The Burgundy and North to Reims

It has been quite a few weeks since our last blog and what a few weeks it has been!  We did at one point contemplate not carrying on with blogging but having re-read some of our earlier stuff and the memories they kindled, we decided that we just had no option but to keep on writing.

So, we left Tonnerre after waiting a few days for the weather to improve (the very first bridge was going to be a ROFF – Alex had been up and measured it).  Our first attempt at mooring at Tanlay was rather hampered by a land and aquatic fun day for the village youngsters.  The best moorings were full of kids in canoes but we managed to squeeze in on the opposite side in the shallows – only 2ft from the quay.  The chateau at Tanlay was pretty impressive with some amazing trompe d’oeils.  Our very next mooring in the middle of nowhere left us so far from the shore even our 8ft gangplank wouldn’t reach, but we had no passing boats thankfully and enjoyed a spectacular thunderstorm overnight.

Another ROFF to start the next day but around lunchtime the day looked a bit overcast so we put the roof back on.  Lucky we did, because as we travelled up through the next few locks together with a hire boat full of lads, the rain began to fall in earnest and suddenly blew into a minor hurricane.  We all got absolutely soaked, as in ‘up’ locks we have to be on deck holding and adjusting our ropes, and while we all had a good laugh about it, the fat Madame Eclusiere couldn’t crack a smile.  She was of course soaked too but . . . miserable cow!

On exiting the lock and before the next suspect bridge Alex spotted a lone bollard.  We moored up for the night and there was even plenty of depth – a rarity on this canal.  That evening as the sun came out again we walked up to the local village.  But in the morning, the approaching hotel boat had one hell of a job getting past us and lining up for the lock: not that he seemed over concerned: all part of the job I suppose.

In due course we got to a mooring at Pouillenay, where the notice board offered us two delightful and historic villages and towns to visit, Flavigny at 5kms or Semur at 10kms.  Flavigny won for obvious reasons, but we didn’t realise that 3 of the 5kms was steeply uphill, and the rest steeply downhill.  The village itself was just great, totally unspoilt and complete with its protective surrounding wall intact.  We sat in a café in a square having drinks and pouring over our map for a better way back – longer but flatter – definitely better!

We also noticed that there was a bus to the town of Semur which also passed through our next proposed mooring at Marigny.  So the next day we moored up for the night and asked our kindly lockkeeper if the bus was still running to Semur.  (We had given him a jar of Riccall chutney for his efforts that day in working the locks.)  And he said (all in French of course) “Be ready at 12pm and I will give you a lift”!.  So he did just that in his lunch break, and collected us again just after 5pm – so kind.  We had a nice day in Semur but got soaked again when we ran into another rainstorm.  This time though we were trapped on the Petit Train, with no hope of keeping dry.

Our next mooring at Port Royal has to rate as another one of the best.  The moorings were adjacent to a beautiful Chambre d’Hote village house which operated them (water and electricity included) in what had once been a thriving village with charcuterie and boulangerie, now sadly all closed, but mine host happy to provide baguettes and croissants in the morning.  The restaurant across the road run by Basil Faulty’s French cousin did excellent Charolais steak and chips, with massacred French beans as the side veg! - surprisingly common in France.

A few days later we were finally at Pouilly with the 3km restricted-dimension tunnel to negotiate ahead of us.  Alex spent the day installing lengths of split plastic pipe over the handrails at the front to protect them from the tunnel walls (a good use of time as it turned out) and fixing some old 4 foot long 8” x 2” baulks of wood which we had once used as glissoires years ago, through the bollards front and back.  He used luggage ratchet straps to fix the wood at an angle between the bollards so that each protruded about 50cms each side to keep us near the middle of the tunnel.  As it turned out it all worked well, but the handrails only cleared the roof of the tunnel by about 6” each side so it was slow but steady as you go.

At Vandenesse we had to leave the lovely moorings after just one night as the town was about to hold a firework party, so we moved on a couple of kms and moored between locks on a post and a makeshift G clamp on the armaco just behind the barge IBAIA.  We met the new owners Richard and Lynda and we all walked up to Chateauneuf in the warm sunshine.

