Safe return to St Jean de Losne

On Wednesday 17 September, after just over three and a half months away, we brought Erewhon back into the Gare d’Eau or port at St Jean de Losne two days ahead of our scheduled arrival time. We had intended to spend those two days in Chalon-sur-Saone but man and nature conspired to get in the way.

Ever since the start of our trip we have been very aware of the fact that in order to get back to St Jean de Losne, we would need to come up the Saone, a major river , usually sedate but capable of capricious behaviour in times of rain. We’d seen it in flood at the start of the season and it was in flood again when we met it last week, although fortunately not as badly so. When we came down off the Canal du Centre - and you really do “come down” as the lock at the end is an impressive 10.76 metres high - we found the Saone running swiftly and a bit more than a metre above its usual height. There was also a nasty wind blowing, which never helps when navigating. It was late afternoon when we headed down the river for a couple of kilometres into Chalon sur Saone - not our usual strategic time of arrival and we were to pay the price. When we turned into the port at Chalon and started looking for a mooring spot, we were told that the place was full and that the next possibility was a very small town one and a half hours upriver. At 4:30pm with the river running high, there was every chance that the port there would also be full, so we decided to head back up onto the canal, where we knew we could moor safely. This is the first time we have backtracked and at the start of the season I don’t think I could have imagined the situation of choosing to go up a 10.76 metre high lock! However, we knew the lock to be a gentle giant and the prospect of getting stuck on a running river after dark is enough to change many an idea…

Overnight we decided that we didn’t want to bother with Chalon, the possibility of a still full port and the nasty current flowing through the bridge when you come out of the port, so we left our mooring in time to be the first boat through the giant lock and turned left off the Canal du Centre heading up the Saone towards St Jean de Losne. We were delighted to find the river had dropped noticeably overnight and the wind had dropped as well. It seemed a much friendlier waterway than it had done the night before.

The PK markings on our map, which mark off each kilometre along the waterway, indicated that we had some 70km to cover to get back to St Jean, so we were expecting it to take more than one day of navigating. However, as we moved up the Saone, we found that parts of the river have been shortened by canals over the years and it turned out that the actual distance was just on 55km, which meant that just before 5pm we were happily bringing the boat back into the familiar surroundings of the marina at St Jean de Losne… so familiar in fact that the faces on the pontoon as we came in to moor seemed to be exactly those that were there when we left: Brian and Liz from De Laak, Brian and Maggie on Seabird and Chris (alas without Roger) on Liberte, all looking excited (or was it surprised?) to see us safely back - it felt like coming home to a family! The only people missing were John and Elaine from Taupo but we knew they would be back before we left for our real home in NZ.

Since our return to port, we’ve spent quite a lot of time on catch ups and there are still more of those to go. We’ve also spent a bit of time trying to talk with David Blanquart to discuss the winterising of the boat and the work that we want done to it over the winter. It took a while to find him in his office with some time for us (he’s not one to tie himself down by making appointments) but now that we have done so we know what his staff will take care of and therefore what we need to do. Mostly it is a case of cleaning, drying everything out as much as possible, packing linen and clothing into plastic to protect it from moisture (condensation is always a problem on boats, especially over winter), making sure there is nothing liquid left in the boat that might suffer from freezing - the temperatures here in winter can get as low as -15 degrees so that includes wine as well as all water pipes. We need to sort out food and dispose of / consume anything that won’t cope with 6-7 months in storage and we need to work out what to leave here and what to bring home. We’re hoping that our suitcases for the return trip will not be as heavy as they were coming over.



As well as that, I have secured work (Wellington-based, with a little help from a friend) from early October through until mid-May and we are trying to confirm details of our flights home. When I rang Korean Air yesterday to reconfirm our flights, I was told that it wasn’t at all necessary but I asked them to check anyway - we had had 2 (admittedly minor) changes to our outbound flight even before we left NZ and I wanted to make sure the times were still as we had on our tickets. It’s just as well I did! The young lady was able to confirm the Paris-Seoul leg but then asked if we’d changed the Seoul-Auckland one to the following day. We hadn’t, but it turns out that Korean Air may have… It seems that there is no longer an flight from Seoul to Auckland on the day we are supposed to be travelling. We are now waiting to hear back from the airline with firm details of the bookings - and to find out who gets to pay for the stopover in Seoul if it is required!

