Under the prison walls

Paris to Melun

We bade farewell to a fairly somnolent Arsenal harbour, turned sharp left and headed south. Plenty of bridges to look back on, though these are not so spectacular as the ones we enjoyed coming into the city from the north:

We were soon reminded that the Seine is an important commercial artery for Paris. Barges were unloading sand, gravel and building materials while we were still inside the city limits:

In the old days, they used to float timber downstream on the Nivernais Canal and the Yonne River, then the Seine, to Paris. And of course plenty of wine, grain and other goodies came north from Burgundy along the canal we will be travelling.

In fact, thinking about all the commercial activity we see prompted a bit of internet research. We found that France in 2014 transported more than 56 million tonnes of goods on the inland waterways. And in Europe, France is only about the fourth-busiest country by volume transported, after Germany, Holland and, apparently, Romania. There are, it seems, 37,000 kilometres of navigable waterways in the EU. Keeping all those goods off the roads has to be a good thing.

After that entrancing economics seminar, we continued up river, passing the confluence with the Marne, which is marked by an extraordinary Chinese hotel and restaurant:

Soon the river moved from the big city to the country, with small towns and villages. We enjoyed seeing these little children feeding the swans:

This shipwreck was a reminder of the very serious flooding on the Seine just a few weeks ago:

But gloom and doom was not on the minds of these boys, enjoying a hot summer's day on the river:

There are always plenty of large barges, in varying stages of conversion or delapidation, along the river. This one, surprisingly, sported a Stars and Stripes:

It was a long day on the river, but finally we arrived at Melun, which has various claims to fame, including a forbidding prison on an island in the river. We are moored up almost under its walls!

Tomorrow we should reach the Yonne, which in turn leads to the beginning of the Burgundy Canal. The weather promises to be hot, which will be a change. But I expect we'll complain about that too!