Rain, Reims and getting ready for Rob…

In our last post, I think we were um-ing and ah-ing about whether or not to take the boat to Reims meet our friend, Rob, who was going to be staying in the area with friends and then joining us for a few days afterwards. I seem to recall that we were in Bar-le-Duc awaiting the arrival of a Waterways Guide to the Champagne-Ardenne region… (Waterways guides are an essential - we don’t go anywhere without the appropriate one for the region we are in. They provide maps of the waterway and surrounds with details of distances, locks, mooring spots, lock opening hours, telephone numbers to contact the VNF if there are any difficulties and other useful boatie information.) Thanks to a fantastic bookshop in Bar-le-Duc, the guidebook we were looking for arrived very speedily and we decided that we would indeed make the detour. That was in the last week of August. Without accident or incident, nor any particular highlights for that matter, we made our way to Vitry-le-François at the end of the Canal de la Marne au Rhin. We arrived there on the 30th of August, having been on that canal since the 11th of July. From our maps, it would appear to be the second longest of the French canals after the Canal du Rhône au Rhin.

The end of August also seems to have marked the end of summer. Although we have had some lovely weather since then, the thermometer has taken a definite dive, especially mornings and evenings. Some days have been decidedly chilly too! For a while we tried to convince ourselves that the different colour in some trees was because of the seed pods but we have now had to accept that it really does have more to do with the leaves changing colour. In fact, the damn things are even falling from the trees now, which makes denying the change of seasons even harder.

We were able to take our time heading towards Reims, which is just as well because we had several rainy days or half-days and - for fairly obvious reasons - we prefer not to navigate in the rain. It’s hard enough for J, who does the driving, but even less pleasant for C, who looks after the rope work when going through locks and has had the occasional drenching along the way. On one of the rainy days we navigated for just under an hour, making our way to Condé-sur-Marne at the junction of the Canal Lateral à la Marne and the Canal de l’Aisne à la Marne before deciding to give up for the day. Having not seen anyone we knew for weeks and weeks, we ran into two couples we knew there: Joy and Bill, a kiwi couple with a boat very like ours, and Pat and Eileen, an English couple on their new boat “Merlot 2” . (They still had the original “Merlot” when last we met them and funnily enough they had seriously considered buying Klaus and Irene’s boat - you’ll remember we befriended them in Nancy and may have mentioned that we lusted after their gorgeous “Antica“). While Joy and Bill decided to brave the conditions and keep navigating, Pat & Eileeen, like us, decided to hunker down for the rest of the day. Some of the time, we literally did that but during one break in the weather, we ducked out to see what Condé had to offer. There wasn’t a great deal but there was beautiful-looking church set in lovely grounds, which we could only appreciate from a distance because the gates to the grounds were locked. There was a not-very-inspiring looking café-bar and an open Boulanger (always a bonus!). There was also a little champagne house, the Maison Potié. We were just discussing the pros and cons of visiting it for a tasting, especially if you are not necessarily wanting to buy any wine, when it started to rain. Oh well, we were too far to make it to the boat and stay dry, so we opted for a champagne tasting instead. (Well, what would expect us to do?!)

What a good move that was! The woman who served us was just delightful: and happy to talk about the wines, the harvest (which will be happening as we write) and more than happy for us to taste our way through their range of champagnes (Brut, Extra-Brut, Blanc de Blanc and Rosé) providing VERY generous tastings along the way - whether we wanted to buy any or not…. Of course, she is a wise and clever saleswoman and when we left her place, the skies were brighter and our wallets lighter. We bought one of each of the wines we tried at an average of around 13 euros a bottle. That’s really extravagant for us as we usually buy in the 2-4 euros-a-bottle range here but it doesn’t seem that expensive for what is very good champagne indeed. We also bought a jar of Peach jam, made from funny little peaches which have an intense flavour. The bottle of bubbly certainly stood up to the test that evening as we shared it with Pat and Eileen on their beautiful new boat.

We ended up not taking the boat into Reims, although we did go there ourselves. Every boatie we spoke to put us off the idea:, it was too expensive, too industrial, full, noisy, not pleasant, not in a nice part of town… Not a single boatie recommended it, so we decided (as so many boaties do), to base ourselves at Sillery, just 10 km to the south-east of the city and to visit from there. We also figured that Rob’s friends would be happy enough to drop him off there (and so it turned out). We had three days in Sillery, the first of them Thursday) was fine and sunny but with a cool breeze. Anyone who knows us well, would recognise a good day to get the clothes washed and dried in preparation for a guest on the boat, so that’s what we did. And we were able to get a new gas bottle and 80 litres of diesel from the supermarket, conveniently situated just a few hundred metres away. With Saturday dedicated to cleaning, grocery shopping and making sure the boat was ready to host our guest, that left Friday for us to visit Reims.

It rained; gently at the start of the day as we got on the bus with one or two students from Sillery who have to go to Reims to attend secondary school and then more heavily as we arrived in Reims. It was not quite 9am and the first return bus was not until 5:30 in the evening (the times are to suit the school children; other passengers fit in around them). We were there for the day and it was too early for anything to be open other than a café… We had coffee and stayed under cover for an hour before venturing out into the city, still in the rain. Suffice to say that no city is at its best in those conditions and even less so when half of its central city roads are being dug up to put in a tram line. We did our best to stay warm and dry by buying an all-day ticket for the buses. There are two lines that go past the majority of the tourist highlights but to catch them you have to find the appropriate bus stop first. That proved quite a challenge as the ones we were looking for - it was pouring by this stage - had been moved because of the road works and no-one seemed to know where they had been moved to, least of all us. The day did have some highlights. The cathedral - yet another Notre Dame - is a stunner as you might expect of the church where every king of France (from Clovis in 498 to Charles X in 1825) was crowned. It’s in the middle of some significant restoration work and the information about that was fascinating too. The St Remi Basilica was fabulous too and perhaps more appealing in some ways. It houses the remains of St Remi, the bishop who crowned Clovis in 498. That sort of thing can be a bit hard for us to get our New World heads around! Lunch was good too and the return to a nice, dry, comfortable and homely boat was never more welcome! I think we owe it to Reims to return for a visit on a sunny day…

…and the sun did come out again the following week when Rob was on board, for which we were very grateful. Doing the tourist thing in the rain may not be much fun but being three on a relatively small boat in the rain doesn’t have a lot to recommend it either.