Autumn has definitely arrived in this part of the world. Temperatures dropped dramatically with a thunderstorm (yes, another one) a couple of weeks ago and have not gone over the 20 degree mark since. The overnight lows are in the 5-8degree range - the hot water bottle has come out of the cupboard! But we have been lucky all the same - there has been no rain now for a week or so and none is predicted before the weekend when we leave SJL. The equinox has brought us sunny, breezy days (some would say windy but with Wellington as our point of reference we couldn’t agree) - perfect for getting things washed and dried! Tomorrow we take the boat on its last trip for the season to the other side of the boatyard: - a few hundred metres out of the marina and through the first lock on the Canal de Bourgogne. The boat comes out of the water on Thursday morning and we’ll spend our last two nights here in a hotel before leaving for Paris on Saturday morning. There we’ll spend a couple of nights with our lovely friend, Jean-Marc before flying home. When we actually arrive home is in the hands of Korean Air but it will be within a day either side of October 1.

We are both feeling sad as this part of the adventure comes to an end. It has been a fabulous few months and we have learnt so much - there may be another blog entry on that yet. Still, even if it were possible, neither of us fancies the idea of staying in the boat over the winter as some people do - the size of the wood stacks around here tell us all we need to know about the winter temperatures! We are looking forward to seeing family and friends at home and we are already starting to think about where we might take the boat next year.

Catherine

Sunday, 31 August

We have had a lot of wonderful days on the canals this summer and, perhaps not surprisingly, after a while some of them start to merge with others. This morning (31 August) was, however, one right out of the bag. We have been enjoying what may be our most settled spell of weather so far this summer - this is the fifth day of hot, sunny weather on the trot (but thunder storms are once again forecast for later on today). As has been the pattern for the last few days, the day began with mist on the canal and a heavy dew on the boat. We were up and navigating relatively early, leaving our mooring around 9am. There’s no point being on the water sooner as the lockkeepers don’t start work until 9am and the days have hardly begun. For some reason (no doubt related to latitude, longitude and time zones), 9am in France IS actually earlier than 9am in NZ. It s not just a cultural thing as I once thought - the days themselves do not get underway until quite a lot later here. The sun seems to rise later and the early morning coolness takes longer to clear.

It was our last leg on the Canal Lateral a la Loire with just 10km and a single lock between us and the port at Digoin (no, I’d never heard of it either before we started reading canal guides). We set off in the last of the mist on yet another gloriously still morning. I’m sure that only those with recent experience of living in Wellington can truly appreciate the beauty of one windless day after another… The morning was cool but with the promise of heat later in the day and the canal moody with its mist and reflections. We were also both calm and relaxed: one lock in 10km covered today represents a real luxury and all the more so because the locks on this canal (even when locking up) have been more user-friendly than any others we’ve met. The positioning of the bollards seems to be standardised so we know what to expect when we arrive and can set ourselves (and our ropes) up accordingly; the lockkeepers have, without fail, been willing to assist with our ropes if we want them to and the locks themselves - whether through the actual mechanisms or through lockkeeper training - have provided us with a gentle ride up, even when on the rare occasion that we’ve had to share them with another boat. In some of the locks on the Nivernais the ride up was more akin to trying to hold onto a bucking horse!

So, a morning of “mist and mellow fruitfulness” and the canal all to ourselves as it meandered through the French countryside with the Loire river often in view alongside. It’s enough to make anyone want to sing… So sing, we did! We put the Great Tenors (Pavarotti and Domingo) on the tape deck, turned them up loud and sang our way through the countryside with them. Exhilarating stuff!

We didn’t know what to expect of the town of Digoin and its name somehow doesn’t promise much but the entry into the town by canal is a fabulous one. The lock is beside a tree-filled park and with its rise of four metres is the biggest that we’ve encountered on this canal. As you come up in the lock, the Pont-canal de Digoin comes into full view - the canal crosses the river, Loire, by means of a one-way bridge. Footpaths on the sides allow people access across and it is decorated with flower baskets. It is a weird and wonderful experience to cross a river on a canal bridge. This one is like the canal version of a grand avenue leading straight into the heart of town and into the biggest and busiest port we’ve encountered since we left St Jean de Losne. There’s another canal - the 55km Canal de Roanne a Digoin - which branches off here but we’ll leave that for another time. We had considered including it in this trip but, although we probably have time, we don’t want to have to rush and we need to allow ourselves some contingency time: there is always the chance that something might break down and it is possible that we may want to be back in St Jean a bit earlier than planned. Chris is returning to scatter Roger’s ashes on the Saone there and we’d like to be there for that.

Having arrived in port and found ourselves a mooring with electricity, J got on and did the washing while I cooked our Sunday lunch: roast chicken (a favourite) stuffed with leftovers of last night’s fried rice and accompanied by green beans (fresh from the market at Dompierre yesterday) and a creamy mushroom sauce… and a bottle of Cremant de Bourgogne (Burgundy bubbly) that we bought in Bailly a few weeks back. Dessert will be melon from Cavaillon, when we get around to eating it, which may be at dinner time.