Our descent of the Bourgogne Canal from the tunnel went without many incidents, most of the bridges being JUST high enough, and with the number of hotel barges on this side, the depth was absolutely fine.

We did come across one unexpectedly low bridge between two locks near Epoisses, which were being worked for us by an eclusier and had to do an emergency stop.  The lockkeeper came scooting back on this VESPA and we explained we just had to take 5 minutes getting the roof off.  “Pas de problem” he said, and watched as we did it giving us a thumbs up when the job was done.  The fisherman beside this said bridge never raised his eyes!  (Of course, he’d seen it all before!  Yeah!  Typical!)

Finally we got down to St Jean de Losne and a long wait in the basin waiting for the lock out onto the Saone.  The town quay moorings were predictably full, but the ‘secret’ hidden ring on the sloping wall of the launch ramp which Jill and Robert of DANUM had told us about, was free so we hooked on there.

We had now completed the Canal de Bourgogne, one of the jewels in the crown of the French canal system, and we would be travelling north again by the Canal du Marne à Saone, now called the Canal entre Champagne et Bourgogne (we prefer the old name).  There is much to commend the Bourgogne with isolated stretches and few boats but the manual locks, operated by roving eclusiers make it difficult to make unplanned stops, as the VNF like to know what your movements are at all times, and you don’t know what you might like to do or see if you haven’t done that particular canal before!

At Auxonne we stopped for lunch on the town quay and Alex fashioned an ingenious (Louise says) system to get water from the push and hold tap close by.

Then at the next lock just before our turn on to the Marne à Saone, the rain started again.  We took pity on a middle-aged couple of cyclists, who were sheltering under the bridge over the lock, and invited them on board for a warming cuppa and shelter.  They gratefully accepted and we took them with us through the next couple of locks to our mooring at Maxilly.  We managed quite a good chat with our limited French and they were delighted to have spent a short time on a barge for the first time in their lives.

The next day the first thing we met was a fully laden peniche.  Crikey!  We thought they had pretty well stopped using this canal!  But it was one of very few we met up with on the canal.

That night we moored in front of an Australian couple on a cruiser, who had seemingly moored right in the middle of the long quay, leaving us just enough room to get in in front of them.  The guy took a rope for us, as the moorings were rings and that is helpful, and we motored forward on that to get the stern into shore and our other rope on, whereupon Mrs came out very flustered and said in no uncertain words, that we were too close to her boat.  Fine!  We’ll move back a bit to give you 2 metres clear instead of one – not a problem, if that’s what you want.  No need to get your knickers in a twist!

She was just as twitchy the next morning when we left, convinced that we would scratch her precious cruiser.  Needless to say, we didn’t fraternise with them, but thought it unusual behaviour for Ozzies, who are usually so friendly.

We now had more of a target for meeting Mary and Martin who were due to visit us for a few days’ cruising.  There was definitely a station at Joinville, where two trains a day still stop on the line that runs down this canal. We had plenty of time to get there for their arrival, but in the meantime we found ISKRA at the Chaumont mooring, together with a South African boat called SEA HAWK.  We had kept in touch with John and Hilary since we met them 4 years ago on the Canal du Centre and had even visited them at home near Nottingham, so it was great to catch up.  And we also got to know Alan, Liz, Richard and Lorraine of SEA HAWK and had drinks with them.

We spent the next few days leapfrogging with these two boats till Friday when we got to Joinville at lunchtime.  We knew in advance from them that there was room for us on the quay so that was a relief.

Louise had been longing to have her hair cut and on Friday afternoon went into town and had the job done.  Liz and Lorraine coincidentally had also gone into town for the same purpose though to a different hairdresser.  Seeing Louise’s new short hair, Alex decided he had better try on Saturday morning for a ‘coupe normal’ too.  Having ridden all round the town twice looking for the best deal (!) he suddenly saw a little coiffure on the corner which looked his kind of place.

