08 CHAMPAGNE-ARDENNE - DE NAMUR À SAINT-JEAN-DE-LOSNE

guide de navigation fluviale

The Meuse (from Namur to Mouzon), the Canal des Ardennes, the canal from the Aisne to the Marne, the Canal alongside the Marne, the canal from the Marne to the Rhine (from Vitry-le-François to Sermaize-les-Bains), the canal between Champagne and Bourgogne, the Petite-Saône (from Rigny to Saint-Jean-de-Losne).

This guide takes all of the navigable channels that join the Ardenne to the Champagne region and the Champagne region to Burgundy.

The Meuse is the most beautiful means of access to our canals for Belgian, Dutch and German recreational sailors. We leave it shortly before Sedan to reach the Champagne region by taking the Canal des Ardennes. This canal, which is superb, wild and should be better known, accompanies the Aisne.

Further on, the canal from the Aisne to the Marne opens the way towards the capital of the Champagne region.

Then, immediately upon leaving Reims, a succession of beautiful tree-lined channels descends in levels to the Canal alongside the Marne. This canal crosses the vineyards of Champagne from Épernay, to finish by joining the canal from the Marne to the Saône which, in 2005, was renamed the canal between Champagne and Burgundy(and which the bargemen still call the Heuilley canal).

The canal between Champagne and Burgundy is the most important link in the Marne-Saône connection, the most commercial of the four channels that connect the Seine to the Mediterranean. It traverses the plateau of Langres at 340 m altitude through the Balesmes tunnel (4820 m long), before reaching the Petite Saône and its beautiful stopovers of Gray, Pontailler, Auxonne and Saint-Jean-de-Losne.