Since I began writing this, the weather has broken and we’ve had one downpour complete with wind, thunder, lightning and hailstones. It’s possible there is more to come but we are still sitting in our togs and spending a very mellow afternoon doing gentle activities - reading, playing patience, dozing and writing. We’ll be in Digoin for a week as we meet our friends, Marlene and Margaret here next Sunday., so we are in no rush to get to know the town and we have a few more things to do on the boat. Perhaps a little more brown will disappear over the next few days or maybe we will finally find a way to stop one (or more) of the remaining leaks… And perhaps with the onset of September we’ll also have to face the reality of coming home and looking for work. CV writing and internet job-searching could also be on the agenda for the rest of the week… but I think for now, we’ll just relax and make the most of this last and lovely day of August.

Seeking cyber-space

As you may have gathered by the infrequency of our blog postings and responses to email, one of the great challenges of this way of life is finding ways to access the internet without paying exorbitant amounts for it. 4 euros an hour seems to be the standard rate here but you’ll appreciate that we don’t want to have to pay that too often! It also usually means using someone else’s computer, which is okay for picking up our email, slow-ish for responding as the different position of the letters on the French keyboard slows us both up to a greater or lesser extent and impossible for making blog postings as (understandably), no-one wants us putting our memory stick into their computer for fear of catching some nasty virus. So, for the blog, we really need to pick up a wifi connection of some sort. Easier said than done. It should be said that in the smaller towns (and to be fair, we are talking very small and very rural) there are simply no options at all for public access to the internet.

Here is a summary of how we have managed so far:

St Jean de Losne: theoretically free wifi at Blanquart’s yard where we were moored, never managed to tap into it even though they gave us the password. Did manage to tap into the neighbour’s wifi connection without his knowing and also used to visit kiwi friends, John and Elaine, in H2O’s yard and use their connection, although it was always a bit temperamental.

Menton - free wifi at the hotel which was great until the battery ran out and we realised we hadn’t taken an adapter with us. The hotel had loads of different kinds but not one that would do the trick for us. Very frustrating!

Dijon had options: 4 euros an hour at a cyber-café or have lunch at the Campanile Hotel and use their connection for as long as we liked. We did both at different times. There were supposed to be wifi hotspots at the railway station and at McDonald’s. We tried both but they turned out to only enable you to connect to your local (read French) ISP. Too bad if - like us - you don’t happen to have one!

Bligny sur Ouche: an 8km bike ride from the canal port of Pont d’Ouche to find a beautiful brand spanking new community centre with internet (not wifi) access. Very fast connection and very generous interpretation of the amount of time we spent on the computers.

Montbard - wandered the streets with my brother, Mark, and found an unsecured wifi connection - good for a quick check of the mail but not the most comfortable situation for writing extended replies!

Tonnerre - in a hotspot for Orange (a French ISP) so decided to purchase some time from them so we could work from the boat. Paid 10 euros by credit card and used about half of the three hours that allowed. The username and password, which were supposed to be sent both by email and to the mobile phone have never arrived! (Update: they did arrive - we believe- weeks later via a text message in Danish. Have not yet been back in a suitable Orange hotspot to check and see if they work)

Auxerre - free wifi in the port!!! Aaaaaaaaaa…. What luxury being able to use the computer on the boat for as long as we wanted! Lots of email and several blog updates posted.

Clamecy: free and unlimited wifi in a café in the centre of town (right opposite the Office de Tourisme). The coffee was even good too so repeat visits were in order and we were able to have a good catch up there.

Corbigny had a free wifi connection at the Office de Tourisme, which was closed the first time we went to visit (a Monday) but we managed from the steps outside. The second time we had the luxury of a dedicated room with a table and chairs… but limited time in and around haircuts and preparations for our next set of visitors.

The Office de Tourisme at Decize also had free wifi - but no space at all dedicated to using it. We stood outside with Emilee (our computer) perched on a fence and did what we could. It wasn’t exactly conducive to good, long communications however.

Digoin, where we have stopped for a week in preparation for our last set of visitors for this season, has 4-euro-an-hour internet at the Office de Tourisme but also free wifi in a café at the other end of town. We think we might also find some nearer to the port and with any luck, that’s where I’ll be making this posting from… (No, in fact we are back at the original cafe/restaurant having just had a steak and chips lunch - a rare treat - and it is bucketing down outside. We might be here for a while...)

Marlene and Margaret, our visitors, will be staying with us for two weeks so there will be less than usual time for log writing. Once they have gone, we’ll be back in St Jean de Losne and preparing the boat for the winter and ourselves for our return home. Hopefully, we’ll be able to find the wifi connection at Blanquart’s or we’ll just have to befriend someone moored at H20... (or sit on the step outside their office, as others have been seen to do)

It’s not ALL beer and skittles, you know!

