2. L'Isle Adam - just up the Oise from Auvers - is an enchanting little village. There is a lot of water, islands joined by bridges and a distinct impression of a well-to-do neighbourhood. Our mooring spot was one of the best we have used (a well-maintained pontoon out of the main flow of the river) and was very close to the centre of town. An Italian family moored up next to us and we did our best to communicate with them. Their English was better than our Italian. They had just sailed their brand new Linssen down from Holland and were very pleased with it. (The Linssen is something akin to a Mercedes or a BMW of the waterways – very nice boats indeed!) We did the town on our bikes, rode past the grande ecluse and the petit ecluse (the locks – big and small) and were impressed to find a very well appointed viewing platform from where one could watch boats pass through the locks. As well as a large, covered swimming pool, there is an artificial beach complete with sand. Entry to this cost around NZ $30 per adult and around $17 per child – no wonder so few people were using it! We found the Chinese Pavilion built in the time of Louis 14th by someone who wanted to have something Chinese in their garden because that was the fashion at the time. A feature of this building is that part of the bottom floor is a dam - you can just see that in the photo.
Public buildings are well maintained with beautiful gardens, the local Police Station (below)is a good example. We found a small but exquisite rose garden and enjoyed a French vanilla ice-cream as we admired the view.
3. Jet skis! Some people love them, some people hate them. I do both. They are fun to ride on but a real nuisance when they invade your space! We had had a long day navigating from L'Isle Adam to Ste Maxence and were ready for a bit of quiet time. We had planned to stop much sooner but couldn't find a mooring spot we were comfortable with. We went up the lock at Ste Maxence and joy oh joy there was a good mooring spot well out of the way of river traffic and the main flow of the river (which is doing 1-2 km an hour at the moment so no big deal). A long barge, pushing another long barge moored up across from us. Two testosterone enriched young men used a crane to put a jet ski in the water and spent the next hour hooning up and down the river with the wake rocking our boat. They were showing off big time (yes, there was a girl on board the barge) and we saw one of them bury the nose of the ski deep into the water and fall off. I admit to a little grin at that point. The behaviour of the two as they tried to outdo each other was so predictable! For all the irritation they caused us, they also amused and entertained us. It was a stunning evening and they were enjoying the river.
4.
These two photos are of the two barges mentioned above. It is really difficult to accurately portray the size of the lock and the length and width of the barges. The barges look like dinky toys but all up must be nearly150m long and 5.5m wide. We’ll leave you to try and work out how big the lock is – and to try and imagine our little boat (11.6m x 3.5m) coming up it all alone. We’d done that just a few hours earlier.
5. Not surprisingly, there are hundreds and hundreds of war memorials in France. They are in public places of every kind and in and around churches. In an earlier posting, we included a memorial that unusually had a statue of a baby boy with an inscription that said they had “sent their babies to war”. It was very poignant. The signing of the 1918 Armistice took place in Compiegne and this photo was taken outside the church there. A simple but very moving piece of sculpture.
6. One morning we woke to a clear blue sky and no wind (an event in and of itself this summer). There were close to 100 vapour trails criss-crossing the sky. After consulting our Atlas, C said there were 4 airports of varying size around our mooring spot. We hope the air traffic control people communicate with each other!
7. Usually we do our grocery shopping by bike as the panniers, baskets and our packs enable us to carry a lot with relative ease. In Compiegne, we were convinced that the bus from the Railway Station was a better option as the supermarkets are a long way out of town and the bus is free. We don’t think it was a quicker option as it did a tour of half the residential areas of the town before dropping us right outside the supermarket but it was certainly easy! It was also fun. Not because of the shopping but because of the conversation we had while we waited for the bus to go home. We were hurrying to get to the bus stop because we knew we didn’t have much spare time and the busses run every 30 minutes. One of three women already at the bus stop made a comment about C making J run around and that not being fair… This led on to more conversation about shopping, the joy of free buses, where we came from and what we were doing in Compiegne. But the conversation really took off when C mentioned that the woman at the Tourist Information Office in town hadn’t really been all that helpful. Well, it seems that people from Compiegne are often that way and each of the women (none of whom knew each other) tried to outdo each other with stories and examples, and then examples of how people were so much warmer, nicer, more helpful, etc. where they came from. It really was very funny. The conversation was soon curtailed by the arrival of the bus – but as each of the three got off the bus they bade us a warm farewell and happy holidays in France.
No comments:
Post a Comment