We left Limay for a jaunt down the Seine to Vernon. I mean, we had to get away as the local council had decided to dig the road up for a new gas supply line right beside our moorings. The workmen were great but the noise was frightful! Actually, we spent some time watching the foreman digging a trench with a Caterpillar digger – big piece of kit – and handling it as if it were a knife and fork. Hence the photo – couldn’t resist it!
So we set off on a grey day for what turned out to be a rather boring 4½ hours of uneventful cruising down a rather quiet Seine. We stopped for lunch at a disused lock an hour or so from Vernon and speculated as to what you do to a river when you remove a lock (and weir presumably) entirely – do you lower the river level above or raise the level below? Although neither looked feasible we decided on the latter. It made an interesting place to stop with road, rail and water transport all side by side within 35 metres.
We arrived at Vernon in drizzle and moored in front of a 110 metre river cruise liner ‘Bizet’. When the weather improved we had a lightning-fast walk round the town. Vernon is excellent: ancient unspoilt timber-framed buildings in original 16th century streets and even the more modern town centre was not too bad.
We even managed to have drinks outside on the back deck before the chill wind and a pair of entwined youngsters on the quay drove us indoors for supper. I ask you, they were there for two hours canoodling away while we tried to have a civilised few minutes in the brief sunshine! (One of our fellow DBA members says that the exceptionally high-pitched electronic sounder used to deter teenagers from outside late-night-opening shops works on boats too, but we reckon Wagner would do just as well!)
The following day dawned bright and rainy (there’s a change) and we did our sums and realised that if we went further down the Seine we would be really pushed to get back in time for Rob and Kerry’s visit. So as it was raining yet again and the only internet café in town was closed for a week we decided to start retracing our steps towards Paris.
The evening saw us back again at Limay, after a tedious day plugging against the river, where we were able to catch up with our emails yet again on the tennis court wifi and have a quick drink outside in a 5 minute sunny internal before retiring indoors to watch the torrential rain for the rest of the evening! (Alex – I don’t have any sort of hang-up about the weather or anything. I just want to know why it rains wherever I go??? Answers on a postcard …)
Mantes-la-Jolie is quite a nice town, though without much history apart from its massive church, the Collegiale Notre Dame (not sure of the exact meaning in this context of collegiale, as the word isn’t in our French dictionary) but to be fair, and judging by photographs we have seen of the devastation wrought during the war, most of its history was wiped out during that period. Much of the town has been rebuilt to resemble what was lost, but clearly ancient churches, towers etc. can’t be replaced. The massive riverside fortifications which would have been really something, were, however, demolished in about 1640, a bit before World War II, as presumably at the time they seemed rather passé!
Our moorings are opposite the Mantes Parc des Expositions where events are held – a bit like a small Great Yorkshire Showground, and in part of the area is a conference and banqueting centre. When we were here a week ago, a cacophonous blaring of car horns announced the imminent arrival at the reception of a wedding convoy, including of course the bride and groom. Today, we were treated to this again and although noisy, it’s actually really nice to hear the sheer exuberance which accompanies such happy events here.
On the opposite side of the river, Limay is, on the other hand a rather down-market town with very little to recommend it other than the moorings which are pleasant and seem not to attract the undesirables, unlike Meulan.
So it’s back to Pontoise to meet up with Rob and Kerry next week and then onward to Paris in earnest.
Wednesday 27 May 2009
Tuesday 12 May 2009
Pontoise to Mantes-la-Jolie/Limay
As we arrived in Pontoise, passing under the rail bridge and heading for what looked like good quay moorings, we were surprised to find 3 or 4 pigeons alighting on the foredeck. Louise was quick to pop out of the wheelhouse and shoo them away before they crapped over our otherwise immaculate decks!
We thought little more about it until later when we noticed that as the commercial barges passed us the pigeons flocked to each one. They rode upon each barge for a kilometre or so and just before they reached the nearby lock the pigeons flew back to their roosts under the bridge! It appeared to be a game; they took great delight in cadging a free ride on the barges as they headed downstream.