‘C’est combien pour un coupe normal?’ €11.  Great, and she could do it now.  Best haircut he’s ever had so when he got back to the boat and told John about it, John set off hotfoot for the same place.  A great deal for Chaumont – 12 boaters and 5 of them had spent money on hairdressing in the town!!

Mary and Martin duly arrived late on Saturday night and the next day we set off for the mooring at Bayard which only had room for one boat. Unfortunately SEA HAWK had beaten us to it so we motored on to Chamouilly.  The next day was a short one into St Dizier, though this did require a quick ROFF at the railway bridge (not unexpected) and a treat for Mary and Martin who had never seen the procedure before.

St Dizier is not a bad place despite the rather dilapidated moorings, and we had a nice amble round and lunch courtesy of Mary and Martin (another thank you to them) in one of the pleasant squares.  It is the birthplace of Hector Guimard who designed those famous cast iron entrance porticos for all the Metro stations in Paris in the 20s, and also many balconies, gates and other functional or decorative ironware in St Dizier and elsewhere.  Much of this was evident, not unnaturally, in the town and we waited till 9.30 the following morning to have a look at the town museum where some of his work and other artefacts are held.

Apart from ISKRA and SEA HAWK, we saw only a handful of other boats on the canal, so we were not surprised to see them at Orconte when we arrived.  What did surprise us though was that by 7pm that evening another FOUR boats had joined us on the quay and a hotel barge which had wanted to moor up had to decide to motor on a couple of kms up the canal for his mooring spot.  Weird!  Amongst those four boats was another we knew of old - AILSA - with Mike and Sally aboard.

Finally we got to Vitry-le-Francois and managed to moor behind a VNF workboat above the lock into the town.  This was an excellent spot as it was close to the station for Mary and Martin to catch their return train next morning and peaceful being away from the town centre, the only downside was the loss of the sun behind a huge silo in the evening.

Vitry marks the end of the Canal de Marne à Saone and we had loved it.  In some ways it is better than the Bourgogne partly because all the locks are automated and therefore don’t need roving lockkeepers watching your every move, and also because the canalside vistas of countryside seem wider and more spectacular.

From here we are on the Canal Lateral a la Marne - a more industrialised waterway – but attractive nonetheless.

We gave Chalons en Champagne a miss, as since the last time we were there, the moorings have been updated with a new capitainerie, finger pontoons, water, electricity, and of course costs, and much less quay space suitable for barges.  SEA HAWK and ISKRA had managed to squeeze in but there was no room for us, so we carried on to one of our favourite moorings at Condé.

At Condé we were joined by Hubert on his barge DEWAALST whom we had first met at Auxerre and later at Clamecy, and he came for drinks with us.  We saw him again a couple of days later when he pulled in to our mooring north of Reims just before we set off for a morning shopping trip.  His new inverter had stopped working: so Alex had a look and managed to get it going again, and also suss what had caused the problem.  One very happy Hubert went on his way, and we went off and did our Lidl and Leclerc shopping.

We are now about to join the Canal Lateral à L’Aisne to Compiègne, another new canal for us, and then head north for our winter moorings back in Seneffe.

The Nivernais, the Yonne and the Bourgogne

Clamecy is a lovely little town and was once one of the assembly points for the gathering of wood to be floated down the river Yonne to Paris which had run out of local wood for building and burning.  There is a picture of Clamecy taken in the late 1800s, showing the river chock-full of logs so that you could have walked from one side of the other without getting your feet wet!

The logs were assembled and tied together into log ‘barges’, then steered down the river by one or two men using the natural flow as their motive power.  The photo attached may help to explain.

We travelled to the outskirts of the town on our bikes to the usual Lidl and Leclerc to stock up and on our return found Phil and Terrie of barge MR PIP waiting to say hello.

They were travelling in their campervan in the area when they received our last blog and realised we were just ‘round the corner’ from them.  So we had a good catch up with them before they had to rush off to see to their two new kittens, which they’d left in the van.

When we looked round the cathedral in Clamecy Alex found one of the doors to the tower had not been locked. (He always tries every possible door just in case and usually no luck, but this time - result!)   So he climbed to the very top and out onto the square roof which had a parapet all round.  It was blowing a gale up there and as he shouldn’t have been there anyway he had to keep his head well down as he squatted around admiring the views and snapping them from between the balustrades.

