The navigable River Saône runs from Corre in the north where it joins the Canal des Vosges. It runs for 375 kilometres to join the River Rhône at Lyon. On the way it has links with several canals that are still in use: Canal Entre Champagne et Bourgogne, Canal de Rhône au Rhin, Canal de Bourgogne and Canal du Centre.
The upper reaches are known as the Petite Saône for the 198 kilometres from Corre down to St-Jean-de-Losne and for the 177 kilometres from there down to Lyon it becomes the Grande Saône.
History (from fench-waterways.com) – The Saône has always been the most navigable of French rivers, with a very gentle gradient and regular flow, albeit subject to floods which can make the broad valley look like an inland sea. The Roman general Vetus envisaged a canal from the Saône to the Moselle. Natural navigability made merchants an easy prey for local lords and tax collectors, and chains were laid across the river in many locations, to collect tolls. Colbert declared them illegal in 1664, but it seemed to Delalande – writing in 1778 – that ‘the easier the navigation, the more its natural advantages have been abused by exactions of all sorts’. Navigability in the industrial era was introduced, as on the other major rivers, after the movable weir was invented by Poirée. By 1847 there were five weirs and locks on the Saône. The canalisation as completed above Auxonne has not changed, while development of the high-capacity waterway downstream meant the replacement of 12 early weirs and locks by only five in the 215km. The last, at Seurre, was completed in 1980. The entire waterway remains in the national priority network, and may one day be adapted to form the high-capacity Saône-Moselle waterway (Vetus’ dream!)
Not only do we include pictures of the locks we have also captured lock cottages and name plates where they exist.
Please click on the links below to see the locks in the corresponding section of the river:
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