We left Auxerre at 1pm on Tuesday 29 July having very much enjoyed our stay there, a catch-up with Wolfgang and a weekend visit from Jean-Marc. We had a pleasant and uneventful trip heading south but actually heading up river to Bailly. The mooring had the promised water but not the electricity. We needed water and unfortunately the tap closest to us hardly gave a dribble. A tap further down was running well but our hose didn’t quite reach it. We used ropes to turn the boat 180 degrees, which placed us well for the water and we filled up. An unforeseen result of this manoeuvre was to have the stern “facing” the river flow and so we collected a considerable amount on scum, weeds and other debris which we wouldn’t want around our prop. This meant that in the morning we had to do another 180 degree rope turn to release all the muck that had built up overnight before we started the motor. One of the pleasures of staying in Bailly was Bailly-Lapierre. This is a wine “cave” 200 metres from the mooring in an old underground quarry. This is a huge excavation - people drive cars in underground to taste wine and pick up orders, and there are 7 million bottles stored there at any one time. 4.50 euros paid for a guided tour, generous tastings and a souvenir wine glass. The tastings had the desired impact and we did manage to cart a dozen bottles back to the boat. We promptly drank one of the bottles while watching a beautiful sunset, so now we only have 11 to share with M, who has a penchant for sparkling wine and will be joining us soon.

The following morning we continued through to Cravant, where the port DID actually have the promised water and electricity - the latter only during the opening hours for the Tourist Information Office at the port but when it’s free, you don’t mind that! We used the power in the afternoon for the tasks that require it: getting the washing down (Thomas, the great washing spinner need electricity), charging Emilee (our computer) and the phone, and vacuuming the boat before going for a bike ride around the village. A few other boats were moored there and several camper vans parked up for the night. We were disturbed in the early hours of the morning by someone with a torch just next to our boat. We watched for a while feeling quite uneasy and then eventually rang the emergency number for the police. They noted the unusual activity and that was it as far as they were concerned. It didn’t help us feel any better but we did eventually manage to half-convince ourselves that the amount of noise he was making was hardly consistent with anyone up to no good. We did eventually go back to sleep but it would be fair to say that we had an eye and an ear half open for the rest of the night. Any thought of sleeping in was quashed at 7am when one of the campervan owners loudly berated the culprit for his behaviour during the night. Before he had woken us (at around 3am), he had apparently knocked on the door of their camper van asking for food. Perhaps unsurprisingly given the hour, he was given a short shrift. Fear is the first response at 3am when you are in a strange place and someone unknown encroaches on your space and behaves in an unexpected way. We think that what we heard was probably him going through rubbish bags looking for food.

The following morning we cycled to Vermenton ,which is at the end of a small side-canal that branches off the Nivernais. We wanted to know if it was worth taking our boat there. Once we had managed to get there ourselves - having been stranded on one side of the port with no obvious route to get over the water into the town - we decided that it was a nice enough place but we were better off staying in Cravant. We spent the afternoon trying to stay cool and went for a swim in the river nearby. Despite having the whole river at their disposal, a group of small boys continually intruded on our space and we eventually gave up and came “home” when one of them decided that mud-throwing might be quite fun… Later in the day when the weather and we were both a bit cooler, we picked our first blackberries of the season (31 July seems very early for blackberries) and possibly the best blackberries C has ever tasted! They were plump, juicy and shiny. We enjoyed them in blackberry sponge pudding for dessert - yes, even in the heat it was wonderful! - and then again with our muesli and yoghurt for breakfast in the morning. That night Mother Nature provided the disturbance and the spectacle in the form of yet another thunderstorm. The lightning was particularly impressive as were the wind gusts that accompanied the lashing rain. We tried not to be unsettled but it was still very late before either of us dropped off to sleep. In the cooler weather of the following morning, the somewhat tired twosome stayed at home and did jobs: we laid carpet in our cabin (covering yet more brown in the process!!!), made and hung curtains - also for our cabin - and removed a door that we have been tripping over ever since we got on the boat. Once it was gone, we wondered why we hadn’t got rid of it sooner. As the day heated up, we cooled down by hosing ourselves down in our togs and then settled in the shade for a quiet read… On the third night in Cravant we slept like babies.