Our trip back to Auxerre was now on a known canal/river so we knew, or thought we did, where most of the shallow bits were and where it was a ROFF situation.  Despite this previous knowledge though, we managed to go aground twice – once giving a boat plenty of room to enter a lock and once moving over to allow another boat to overtake.

On the way we encountered four ‘adventure boats’ on several occasions, which had been moored at Clamecy, and were now moving slowly along the Nivernais on an outward-bound-type trip with a million teenagers aboard!  Not a job for the faint-hearted!

We took the Vermenton branch this time and moored up for the night in Accolay. It wasn’t quite wide enough to turn Riccall round so on leaving we continued through the second and last lock, turned in the Vermenton basin and retraced our steps back to the Nivernais and one of our favourite moorings so far, at Bailly.  This time we spent the afternoon walking right up to the top of the vineyards for a magnificent view of the Yonne valley.  Our friends Jean and Mike were due to drop in again on their way north so this was the perfect spot, as they now knew where we’d be, having stayed there with us on their way south.  We had another lovely evening with them and they agreed if they could leave some of their luggage for us to bring back to the UK shortly, there was room in the car for Alex to be given a lift to Seneffe to collect our own car.  It would only add about half an hour to their journey to Zeebrugge for their ferry, and thanks very much Mike and Jean for that.  Alex got back with our car late in the evening.

We spent the next night on the shallow moorings upstream of Auxerre as we knew the following day was going to be tricky and Alex cycled the 10kms back to Bailly to collect the car and parked it in Auxerre.

Next day we lowered the roof before setting off, so the Paul Bert bridge in Auxerre town (limited height and depth noted in our canal book and on the bridge itself!) was actually no problem, and when it came to the turn and reverse into our arranged mooring place, communication was much easier with the roof off and the whole manoeuvre went without a hitch (amazingly as Riccall is usually virtually uncontrollable in reverse).

So now we had a safe place with electricity to leave Riccall for a couple of weeks, and someone to keep an eye on the boat – perfect!  Again thanks are due to David, our friend on his barge CARMEN, for acting as intermediary to get us the temporary mooring and checking on Riccall in our absence.

We drove back to the UK, spending a lovely evening and night with Peter and Nicci on AURIGNY in Deinze in Belgium, then two nights with Julia in Bedford, one night with Michael and Sylvia in Harrogate, where we could admire all the preparations for Le Grand Depart of the Tour de France and finally home to Newton Aycliffe.  Unusually for us we spent all of the Saturday watching alternately the women’s tennis final and Le Grand Depart from Harrogate on television, and Sunday watching more Tour de France and the men’s tennis final!

Our main reason though for this return, the christening of Louise’s first beautiful little granddaughter, Sophie, was not for several days, so we had the usual dashing about collecting together everything we needed to bring back to France with us and fitting in a visit to brother and sister-in-law David and Bun in Wedmore, and Emily and Ric in Bristol.

The christening itself was just perfect, and we spent a further great night with friends from way back, Max and Judith in Kent, before catching a morning ferry and the 6 hour drive back to Auxerre.

We decided to spend a few more days on the mooring in Auxerre as it was just so lovely. We were due to be joined by friends Sylvia and Michael in a few days time in Migennes, a few kilometres downstream on the Yonne and just onto the start of the Canal du Bourgogne – but not such a nice mooring.

When we finally got to Migennes we still had a day before our visitors arrived so we sussed the station, train times, did a bit of shopping and were amused to see a pair of elderly scavengers who dropped by every hour or so to see if anything had been left by hirers in the rubbish bins! 

Alex was also suffering a slight hangover because when we had arrived the night before we had been joined for post-dinner drinks by four multi-national hirers John, Viv, Grant and Itati who were about to leave their boat the following morning.  We all finally got to bed about 1am but in the morning they very kindly gave us all their leftovers, including a full crate of beer and two bulging carrier bags of goodies!  Many thanks to them and bad luck the scavengers! 