We speculated about this as we observed it time after time and eventually decided that the more mundane explanation was that perhaps some of the barges carried grain and the pigeons were looking for spilled grain lying on the decks. (That would also explain why bargees, or more often their wives, spend hours hosing down what appear to be perfectly clean decks.) One of the good things about retirement is that you can spend hours on such speculations! But it was a most amusing sight and our best photo shows only a hint of the inundation suffered by some of the barges.
We left Pontoise having posted our most recent blog in one of the two internet cafés in town: one hot, cramped and slow, the other spacious, cool and lightning-quick, and worth twice the price for that comfort and eventually we found our way onto the historic Seine at Conflans St Honorine.
It’s big, very big, but we got through the first lock OK after a 15 min wait, while two barges came upstream, then made our way down, stopping for lunch at a Halte Fluvial at Poissy, which was a great find, as they are few and far between on a river like the Seine.
We arrived at the moorings at Meulan early on a lovely sunny afternoon, where we met a couple from Canada who had sailed their 12m yacht all the way from Northern Canada, down the Great Lakes, across the Atlantic to the Azores, and then into the canal system of France, all with a couple of smelly dogs and a cat on board! And they had been in France since 2007! The moorings themselves were lovely, alongside a pretty little park, but tended to attract the down-and-outs and mentally unstable of the town, one of whom, one evening, hung on our handrail pointing vigorously at his face covered in blood. Alex thrust a large handful of tissues at him, at which he left – thank goodness. A genuine nosebleed or the result of fisticuffs between ne’er-do-wells?
The next day the whole of the path alongside the river and next to us was awash with amateur artists painting the Vieux Pont just ahead of us. We explained we would be gone and out of their way in an hour, but they said no, they wanted our boat in the picture which was very gratifying.!
Later we experienced one of the odd features of the canalised rivers in this area, where the prioritisation of the side on which opposing barges pass is reversed. (The normal rule of the river is to drive on the right.)
We had noticed this a few times previously on the l’Oise, but had been fortunate enough never to have to put it to the test as there had been no opposing traffic, and on this occasion, as far as we could tell, it was normal passing sides. BUT the barge coming towards us was definitely on our side!
We made a decisive move to our right (further over into the normal and correct side) and he seemed to move to his RIGHT also, but then a few seconds later Alex spotted that a rusty old ‘blue flag’ had been deployed by him and a swift change of course to the LEFT side was called for by us.
We still haven’t sussed out why all this changing of passing side is necessary on rivers as wide and deep as the Seine (never mind why all the islands on both the l’Oise and the Seine have to be passed on the ‘wrong’ side) but no doubt someday somebody will be able to explain it – or not!
But we don’t suppose the barge which we met later will be able to! We saw him some distance off on one of the sections where we were supposed to be on the ‘wrong’ side and we were. But it seemed the opposing barge was on ‘our’ side too. What to do? We watched for a telltale change of direction from him – it didn’t happen – so we then decided to make an obvious move to the right side to pass conventionally. A second after we had done this, he at last changed his course – to the designated ‘wrong’ side – i.e. towards us!
Alex made a decisive move even further to the right and at last the oncoming juggernaut changed course to his right. Phew! One kilometre behind us was a laden barge. He showed us what we should have done – stuck to our guns on the ‘wrong’ side.
As all this was happening, our program Noodersoft chose that moment to have a glitch, whereby an error message kept popping up and repeating itself with a plungk! sound each time as fast as we could cancel it. So thus, with all the distractions audible and visual, we also missed going down the correct side of a 4km long island to locate our next mooring place.
Never mind, we knew there was a way through the middle of the island albeit with a low bridge. We turned in and could see very quickly that the bridge was too low. Of course the barge which had been behind us was now much nearer and the gentle current in the river was not going to let us hang about. In fact, it was pushing us right towards the shallows. There was no choice – we had to engage full ahead and pull out in front of the laden barge, powering over a shallow sand bank as we did so. (We only listed about 20o but all the drawers came open in the bedroom!)