We left early next morning and were in Pregilbert by lunchtime. We walked to the commercial trout and salmon hatchery nearby but didn’t see anything cheap enough to buy so went back to the boat for a lunch of supermarket smoked salmon pasta and salad and very nice it was too. The navigation after lunch is the worst we have experienced so far. The weather was not flash - drizzle and wind, although not cold. The first lock we came to was a challenge. It was closed, there was a strong crosswind and we were in the direct flow of the river Yonne that we were leaving at that point. We were third into the next lock, just managed to squeeze in and the bollards were well back from the edge making it difficult to get a rope around them. Locking up on this day continued to be a challenge when at the next lock with not a lock keeper in sight, Catherine went ashore and eventually found the lock keeper enjoying a cuppa and saying he would be ready soon! By then there were three boats waiting to enter the lock. We were first to arrive, English people were second and had been ‘hovering’ and another boat with people of a nationality we won’t mention were third in line. We told the English boat to go in first as they were on the move and we would follow them. Incredibly the ‘third’ boat (a hire boat) aggressively entered the lock ahead of us . In one way didn’t matter but it is considered very bad manners in this boating world, especially as our actions sped up the whole process for everyone concerned. That boat was being piloted by a young lad while his Dad watched on. It ‘bounced’ into the lock and their rope work was incredibly inept. (we have a better idea now of why it is so expensive to hire a canal boat, we have seen some very rough handling of the boats and some serious damage to the hull of one. Jean-Louis - our current neighbour - told us he saw one with a hole so large through the bow that he could see clearly inside the boat!) We hadn’t even tied up when the lock gates were being closed onto the stern of the boat! Fortunately, Jeanette has a loud voice and shouted out to open the gates a bit till we were able to get properly into the lock. We then chuckled all the way to the next lock watching the ‘English’ boat travelled at the correct speed up the centre of the canal thus making it impossible for the second ‘rogue’ boat to pass them. They clearly wanted to continue to ‘hoon’ along the waterways, which is very silly really as lock keepers are in contact with each other and if three boats are expected, the other boats have to wait until all three have arrived, often having to mark time outside the lock in the wind etc. We were very glad to find a very lovely ‘wild’ mooring at Mailly le Chateau, give up on navigating for the day and treat ourselves to a well deserved pre-dinner drink and tasty dinner! With things looking decidedly rosier , we went for a walk over an ancient bridge, past the Chapel to St Nicolas, patron saint of barge men and timber workers, up the steep hill to the Chateau which afforded fabulous views for miles in every direction, past one of the oddest war memorials we have ever seen (see pic below) then back to the boat for a shower and a sound sleep. ( We only have hot water when the motor has been running. If we are moored up for a few days we use the solar shower, port showers or boil the kettle and do the hot water and flannel thing.)



The war memorial at Mailly-le-Chateau

A few of our favourite things... (and some others)

THE FAVOURITE THINGS

In no particular order (thanks to Ian and Lorna for leaving many of them for us):

Binoculars:- Essential when approaching a lock to see if it is open and ready to sail into. Some locks have very disturbed water close to lock entrances especially those on rivers. River locks very often have spillways and weirs to one side of them. We had an interesting experience on the Yonne when we had to turn a corner in the river to see what the locks was doing, it was closed and still emptying, ( we were locking up), keeping the boat in a holding pattern so close to such disturbed waters was difficult so I decided to do a u turn only to find in doing so, that the boat was being pushed sideways down the river!

“Thomas“:- An ancient and venerable but very effective spinner of wet, rinsed washing. Thomas does a better job of ‘wringing ‘clothes than any modern washing machine we have ever had. Long may he live, he has obviously had a hard life over the years but is still working valiantly and hanging together with the silver tape mentioned below.. (Thomas is a German brand name) Add to this the ‘Wonder Washer’ which is essentially a small barrel you tumble to wash the clothes in.

Large plastic drum:- Wondered what we would use this for, (other boaties think we brew in it) fabulous for rinsing clothes, great saw horse, useful as a prop for one end of a door being painted, emergency fender ,not needed as such yet

Saws:- Ordinary ‘wood’ saw and recently purchased hacksaw

Mastic gun:- to use with silicone sealer. Much used, especially for fixing leaks. Catherine is getting better and better at it and has settled on her favourite brand of mastic. She is Queen of the Mastic Gun.

Fat Max:- very useful Stanley knife

Silver all purpose tape:- great adhesive qualities, lost count of its many uses, including holding Thomas together, backing tape to stop carpet fraying.

Electric drill, screwdriver set and screws:- no explanation needed

Brian’s pointy tool:- yes this does need a little explanation. The wonderful Brian (our next door neighbour in St-Jean-de Losne) recently bought a fancy tool with extra fittings in the handle. It looks rather like a stout nail on a handle. He bought an ‘old’ one at a vide grenier recently and declared it was better than his new, fancy one which he kindly gave to us. We don’t know its proper name but it is fantastic for “drilling” small holes in walls prior to putting screws in, for piercing holes in the saloon carpet that Catherine then did blanket stitch around the edge of, and a variety of other uses.

