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C H Â T I L L O N - E N - B A Z O I S x V E N I C E

- the Little Venice of the Bazois -

VENICENESS: 6.6 OVERALL EXPERIENCE: 8.3

TOTAL: 14.9/20

Châtillon-en-Bazois is a small village in the Nièvre département. Located in a rural, woodland area known as the Bazois, Châtillon is a gateway to the Morvan Regional Natural Park. It is crossed by the Canal du Nivernais and by the river Aron, whick makes it a rather fluvial village. Inhabited by roughly 950 people - the Chatillonnais - Châtillon is not exactly a place you go to, but rather one you only drive or sail through. It is by no means an official Little Venice, and probably stands as my most idiosyncratic choice so far.

It is a place I know well, one I have driven through almost every month for the past 26 years of my life. I took a liking to it when I started paying attention to the things around me, the landscapes, the architecture, at about 8 years old. I liked the greyish town houses, so out of place in such a small village. Ten years later, I found myself doing a summer job as a lockkeeper on the Canal du Nivernais. Along with twenty-odd youngsters, I had a one-day training in Châtillon, where I was taught how to manipulate a lock. It was an easy task. On that peaceful, beautiful day of July, I rediscovered Châtillon, its 600-year-old castle standing majestically on top of a small mull over the canal, its austere and perfectly symmetrical garden contrasting with the endless flux of the water. I was not attributed the lock of Châtillon, but that of Bazolles, further North. Of this period of my life, I have the fondest memories. For a month, all I did was sleep away the hangover of the previous night's party in the shade of a beech tree, read dozens of books, and chat endlessly with my mate Audrey, who happened to work at the lock next to mine. And I was paid for that. Occasionally of course, I would have to open the lock for the bargemen. Most of them were friendly Dutch people. They would often stop for a while to talk, and ask me about the things to see around. I would always mention Châtillon, as if it were some kind of unmissable, unforgettable sight. Looking back at it now, I wonder what the Dutch tourists thought about it. Perhaps I set their expectations too high, perhaps I should have been a little less passionate about it.

Quite recently, I decided to drive to Châtillon and walk around it, as a way to confront my nearly Edenic memory of it to the actual place. Accompanied by my mother, my aunt, my grandmother, and my grandmother's sister, I parked in front of the 1868 Neo-Roman church, took my camera, and got ready to explore. The village was astonishingly quiet, and most of the doors and windows were shut. We walked by a group of teenagers who were listening to terrible French hip-hop on a mobile phone. They were killing time at the village's sole bus stop, somehow mimicking what other teenagers from more urban areas sometimes do. They were definitely not waiting for a bus, or perhaps not for the kind of bus that stops twice a day in Châtillon, but for one that would instantly make them grow four years older, or take them to a place that only exists in the minds of bored 14-year-olds. They looked at us inquisitively and instantly made us feel like strangers. A weird, slightly vain instinct made me grab my camera and exhibit it - almost parade it - to let them know I was up to something. Instead of heading directly to the canal, we decided to delay the moment we would eventually lay eyes on it - as a way to excite our imagination and toy with our patience - and walked down the rue du Lion d'Or, a narrow alley that is perpendicular to the main street. At the bottom of the alley, we found a football field on which a twenty-something man was playing alone, and heard laughter in the distance. A lottery was taking place at the municipal campsite, which partly explained why the village seemed deserted. In the fading clouded light of a late Spring afternoon, the scene was melancholy and comforting at the same time, and seemed to me to perfectly encapsulate rural life in 21st-century France.

We then advanced towards the castle, and trod along the canal for some time. Empty of barges, it was as lifeless as its banks and the main street it crosses. The castle was greyer than I remembered, but impressive nonetheless. Its Gothic windows were a good enough evocation of Flemish architecture - if not of some of the palazzi of Venice itself. The French gardens, however, were mostly unkempt, save from the nicely trimmed box trees. Clearly, it was not the tourist season yet, and seeing it then highlighted how seasonal the life of the canal is - comes Summer, it gurgles; comes Winter, it dies, suddenly rendered unnecessary.

As we walked back to the car, we found ourselves in a narrow side street that unexpectedly led us to the bank of the river Aron. I had not planned to pay much attention to the Aron, so the sight caught me by surprise: there it was, hidden in plain sight, the actual Little Venice of Châtillon - houses built right by the water, coexisting with it peacefully, almost organically. I instantly imagined how pleasant it would be to wake up in one those houses everyday, to open the bedroom's window, and see and smell and hear the water down there. A very popular French proverb says that to live happily, you need to live discreetly. It seems particularly adequate for Châtillon, where life and beauty are not where you expect them to be: away from the main street, away from the canal, but next to the football field and on the banks of the Aron. From then on, the connection with Venice, though still slightly confused, started to emerge.

As we walked back on the main street, and stopped in front of a shop that had obviously been abandoned for at least twenty years, the connection became clearer. In the dusty shop window were exhibited, among other memorabilia, an accordion, a Renault teddy bear, and a record of village dance music. There was something quite poignant about the dust, the weird random items that had probably been desired by someone sometime, and the long-gone past the shop evoked and still materialised. Though on a very different scale, it made me think of the abandoned palaces of Venice, of those houses no one will ever inhabit again, of those emblems of past grandeur and wealth which will slowly deteriorate, crumble, and then disappear completely. The Venetians and the Chatillonais thus have more in common than a body of water they cherish and consider as an extension of their living space, they also share the feeling and the experience of living in a decaying place. Though very different in origin - it is linked to the environment and tourism in Venice, to economic geography in Châtillon - that sense of decay is probably felt in much the same way in both places. And surely, it is a truly sublime experience, one that makes life and the aesthetic pleasures one can get out of it all the more precious. The population of Châtillon has indeed been steadily declining since 1881, and it would be no surprise the village’s life became as seasonal as that of the canal in a not-so-distant future. The loss would surely not be as profound and far-reaching as that of Venice, but it would mean the disappearance of a very decent Little Venice; and with it, of a part of the Venetian state of mind.

Nico.

- websites: Mairie de Châtillon-en-Bazois; Tourisme en Bazois; Château de Châtillon-en-Bazois

- pictures: NS, April 2015

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