Then we weren’t able to let the barge pass us, because there was a laden and unladen barge breasted up coming towards us upstream, and by the time they were past we were almost at the downstream end of the island where we had to make a right turn in our second attempt to reach our next mooring.
Again, right in front of the laden barge we had to make the turn. Ah well, we hoped he understood, having seen us go aground, but he probably thought, ‘Mad English amateurs’.
We got to the moorings at Limay and found a lovely quiet spot, on a good wall with bollards, just up from a Port de Plaisance. The only slight downside was a plague of harmless black flies. Even with the wheelhouse doors closed they somehow got in. Alex has been busy with the swatter and there are piles of dead flies all over the place!! In fact Alex has done more swatting these last couple of days than he ever did for his exams!! (Swatting not swotting you fool!)
We have found an Aldi and an Intermarche and a rather splendid church, and with our unerring knack of being in the right place at the right (sometimes wrong) time we were treated to an absolutely fabulous firework display to finish off some sort of local celebration in the town. It went on from 11.00 to 11.30 in a continuous riot of colour and we had a perfect view from where we were moored.
We moved up to a rather lightweight pontoon to take on water a day or so later and look! – an unlocked wi-fi! a signal from the tennis club on the other side of the river. Quick, get those emails read and sent, book those flights/train tickets, download The Archers podcasts, deal with the bank overdraft etc. etc. It’s all very well using internet cafés but the operating systems are all in French and the key positions on the keyboard are in different places and sometimes the memory stick works and sometimes it doesn’t!
We thought little more about it until later when we noticed that as the commercial barges passed us the pigeons flocked to each one. They rode upon each barge for a kilometre or so and just before they reached the nearby lock the pigeons flew back to their roosts under the bridge! It appeared to be a game; they took great delight in cadging a free ride on the barges as they headed downstream.
We speculated about this as we observed it time after time and eventually decided that the more mundane explanation was that perhaps some of the barges carried grain and the pigeons were looking for spilled grain lying on the decks. (That would also explain why bargees, or more often their wives, spend hours hosing down what appear to be perfectly clean decks.) One of the good things about retirement is that you can spend hours on such speculations! But it was a most amusing sight and our best photo shows only a hint of the inundation suffered by some of the barges.
We left Pontoise having posted our most recent blog in one of the two internet cafés in town: one hot, cramped and slow, the other spacious, cool and lightning-quick, and worth twice the price for that comfort and eventually we found our way onto the historic Seine at Conflans St Honorine.
It’s big, very big, but we got through the first lock OK after a 15 min wait, while two barges came upstream, then made our way down, stopping for lunch at a Halte Fluvial at Poissy, which was a great find, as they are few and far between on a river like the Seine.
We arrived at the moorings at Meulan early on a lovely sunny afternoon, where we met a couple from Canada who had sailed their 12m yacht all the way from Northern Canada, down the Great Lakes, across the Atlantic to the Azores, and then into the canal system of France, all with a couple of smelly dogs and a cat on board! And they had been in France since 2007! The moorings themselves were lovely, alongside a pretty little park, but tended to attract the down-and-outs and mentally unstable of the town, one of whom, one evening, hung on our handrail pointing vigorously at his face covered in blood. Alex thrust a large handful of tissues at him, at which he left – thank goodness. A genuine nosebleed or the result of fisticuffs between ne’er-do-wells?
The next day the whole of the path alongside the river and next to us was awash with amateur artists painting the Vieux Pont just ahead of us. We explained we would be gone and out of their way in an hour, but they said no, they wanted our boat in the picture which was very gratifying.!
Later we experienced one of the odd features of the canalised rivers in this area, where the prioritisation of the side on which opposing barges pass is reversed. (The normal rule of the river is to drive on the right.)
We had noticed this a few times previously on the l’Oise, but had been fortunate enough never to have to put it to the test as there had been no opposing traffic, and on this occasion, as far as we could tell, it was normal passing sides. BUT the barge coming towards us was definitely on our side!
