We had never handled a boat on a canal when we picked up the keys at Saint-Jean-de-Losne. By the end of a fortnight on the Burgundy canals my wife could single-hand a lock while I held the boat off, and we had drunk our way through a respectable cross-section of the Cote d'Or. If you want one trip that teaches you canal cruising and feeds you well, this is the one I send people to.
A word on naming first. People say "the Burgundy canals" loosely, but the spine of a hire-boat fortnight is the Canal de Bourgogne, with the option of dropping onto the Saone or the neighbouring Nivernais if your booking allows a one-way. I will plan around the Bourgogne and flag the junctions.
The shape of the canal
The Canal de Bourgogne links the Yonne at Migennes in the north with the Saone at Saint-Jean-de-Losne in the south, a distance of 242 km. It carries 189 locks, 113 on the Yonne side and 76 on the Saone side, climbing to a summit of 378 metres, the highest pound in France. That is a lot of lock for two weeks, which is why most hire crews do a section rather than the lot.
The three main hire bases are at Brienon in the north, Venarey in the middle and Saint-Jean-de-Losne in the south. We chose Saint-Jean-de-Losne because it is a proper boating crossroads where the canal meets the Saone, and because the southern climb gives you the famous summit without committing to all 242 km. The locks here run on a season schedule, open roughly nine to seven, shut for lunch around midday to one.
If the gauge and clearances are new to you, read the Freycinet gauge canal dimensions before you book, because the hire fleet is built to that standard and your bridges and chamber widths follow from it.
Week one: climbing towards the summit
From Saint-Jean-de-Losne you turn up the canal at the Saone end and start the patient climb. The first days are easy, broad reaches through farmland with single locks well spaced, perfect for finding your feet. We deliberately did short days at the start, four or five hours, to drill the lock routine before the chambers came thick and fast.
The middle of the canal stiffens up around Vandenesse and Pouilly-en-Auxois as you near the top. This is heavy lock country and the days get longer. We learned to put one person ashore with a windlass and the centre line while the other steered, which is the only sane way to work a flight without losing your temper.
A workable first week:
- Saint-Jean-de-Losne to Saint-Jean-de-Losne side villages and on towards Dijon, three or four days.
- Dijon itself, a full rest day. You can tie up close to the centre and walk into a real city with markets and a cathedral.
- Dijon up towards Pouilly, three days, watching the locks multiply as the land rises.
Through the Pouilly tunnel
The summit is the trip's set-piece. At Pouilly-en-Auxois the canal vanishes into a tunnel 3,337 metres long, the bore driven straight through the watershed and extended by one-way cuttings at each end. On a small hire boat the passage takes roughly 40 minutes to an hour, run on a controlled one-way system so you wait your turn and go when you are told.
I will not pretend I loved it the whole way. The tunnel is barely wider than the boat in places, the light at the far end stays a pinprick for an unsettling while, and you steer by your headlamp on wet stone. Then you come out into the upper pound, kill the engine, and the silence is total. Worth every minute of the climb.
Week two: back down, or onward
Here is the decision a fortnight forces. You can turn at the summit and descend the way you came, which we did, savouring the locks downhill where the work is gentler and the views open ahead of you. Or, if you booked a one-way hire, you carry on down the Yonne side towards Migennes, where the canal meets the Yonne and the wider network opens up. From the Saone end you can also drop south and link towards Lyon and eventually the Mediterranean, the classic Rhone, Lyon to the Mediterranean run, though that is a bigger trip than two weeks allows.
We turned at Pouilly and made the descent a holiday rather than a route march. The towpath alongside the Bourgogne is one of the best cycle ways in France, so we rode ahead each morning to the next village for bread, cheese and a bottle, and met the boat at the day's first lock.
Whether to hire at all
Plenty of people ask whether they should bring their own boat down instead. For a first canal trip the answer is almost always hire: no licence to buy, no vignette to sort, no winter mooring to find, and the fee covers the lot. I laid out the full case in hire versus own boat on the French canals, and Burgundy is the textbook argument for hiring while you decide whether canal life suits you.
Working the locks without falling out
Nobody warns you that the biggest hazard on a canal holiday is the argument at the lock. With 76 chambers on the southern climb alone, you repeat the same routine dozens of times a day, and the only way to keep it pleasant is to agree roles early and stick to them.
We settled ours on day two. My wife took the lock, stepping ashore with the windlass and the centre line, while I held the boat in the chamber and kept the engine ready. We never swapped mid-flight, we never shouted, and we used hand signals once the engine noise made talking pointless. On the manned locks the VNF keeper does the heavy work and you just pass your lines, but the automated chambers leave it all to you, so the drill matters.
A few hard-won habits: rig long enough lines that the person ashore is not heaving the boat by brute force, keep fenders well placed because canal lock walls are rough, and never, ever cleat off hard in a filling lock, where the boat must be free to rise. Watch the turbulence as the gates crack open and ease the throttle accordingly. By the end of two weeks the whole thing was muscle memory, and we were through chambers faster than crews twice our number.
Eating and drinking your way down
This is Burgundy, so the food is half the holiday. We made a point of timing stops to hit market mornings, and the larger towns along the canal all have one. Dijon alone could keep a greedy crew busy for days, between the covered market, the mustard shops and the restaurants.
Between towns the canal runs close to some of the most famous vineyards on earth. We left the boat for an afternoon and walked up into the Cote de Nuits, tasted at a small grower, and carried a case back to the boat low in the bilge for ballast and morale. The trick is restraint: taste in the evening when the boat is tied up, never before a day's locks, and buy what you will actually drink rather than a cellar you have to lug home.
Practical notes
A handful of things that made our fortnight smoother.
Provision in the towns and do not assume a shop in every village. Dijon and the larger stops have everything. The summit villages have almost nothing, so we stocked up before the climb.
Mind the lunch hour. Locks close for roughly an hour in the middle of the day and so do half the shops, so plan your cruising and your shopping around it rather than fighting it. The whole question of where to tie up overnight is covered in canal mooring overnight in France, which saved us hunting for bollards in the dark more than once.
Take the wine seriously, lightly. You are cruising past Gevrey-Chambertin and Nuits-Saint-Georges. Buy a case, stow it low for ballast, and ration the tasting to evenings when the boat is tied up.
Two weeks gives you roughly Saint-Jean-de-Losne to the Pouilly summit and back, with rest days in Dijon and the wine villages, at a pace that teaches you everything you need to know about canals while feeding you like royalty. We came home converts.
