see photo)!!  We were surprised to find that we had walked 4 miles by the time we got back, so deserved our home-made cup of tea.