We made a decisive move to our right (further over into the normal and correct side) and he seemed to move to his RIGHT also, but then a few seconds later Alex spotted that a rusty old ‘blue flag’ had been deployed by him and a swift change of course to the LEFT side was called for by us.
We still haven’t sussed out why all this changing of passing side is necessary on rivers as wide and deep as the Seine (never mind why all the islands on both the l’Oise and the Seine have to be passed on the ‘wrong’ side) but no doubt someday somebody will be able to explain it – or not!
But we don’t suppose the barge which we met later will be able to! We saw him some distance off on one of the sections where we were supposed to be on the ‘wrong’ side and we were. But it seemed the opposing barge was on ‘our’ side too. What to do? We watched for a telltale change of direction from him – it didn’t happen – so we then decided to make an obvious move to the right side to pass conventionally. A second after we had done this, he at last changed his course – to the designated ‘wrong’ side – i.e. towards us!
Alex made a decisive move even further to the right and at last the oncoming juggernaut changed course to his right. Phew! One kilometre behind us was a laden barge. He showed us what we should have done – stuck to our guns on the ‘wrong’ side.
As all this was happening, our program Noodersoft chose that moment to have a glitch, whereby an error message kept popping up and repeating itself with a plungk! sound each time as fast as we could cancel it. So thus, with all the distractions audible and visual, we also missed going down the correct side of a 4km long island to locate our next mooring place.
Never mind, we knew there was a way through the middle of the island albeit with a low bridge. We turned in and could see very quickly that the bridge was too low. Of course the barge which had been behind us was now much nearer and the gentle current in the river was not going to let us hang about. In fact, it was pushing us right towards the shallows. There was no choice – we had to engage full ahead and pull out in front of the laden barge, powering over a shallow sand bank as we did so. (We only listed about 20o but all the drawers came open in the bedroom!)
Then we weren’t able to let the barge pass us, because there was a laden and unladen barge breasted up coming towards us upstream, and by the time they were past we were almost at the downstream end of the island where we had to make a right turn in our second attempt to reach our next mooring.
Again, right in front of the laden barge we had to make the turn. Ah well, we hoped he understood, having seen us go aground, but he probably thought, ‘Mad English amateurs’.
We got to the moorings at Limay and found a lovely quiet spot, on a good wall with bollards, just up from a Port de Plaisance. The only slight downside was a plague of harmless black flies. Even with the wheelhouse doors closed they somehow got in. Alex has been busy with the swatter and there are piles of dead flies all over the place!! In fact Alex has done more swatting these last couple of days than he ever did for his exams!! (Swatting not swotting you fool!)
We have found an Aldi and an Intermarche and a rather splendid church, and with our unerring knack of being in the right place at the right (sometimes wrong) time we were treated to an absolutely fabulous firework display to finish off some sort of local celebration in the town. It went on from 11.00 to 11.30 in a continuous riot of colour and we had a perfect view from where we were moored.
We moved up to a rather lightweight pontoon to take on water a day or so later and look! – an unlocked wi-fi! a signal from the tennis club on the other side of the river. Quick, get those emails read and sent, book those flights/train tickets, download The Archers podcasts, deal with the bank overdraft etc. etc. It’s all very well using internet cafés but the operating systems are all in French and the key positions on the keyboard are in different places and sometimes the memory stick works and sometimes it doesn’t!
Wednesday 6 May 2009
Compiègne to Pontoise
Louise has done her marathon sprint to the UK and back and Alex went with her to the airport to see her off. The airport link bus journey is in two stages – €2 to Senlis and then a further €5.70 from Senlis to Charles de Gaulle airport. The trip by Alex was a last minute decision and so it was not until he arrived at the airport that he discovered he had a four hour wait to catch the same bus back!
However, further enquiry at the bus station showed that there was a bus to another town – Creil – and then a train back to Compiègne. This even left him half an hour to suss out Creil itself (for moorings) but more importantly, as the train entered Compiègne Alex spotted something he had already spent considerable time looking for – viz a skip at the back of a motor car repair shop full of old exhaust systems and the like!