The night Michael and Sylvia arrived in Migennes, the local bar had become the centre for an all-night party!  M and S were tired enough after their day-long journey to us to sleep through it all but we had a fitful night until 5.30am when the last of the partygoers eventually stopped chatting and drove off.  The goods trains, which ran all night on the opposite side of the port, didn’t help either!

We set off for St Florentin with Michael and Sylvia, stopping for the usual enforced lunch on the way (the locks here shut 12 to 1pm).  At Maladerie we got to our first ROFF.  This gave M and S a treat, as it was the first time they had ever seen the roof being lowered into the well deck.

After a thankfully peaceful night we all went by train to see Auxerre, as we knew M and S would love it as much as we had.  Had a great day, a super lunch and spent another quiet night back in St Flo.

The following day we came to our second ROFF at Germiny – the lockkeeper just had to wait for us while we completed the manoeuvre.  But she was quite happy to do so, and we got a thumbs-up from her and two passing lady walkers when all was completed.  We finally moored up at Flogny where we had free water, and ate an excellent barbecue cooked by Michael on our new barbecue.  (We have rarely bothered with barbecues in the past because the old-fashioned charcoal-burning type is such a trial, so we had finally used the opportunity of M and S’s visit to treat ourselves to a new gas type, which was a great success.)

Another good quiet night at Flogny and on to Tonnerre, where we had an evening and morning to view the town with its amazing ancient wash-house and interesting cathedral on the hill.  We also learnt that Tonnerre had been subjected to a serious mis-directed bombing by the American Air Force in May 1944 in the lead up to D-day.  Can’t think quite what their proper target might have been so far south! but it left the town in ruins. Sad, sad pictures of the time were on display in the cathedral.

M and S left us after a great few days together: the weather had been perfect – flawless blue skies and just not TOO hot!  Just a bit of a pity we hadn’t been able to show them either a French chateau or a typical French market – each town we visited had had its market on another day, and the main chateaux are further up the canal and higher into the hills!  Another time we hope? . . .

On the Nivernais

Finally the weather has warmed up!  In fact it’s so hot now we can hardly bear it – 38C the other day and 34C for four days in a row!  Typical!  From one extreme to the other in a matter of 2 or 3 days.   We Northerners need time to acclimatise!

We left Sens while it was still cool and took our time (5 days) getting to Auxerre, staying at various places on the way including Villeneuve which was nice enough and Joigny, an interesting little town set on a hillside, with some very old and interesting timbered buildings.  The moorings however, were unfortunately rather poor and we did gently make our views known to the Tourist Information Office staff.

At Auxerre we saw David Almond’s boat CARMEN, and went for a catch up and news of the possibility of a mooring there while we return to the UK for Sophie’s christening.  We had last seen David on the Canal du Midi two years ago when we were both waiting to get through a lock, with a dozen other hired plaisances (bumper boats!).   He had good news for us: yes, a mooring was available at reasonable cost just behind his own boat.  Great relief, as a safe spot for Riccall with electricity is pretty hard to find.

We had moored on the town quay at Auxerre which shows signs of a recent, very comprehensive upgrade, but sadly the water and electricity bournes have not yet been connected.  However, it was a lovely town and an excellent place for our boating friends Keith and Louise of SALTIRE to spend the night with us on their way south to their boat at Moissac.  They arrived around 2pm so we had a wander around the beautiful, ancient town of Auxerre with its little winding streets and alleyways on steep inclines surrounded by timber framed houses everywhere, and we even managed to squeeze in an excellent stop for liquid refreshment! These towns are quite amazing: there must be at least three spectacular churches in Auxerre as well as the Cathedral, and we duly went and saw the rest the following day.  After a further night we felt we must move on and decided our next mooring would be at the Caves de Bailly.

We are now on the Nivernais canal proper and here the locks close for lunch from 12pm - 1pm. This is fine for us as we like to stop for lunch ourselves, though sometimes it can be somewhat difficult if there are no moorings at the next closed lock!  On one occasion we came off a river section and entered a very short sloping sided entrance to the lock.  The lockkeeper wasn’t there, the lock was full, and it was lunchtime.  There were no mooring possibilities of any kind, and the sloping side meant we couldn’t get off to take a line to anything ashore.  We ended up sticking the boat hook across the wide gap into the ground and tying up to that!