Straight edge and tape measure

French/English Dictionary:- Catherine’s very extensive language skills have not in the past included sophisticated nautical language nor “hardware” French.

Masking Tape

New wine glasses bought in Beaune and Pastis glasses

Corkscrew

Comfy camp chairs for use in cockpit when using above

Ike:- sturdy little folding stool/coffee table bought at IKEA

Boat hook:- all normal functions and temporary clothes line prop

Bicycles

Paper towels:- multitude of uses, not all suggested by manufacturers, particularly when using silicone sealer

White Spirits:- aka turps (of the mineral kind)

Variety of ropes, Stretchy cords and string

Work clothes/overalls: We didn’t bring enough of theseand have had to buy some here - very fetching!

Sewing kit including 5 only pins, haven’t bought any more, they are very expensive here.
Sandpaper:- never be sucked in to buying cheap varieties!

Casserole/saucepan (Dutch oven):- Very versatile, bought also at IKEA, can be used on top of stove or in oven

Camera and Emilee (aka Eee small portable computer)

Rubber bands

Old green canvas: About 1.5m x 1.5m great as a protector of carpet when painting or sorting out tools and other messy jobs. Useful to spread on nettles that are just where you want to hang the solar shower, nice to lie on in the shade of a tree after a swim in the river on a very hot afternoon.

LESS USEFUL ITEMS

Spirit level : (think about it - we didn't!)

Teflon oven tray too big for oven

Iron

Sewing machine, little more than a child’s toy (Update, have just bought a small useful sewing machine, Janome Mini, and used it a lot already to sew curtains and cushion covers.)

Kitset crane: former owner used it to bring motor scooter on board

Trolley/trailer:- to be towed behind bike when carting diesel and gas bottled, so far we have managed with supermarket trolleys

BBQ:- slightly inconvenient to use as it can only be used on deck attached to bottles in gas well

Fish finder: we think it was installed to be used as a depth finder

Chrome book stand

Hair dryer will plug into cigarette lighter

Rechargeable cordless drill, no battery or charger with it

3 Spare bicycle tyres: didn’t fit the bike that was stolen and don’t fit the new ones either

...AND SOME THINGS THAT ARE PROVING VERY HARD TO FIND

Coffee mugs that we like, mustn’t be too thick, that go with the new colour scheme of the boat

Dinner set either they are cheap but thick and/or ugly or if they are half way decent they cost an arm and a leg

Curtain material French tastes don’t seem to coincide with ours and of course we want something suitable for the boat. Most furnishing fabric shops only carry samples so ordering lengths of material is impractical for us.

Flat sheets Here a double flat sheet is routinely 220cm by 290cm, miles too big for the boat beds.

Face flannels French people use a mitt made with thick towelling, odd for us.

Slices of bacon of the kind we are used to

Fresh cream for whipping French version is difficult to find and whips up into insubstantial froth barely able to support the weight of a slice of kiwi fruit on top of a pavlova, and UHT milk and cream seem to be the norm.

Sour cream we haven’t found anything like the product we are used to

Kumara French sweet potatoes just don’t taste like our kumara

Auxerre

When we make arrangements to meet friends on the boat, we consult our Waterways Guide about where there are railway stations close to the canal we are on. As we came as close to Paris as we are going to get this year, we contacted our Parisian friends, Jean-Marc (former linguistic attaché at the French Embassy in Wellington) and Rachid, to let them know that either Migennes or Auxerre would be good places to meet because of the rail connections. What the Waterways Guide doesn’t show is the nature of the town and its surroundings, the amount of train activity that passes through that railway station that is right opposite the port nor the mad rush of hire boats that come in and out of a big boat hire base such as Migennes, especially at the beginning of any weekend. Thank goodness Jean-Marc and Rachid chose Auxerre because we couldn‘t have coped with staying in the port at Migennes for any length of time!