So after lunch, onto the trusty old bike, back to the garage and try to communicate with the man behind the desk what he was looking for. After several minutes of incomprehension and miscomprehension on both sides they went round to the skip, and Monsieur said, “Help yourself”. (Actually he said “Servez-vous” but this is one expression we understand perfectly now!) So with two old exhaust systems and an extremely difficult bike ride Alex was back at the boat rebuilding the water separator and exhaust system for the genny. (Just not happy with the separator as it was – failing to completely separate the water.)
By the time Louise got back to Riccall after her hectic 3 days in the UK the genny was all done and almost perfect. In fact it was so good you couldn’t hold a candle to it!
Alex has adopted a slightly unconventional approach but believes that in doing so he has ended up with the best of both a wet and a dry exhaust system. (Anybody interested in the details email Alex for a full, if boring, description!)
We are getting to know Compiègne quite well now – still here waiting for HSBC, but we have made good use of the time. Last week we tackled a small area of the saloon roof paintwork but discovered millscale under the failing paintwork which will require a more robust approach. Jeff at the boatyard has discovered some special grindwheels which will be up to the job, if we can get them to us. (I should have listened to Jeff, when he said, “Leave the new steelwork to rust for longer”!)
On Sunday we sanded down and undercoated the whole of the wheelhouse roof. On Monday it was cold and windy and Tuesday showery, but we just had to get the topcoat on before the undercoat hardened too much. At 11 am Louise said, “Look, blue sky! Let’s get going.” Alex said “No, it’s going to rain in half an hour or so” and it did. Then at 2pm Louise said, “Look, sunny again” and Eyore Alex said “I shouldn’t be surprised if it rains again in an hour”, but we did it anyway and Louise was right: it didn’t rain till ages after when the paint had dried!
HSBC tell us that our card is at last at Creil. So we’re off, and a pleasant day was spent on the river with 4 or 5 locks till we reached Creil. We rounded up and moored on a nice grassy bank with shapely trees in their full spring green splendour. And when we got to the bank sure enough they had the card – but not the PIN number!
Well, we didn’t really expect to be able to open the bubbly just yet. So another call to Veronique at HSBC Lille who said she’d call back in a few minutes.
This of course didn’t happen, so we pre-empted and rang Jean our next door neighbour at home to ask her to go through the post to see if she could find said PIN Number. While she was in the house doing so, the postman actually delivered the very letter and bingo! – we have the PIN number which, more importantly, WORKS.
So off to SFR to get the dongle and thus access to Neuf wi-fi. But – Oh no you don’t. They want bank details, PIN number, passports, proof of address – no, not an address in England, an address in France! We are visitors, we have a French bank account but obviously as we are travellers we don’t have an address in France. Bad luck then. No SFR dongle, no Neuf wi-fi access. Finis!!!” Bloody French – I hate them! I hate them! I hate them! They break all the rules when it helps them: sticklers for the rules if it hinders others.
But we are not beaten yet. There are other avenues to be gone down. Keep reading for the next thrilling instalment of the subplot – Getting on the Internet in France.
In the meantime we have given up on Creil, especially with our usual knack of arriving in the thick of a festival of some sort. We found our lovely moorings were right beside the loudest live pop venue for Saturday night – over a wall admittedly, but no further than 20 metres from the sound stage! Our neighbouring live-aboards warned us that it wouldn’t finish till 2 o’clock in the morning, so we moved half a kilometre downstream on the pretext of filling our water tanks with free water from a supply there and stayed for the night. And were we glad we had moved! The noise was unbelievable, but we did manage a reasonable night before setting off in the morning for Pontoise north west of Paris where we are now.
And who should appear today coming upstream but Julian in Santanna. He had been almost to England and back while we had been pottering in fits and starts to Pontoise! but at least he could give us some good gen on moorings ahead of us down the Seine.
