A week in Toul

We are in Toul and have been here since Monday. We plan to leave next Monday but that is flexible too. We needed a cheapish, pleasant place to stay at to catch up on a lot of little jobs, some of them leaky windows and a place called Toul seems appropriately named for stopping to do jobs. They are not life-threatening but are a constant source of irritation. It costs 6 euros a night to stay here, water and electricity included, and 1 euro for a shower, which can do two people. We booked in for a week at a bit of a discount, 30 euros for the week. The port itself is pleasant, close to the centre of town with good supermarkets and other services. We enjoyed an early evening of free wine tasting of the local product (Cotes de Toul) just over the road from the port, and the bread from the Boulangerie also just over the road is possibly the best we have had. We have made a good start on jobs and have even done some we hadn’t planned on doing. The weather has so far been glorious with fabulous evenings.

We have met, and re-met, lots of lovely people and a few kiwis (some lovely and some fellows who are your typical, helpful kiwi bloke) We had a rude and stroppy bully of a Frenchman one night who berated the poor capitainerie lady because he had moored his boat only to find all the power points had been taken. There were plenty of places in other parts of the port with power points but no, he didn’t want to move and he didn‘t think he should have to pay full price if he didn‘t have electricity. The solution was apparently to share a power point… Without talking to us he pulled our plug out, added a dodgy looking connection that hopefully would give power to both boats. C had a spirited word or two with him in French pointing out that it wasn’t usual behaviour to meddle with our power without asking and making it obvious that she expected him to do something about protecting the connection from possible rain. With bad grace he endeavoured to protect the connection with a plastic bag. As it happened all went well but the contretemps was unpleasant and was heard by all the neighbouring boaties. Compare that with another Frenchman who tied up last night and encountered the same problem. He came and nicely asked us if he could put in a double adaptor to ‘share’ a power point and of course we were happy to oblige. Also he had a ‘proper’ connection so it was safe.

We are loving our boat more and more and having seen in and out of a lot of different models of boats have come to appreciate certain features of our one. Many boats have lots of narrow sets of stairs separating one area of the boat from another. Ours has two steps leading from the saloon down to the galley and cabins. Very few have an ‘island’ double bed, in fact many - usually Dutch boats - don‘t have a double bed at all. Our gas stove has four rings, a griller and an oven, which seems to be unusual. Erewhon has quite a flat bottom and draws only 60cm of water. It is quite beamy (that means “wide” or “broad” for those without a boating background) at 3.6 metres and doesn’t rock as much as many of the boats which have deeper keels, high superstructures and elevated steering positions. We had a mouth-watering, brand new steel boat moored next to us for a few days. It was similar to our boat in many ways in terms of the general layout but that was where the similarities ended. It was owned by a very nice Dutch couple and it was built in Holland with special features they particularly wanted. It had all the bells and whistles, including satellite tv, stern and bow thrusters, and a washing machine. C constantly reminds J that Erewhon does in fact have a stern and a bow thruster - her! She fulfils the role in many situations by pushing off a lock wall or pontoon from the front, back or middle of the boat, as required. Unlike real bow thrusters, however, she is completely ineffective when we are trying to manoeuvre in the middle of the water when there is nothing solid to push against.

We haunt bricolage stores (hardware eg Mitre 10 Mega) and are delighted to find solutions to various little challenges we want to solve. One needs time to look carefully at what’s for sale because with everything written in French, it is not always immediately obvious what a particular product is for. You also can’t always find an equivalent product to what we would get at home, so the “solution” might end up looking quite different to what we first imagined. Some brand products are available in some stores and not others eg Sikaflex and a particular degreasing cleaner that is fantastic. It can be frustrating if you cannot get what you want and some jobs are either deferred until you can get it or you use a product that might not do the job properly. Occasionally, in a bigger town, it is possible to cycle or catch a bus to a big industrial zone to find what you want. We have cycled, bussed and walked back to the boat with all manner of odd loads including carpet and lengths of timber.

We watch the way different people do things and constantly copy or modify their better ideas to suit ourselves. A shortish rope with a loop spliced at both ends has proved very useful. It can be used when wanting to tie up quickly to moor the stern of the boat to a bollard, then deal with the other ropes. It is great to use when locking up or down sometimes if there is a ladder or pole to loop around. It is safer and easier to manage than a long rope. A short length of hose with a trigger rose attachment designed for watering gardens makes a quick and refreshing shower to cool off if we are on shore water. If we want a warm shower well all we have to do is lay out the whole length of the hose in the sun and in 10 minutes we can have a warm shower, or a too hot one, if we are not careful!

One of the interesting things about being in one port for a while is to get a feel for the rhythm of the place and to watch the comings and goings of the different boats. Here in Toul, the port is sandwiched between two locks, both very close to the port. Although all the guide books say that the locks are operational from 7am-7pm, the ones here most definitely do not function before 9am. Every morning, just before nine, we hear the sound of boat motors kicking into action and rush hour begins. Boats take off in both directions for the next hour or so and then the calm reigns once again. There is occasional traffic throughout the day - departures, arrivals and through traffic- but things start to get busy again around mid-afternoon as boats arrive to take up their moorings for the night. There is always a real mixture of nationalities represented each night. There are, of course, the great traditional users of the inland waterways: German, Dutch, Belgian and British; some French but not as many as you might expect; lots of Swiss boaties too, especially in these eastern parts of France. While we’ve been here, we’ve also seen an Austrian boat, one Danish and one Swedish boat, one American, one Australian and an over-representation of New Zealanders with three boats passing through the port in the five days so far. The boats come in all shapes and sizes as well but there is another whole post to be written about that sometime…