Our faithful Waterways Guide also warned us that the port in Auxerre is often crowded and we have developed a strategy for optimising our chances of finding a mooring in such circumstances. We find ourselves a mooring just short of our destination and stay there the night before. We then take off in the morning with the aim of arriving at destination around mid-late morning - at a time when there is a good chance that those who are leaving have already done so but before the majority of new arrivals have come in, which usually happens from mid-afternoon onwards. In Auxerre, it worked like a charm and we found a beautiful spot in the port, directly opposite the Cathedrale St Etienne and with easy access to the footbridge over the Yonne, which joins the port to the city.
The costs of staying in the port at Auxerre were, however, higher than any others that we have met so far - with daily rates of 11 euros for mooring for a boat of our size, 4.85 euros for electricity and 30 cents per person in visitors‘ tax. Additional extras such as showers (2 euros) and washing machine and dryer (5.90 euros each) were also available. However the mooring fees included free water (filling the tank is a priority in any port stop), rubbish disposal and, best of all, free wifi access. Given that internet access of any kind usually costs around 4 euros an hour, it was the free wifi - in combination with the spectacular views across to the town (day and night) - which helped us decide not only to stay in the port but to stay on electricity for the duration of our stay. We arrived on the Tuesday and would leave on the Sunday - morning or afternoon depending on whether our visitors wanted to go for a ride on the boat or not… What we also knew through our faithful human guides (friends Brian and Liz are ahead of us on the same canal and a source of very useful info) was that we could moor for free a few hundred metres upstream at the start of the Nivernais Canal - still within easy walking distance of the centre of Auxerre but without water, electricity and wifi!).

Having said that, we were in Auxerre for a good two days before we even set foot in the town centre or anything like it… We first had to catch up on the chores - washing and vacuuming have to be done when we are on electricity - and on our email and blogging! It was such a luxury to have free access from the boat that one or other of us must have been on the computer most of our waking hours for the first couple of days. Then there were other priorities to see to - we had seen a Mr Bricolage (a chain of hardware / home decorating stores) when we came into Auxerre and we had a list of things we needed for the boat: carpet for the spare cabin (recently repainted), plastic protector caps for the bottom of our dining chairs (to prevent them cutting into the new carpet), a strong plastic bag (for our weed hatch), curtain hooks and slides (again for the spare cabin), and curtains and fittings to replace the door to our cabin (which seems to get in the way at every moment). We found all of the above except the strong plastic bag and brought them back to the boat (2-3kms away) on the back of our bikes. We’ll leave you to imagine how it was done… We have had to become experts in various forms of problem-solving over the past few months - just as well we’ve both had a lot of practice in the past!

Needless to say, some more of our time in Auxerre was then spent laying the carpet in the spare cabin - and finishing off the painting and decorating in that room so that it was ready for guests at the weekend. But we did also venture off into the town centre, armed with a brochure outlining “un circuit touristique” to follow. We really enjoyed walking around the town. As well as its over-abundance of fabulous churches, it has wonderful squares joined by narrow, winding cobble-stoned streets and alley ways, loads of beautiful half-timbered houses, great shops, cafes, etc. It wasn’t too long, however, before our tourist trail took on its own particular flavour, as we found ourselves outside a sewing machine shop. The boat had a sewing machine on board when we arrived - a tiny Warehouse number, more like a toy than the real thing and with more limitations than capability. J was able to use it for one or two tasks but then the bobbin mechanism threw a wobbly and neither of us could get it to do anything other than produce a tangled mass of thread on the underside of any sewing. We have talked about whether or not to replace it - all purchases have to be able to be justified not only in terms of cost but also in terms of the space they will take up. We have been into a couple of sewing machine shops before and found only very large and expensive models, so we were expecting more of the same. What we found was the Janome Mini - a lovely, small, sewing machine that does straight and zigzag stitch (nothing else) and cost just 99 euros. After a demonstration, it was ours and needless to say, our tourist trail was somewhat foreshortened with Janome in tow… We did, however, manage to visit a free exhibition of beautiful painted wooden sculptures produced by Francois Brochet, one of Auxerre’s favourite sons before returning to the boat to try out the new purchase. I should add the this will be J’s “toy”. Sewing machines and I have never really been on particularly good terms.

On Friday morning, I left J on the boat testing out the new Mini on curtains and cushion covers for the spare cabin while I went in search of somewhere to top up the credit on our mobile phone as well as a shop we had earlier passed which sold cobalt pottery vases… yes, still with the spare cabin in mind. I topped up at an Orange shop, which happened to be right next to the Auxerre market, where I also found - at a very reasonable price - some dried flowers in just the right shades of blue and yellow to fill the cobalt pottery vase. Eventually I did also find the shop and the vase and now the spare cabin is complete - in shades of ivory and French navy blue and barely a square centimetre of brown left to be seen!!!