However, further enquiry at the bus station showed that there was a bus to another town – Creil – and then a train back to Compiègne. This even left him half an hour to suss out Creil itself (for moorings) but more importantly, as the train entered Compiègne Alex spotted something he had already spent considerable time looking for – viz a skip at the back of a motor car repair shop full of old exhaust systems and the like!
So after lunch, onto the trusty old bike, back to the garage and try to communicate with the man behind the desk what he was looking for. After several minutes of incomprehension and miscomprehension on both sides they went round to the skip, and Monsieur said, “Help yourself”. (Actually he said “Servez-vous” but this is one expression we understand perfectly now!) So with two old exhaust systems and an extremely difficult bike ride Alex was back at the boat rebuilding the water separator and exhaust system for the genny. (Just not happy with the separator as it was – failing to completely separate the water.)
By the time Louise got back to Riccall after her hectic 3 days in the UK the genny was all done and almost perfect. In fact it was so good you couldn’t hold a candle to it!
Alex has adopted a slightly unconventional approach but believes that in doing so he has ended up with the best of both a wet and a dry exhaust system. (Anybody interested in the details email Alex for a full, if boring, description!)
We are getting to know Compiègne quite well now – still here waiting for HSBC, but we have made good use of the time. Last week we tackled a small area of the saloon roof paintwork but discovered millscale under the failing paintwork which will require a more robust approach. Jeff at the boatyard has discovered some special grindwheels which will be up to the job, if we can get them to us. (I should have listened to Jeff, when he said, “Leave the new steelwork to rust for longer”!)
On Sunday we sanded down and undercoated the whole of the wheelhouse roof. On Monday it was cold and windy and Tuesday showery, but we just had to get the topcoat on before the undercoat hardened too much. At 11 am Louise said, “Look, blue sky! Let’s get going.” Alex said “No, it’s going to rain in half an hour or so” and it did. Then at 2pm Louise said, “Look, sunny again” and Eyore Alex said “I shouldn’t be surprised if it rains again in an hour”, but we did it anyway and Louise was right: it didn’t rain till ages after when the paint had dried!
HSBC tell us that our card is at last at Creil. So we’re off, and a pleasant day was spent on the river with 4 or 5 locks till we reached Creil. We rounded up and moored on a nice grassy bank with shapely trees in their full spring green splendour. And when we got to the bank sure enough they had the card – but not the PIN number!
Well, we didn’t really expect to be able to open the bubbly just yet. So another call to Veronique at HSBC Lille who said she’d call back in a few minutes.
This of course didn’t happen, so we pre-empted and rang Jean our next door neighbour at home to ask her to go through the post to see if she could find said PIN Number. While she was in the house doing so, the postman actually delivered the very letter and bingo! – we have the PIN number which, more importantly, WORKS.
So off to SFR to get the dongle and thus access to Neuf wi-fi. But – Oh no you don’t. They want bank details, PIN number, passports, proof of address – no, not an address in England, an address in France! We are visitors, we have a French bank account but obviously as we are travellers we don’t have an address in France. Bad luck then. No SFR dongle, no Neuf wi-fi access. Finis!!!” Bloody French – I hate them! I hate them! I hate them! They break all the rules when it helps them: sticklers for the rules if it hinders others.
But we are not beaten yet. There are other avenues to be gone down. Keep reading for the next thrilling instalment of the subplot – Getting on the Internet in France.
In the meantime we have given up on Creil, especially with our usual knack of arriving in the thick of a festival of some sort. We found our lovely moorings were right beside the loudest live pop venue for Saturday night – over a wall admittedly, but no further than 20 metres from the sound stage! Our neighbouring live-aboards warned us that it wouldn’t finish till 2 o’clock in the morning, so we moved half a kilometre downstream on the pretext of filling our water tanks with free water from a supply there and stayed for the night. And were we glad we had moved! The noise was unbelievable, but we did manage a reasonable night before setting off in the morning for Pontoise north west of Paris where we are now.
And who should appear today coming upstream but Julian in Santanna. He had been almost to England and back while we had been pottering in fits and starts to Pontoise! but at least he could give us some good gen on moorings ahead of us down the Seine.
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