Sillery to Rethel

Canal des Ardennes

All is not harmonious on the French canals !!!

Saturday dawned fair and wind-free. We started the preparations for setting off from Sillery.

The day before, two cruisers, one German and one Dutch, had arrived together. The German had moored in the finger mooring directly behind us (like us, next to the quay) and the Dutch guy moored between the two of us (also on the quay). Alex had mentioned to the Dutch fellow that we were moving off the next day and asked him if he would move his cruiser to let us out, to which he agreed.

So, as we made ready, his cruiser was still there, as he wandered up and down the quay watching us getting ready.

Alex said that we would like to leave now and could he move please. “I already have,” he said, indicating that he had moved a couple of metres nearer the German cruiser.

Alex pointed out that there still was not enough room for us to get Riccall out without a lot of shimmying about and going the whole distance past all the other (er …Tupperware) boats backwards. The Dutch guy then proceeded to tell Alex how to handle Riccall, and Alex pointed out that it was a hell of a sight easier for him to move his cruiser next to the German, where there was a proper mooring space. Dutchy wasn’t having it, whereupon Jeff from Whisper 1700 put in his two-penn’orth much to the distress of his wife Jane who advocated keeping well out of it! Louise then adopted her resolute tone and confronted him with a question, “Are you saying that you refuse to move your boat?” All the other boaters around were glaring at him by now, and with massive ill grace he stomped off and moved it!

Roger and Ann of Thirza, moored next to us, gave Alex 11/10 for diplomacy and not losing his temper and everybody else heaved a sigh of relief that sense had prevailed.

We made a safe and controlled exit and Alex made a point of thanking Dutchy very much for his help. (You can’t really afford to make serious enemies out of total wallies, because you tend to run into them again and again!)

At Reims we had a noisy mooring for the first night but there was a bill to pay at VNF and yet another trip to an SFR shop to sort out some more paperwork, which apparently hadn’t been sent on by the SFR shop in Mantes-la-Jolie where we set up the original contract. We also wanted to fit in more sightseeing in Reims including a visit to the tomb of St Remi in the Basiliqu de St Remi and a roof tour of Reims cathedral.

Then we moved a couple of ks to moor up beside Aldi where we could wheel the fully laden trolley right to the boat for unloading. We ended up at the end of a commercial mooring quay on the edge of town for a totally peaceful second night in Reims.

The following evening provided another mooring contretemps. We had eschewed a couple of possible moorings, it being still too early to stop, and set our sights on one said to be at Variscourt. When we arrived there were two cruisers there already, albeit moored well apart, but we thought there was just room for us behind the nearest one, a Belgian boat called Concordance. So we nosed in, and with the help offered by the other cruiser crew got our front rope onto a good bollard shared by Concordance. The back rope was going to have to go round a tree, and Alex and the helper were in the process of doing that when the front end of Riccall started to edge out a bit. This meant the front rope was going to tighten and touch the back of Concordance. Her ‘captain’, who had been sitting watching all this from a picnic table 25m, away with no intention of helping, or moving his boat forward a bit to make room, was up like a shot and across the grass quicker than you could say ‘Jack Rabbit’! He then proceeded to shout a torrent of abuse, we think in Flemish, and PHYSICALLY REMOVED OUR FRONT ROPE from the bollard. I mean, that is just not done. The rope had touched his boat but as it’s soft and silky while strong, hadn’t made so much as a scuff, much to the owner’s disappointment.

Alex took the decision that to start the whole manoeuvre again, with such a hostile little shit waiting to hurl abuse at the slightest excuse was not worth the hassle so we reluctantly left and carried on.

Little did we realise that we would not find anything suitable until after the locks had closed for the night, and then the next lock mooring place was pretty shallow and the bollards, when we eventually unearthed them from the undergrowth, were spaced far apart. We did however, finally moor up safely some three hours after our ‘difficulties’ with Concordance, and retreated to supper and bed totally exhausted.

In all the time we have been cruising until now we have found all the other boaters helpful and often prepared to go out of their way to be so. It’s a pity that we should come across a couple of horrors so close upon each other.

However, we arrived at Rethel in plenty of time to meet Alex’s son Will and girlfriend Laura and a pleasant weekend ensued, trundling back a short way to a brand new mooring above a lock in the depths of the country, shady trees to shelter from the hot sun and a pleasant little village a kilometre away. There we had a barbeque and spent a quiet second night before returning to Rethel to pop them on the train back to UK.

In true Riccall style however, we happened upon the town fete as we returned to Riccall after the train left, and included in the pics below is a flavour of the event.



P.S. Concordance, of course, means ‘agreement’. We don’t think we have ever come across a boat so inappropriately named!!!