In the end Jean-Marc came alone; Rachid not having been able to arrange a replacement for his weekend shift work. It was wonderful to catch up with him again and to find him looking very well and happy .We passed on the best wishes of many from NZ and we fed him NZ lamb, which may cost less here than it does at home and certainly counts amongst the most affordable meat we can buy here. We spent Saturday afternoon and part of the evening wandering through the town and beside the river, and on Sunday morning we went for a cruise on the Yonne and then onto the start of the Nivernais Canal, mooring up in a beautiful big park not far from the aquatic centre - and still only a kilometre or so from the centre of town. After a leisurely Sunday lunch (more about those in a future posting), I accompanied J-M back to his car, which was parked at the port (no, we didn’t need the rail connection after all!) and he left to do battle with late-July weekend traffic returning to Paris, hopefully having enjoyed a change of scenery and of pace for the weekend. In an earlier posting we mentioned the lovely evenings while we were in Auxerre. The glassy river and the reflections were indescribably beautiful. We were glad Jean-Marc saw this city at its best as it was the first time he had visited it.

J and I stayed another day at the new, free mooring in Auxerre taking advantage of the proximity to the swimming pool on what turned out to be a very hot day and then ventured forth onto our second canal - the Nivernais, which is purported by many to be the most picturesque in France. We’ll let you know what we think in due course…

Catherine

Sudden bereavement: 25th July 2008

Our lovely Roger (of the removable leg) died in his sleep last night. Our sense of loss and devastation has been out of all proportion to the brief time we have known Roger and Chris off the barge Liberté . We met Roger and Chris when by chance we were moored with only Brian and Liz’ boat, de Laak, between us when Erewhon was put on the marina at St Jean de Losne at the end of April. That was such a great piece of luck for us. Both Brian and Liz and Roger and Chris, who are old hands at canal boating, took us greenhorns very easily into their ‘boating family’ as though we had always belonged. We have never underestimated our good fortune.

Roger , a Yorkshireman in every respect, was a detective for about 25 years and seemingly never became cynical or hard hearted.. He had, what we subsequently learned, was a typical Yorkshire sense of humour and we gloried in it. He did much more for us than we ever did for him. Catherine did accompany him on a couple of shopping trips - once when he wanted to buy a new pump for his boat and once to buy decking glue - to make sure he was getting what he wanted. His French speaking skills couldn’t cope with the technical language. (Mind you, C had to check a few terms in her dictionary as well!)

We had a leaking tap in one of the bathrooms. It was a dog of a thing to work on: almost inaccessible and the spanners wouldn’t fit into the confined space. We had several goes at it and in the end did the girlie thing and put a drip tray under it. After all it was an intermittent leak! The day before we left for the south of France, for no reason, the drip turned into something a lot more serious, about a litre a day. We knew the drip tray would be inadequate while we were away so we turned off the water pump, emptied the pipes and left for Nice knowing we would have to deal with it when we got back. Indeed when we got back we contorted ourselves and used all our strength in failed attempts to undo what we believed to be the offending connection. Enter Roger, who assured us such problems were mechanical not physical. We gladly relinquished this problem to one so knowledgeable. Many hours and a lot of exclamations later, Roger disentangled himself from the bowels of our hand basin with the problem solved, permanently as we now know. When Jeanette said to him, ‘was it mechanical or physical?’ He responded ‘it required brute strength and ignorance’. “oh well’, said Jeanette, ‘no wonder Catherine and I couldn’t solve the problem!’
True to his Yorkshire humour, Roger just gave a rueful grin. He knew we were just joking but he also knew it was too good an opening not to respond to!

Earlier we recounted how it took us five days to do the one and a half day journey from St Jean de Losne to Dijon. Such is the network of friendship we enjoy, that everyone knew Catherine had been laid low with a bad back. On our final run into Dijon, we had stopped for a lunch break on the side of the canal. (locks close between noon and 1pm) As it happened, Roger was driving to Dijon to pick up a friend from the railway station, he saw our boat, did a u-turn and came back to check we were ok, which we were. We gave him a cuppa, and had a good old natter, it was ssooo good to see him. Jeanette mentioned that the head had fallen off the mallet when Catherine was driving in a spike when we moored up for lunch. This long suffering friend took the offending mallet and a hammer and put it all together for us. Jeanette promised him that the next time she saw him she WOULD NOT tell him our problems otherwise he would avoid coming to see us. Roger accidentally left his packet of smokes on our boat. We put them safely on our bookshelf ready to return to him. We exchanged text messages en route over the following weeks and had a good idea where each other was.

Unbelievably now, we cannot have that chat and tell him about a problem we need help with, (even though we promised not to) and we cannot give him back his forgotten smokes. It is hard to comprehend that the death of someone we knew for such a short time has had such an impact on us. Roger was a gentleman and friend it was a true privilege to know. Our hearts go out to Chris. To have to cope with a sudden death on a canal in a foreign country would be extremely difficult and it is going to be at least a day before close family can be with Chris, we know her son is on his way.

Kia kaha, Chris.

Roger and Chis enjoying a drink with Jeanette in Dole (where they took us on a shopping mission)