As it happened, on the way to Bailly, again the last lock before the mooring was closed for lunch when we got there and this time we had to use a totally inadequate quay about 4 metres long (admittedly with two good bollards) but loads of rocks just below the water surface.  We managed to hang on while we had lunch and Alex leapt off Riccall to scout ahead and see if there was room on our planned mooring.  Yes!  Just 3 boats and plenty of room for us.  When we finally got there two of the boats had already gone and the third left half an hour later, so we had the place to ourselves: a really excellent mooring with water and leccy by jeton.

A short walk up the hill were the Caves de Bailly- a cooperative wine organisation which had taken over the underground excavations formed during stone quarrying work many, many decades ago.  Really stone mines rather than coal mines.  The underground caverns run to about 4 hectares and maintain an ideal temperature for the production and storage of the millions of bottles of wine made there.

One of the most amazing things about this underground facility was the sheer size of some of the areas without support.  The roof wasn’t domed or supported by pillars, but completely flat 12 feet above our heads, spanning an area sometimes more than 30 x 60 metres.  When you think of the weight of the hill above, some 200m in height, you wonder how it could possibly be self-supporting

We took the €5 guided tour and were lucky enough to be joined by only one other couple (British) and so the guide was able to speak only English to us all – and excellent English she had too.  It was a fascinating tour, well worth the money and at the end we got a glass of two types of Cremant to taste and to keep the glasses afterwards!  Needless to say we did buy a couple of bottles at the typically slightly inflated cave prices but it was all worth it.  We also bought the jetons for the electricity and water at €1 each – for 12 hours electricity or half an hour of water.  The mooring itself was free!

Our friends Mike and Jean from our UK narrowboating days had arranged to spend a night with us on their drive to Spain and this was a perfect spot for them to find us: quiet road right beside the mooring and even a safe car park.

We had a great evening with them, then the following day, after they had set off we were joined on the mooring by a small British barge called Unique (well they all are pretty well unique, aren’t they? – almost as bad as us calling our narrowboat ‘The Boat’!!)  We had pleasant apéros with Tony and Heidi and the next day we were on our way again.

One other notable thing about the Canal du Nivernais (apart from its lack of depth) is the height of the bridges.  Our Breil Guide tells us that they all have 3.4m clearance, expect a few which it marks up as specially low.  In fact most of them are more than 3.6m high (our wheelhouse height) but the ones marked as low are usually the wrong ones!!!  So, for a lot of the time, we are cruising ROFF and marking up each bridge in our book as we come to it, as to whether we needed to be ROFF or RON.  So far there have only been three that were definite ROFFs so as it’s so hot we have done the last couple of days with the roof on and going very slowly when approaching the bridges.  And no problems as yet.

Our last mooring was at a pleasant little village called Chatel-Censoir, in an ex-hire-boat basin.  The hire company, Le Boat, had closed down but the water and electricity were still on and all free so that was nice and we stayed a couple of days.  The basin was a bit tight for our boat but we knew there would be no trouble turning when the overnighting hire boats had left in the morning. However, one particularly large one was still there at 10.00 on the day we wanted to leave, so Alex asked the English hirers when they might be leaving.  They said they were just going up to the village for shopping and they would be away by 11 o’clock.  Fine!  We were in no hurry.  So at 11am they got back on board, released the ropes, THEN started the engine.  We could see immediately that they had a problem as they started to drift away from their pontoon in the light breeze, without any power, in our direction.  The captain then tried again and got forward thrust but no steering and no reverse.  By this time they were heading straight for us!  However we managed to deflect them and took a rope so they could moor up behind us.  Perfect!  Now we could get out of the basin and they could ring Le Boat to try and sort their all-electronically-controlled boat!

We moored up for that night, nestling on the mud a metre away from the edge of a little off-line divit in the canal.  And then we set off for our last stop before the water depth runs out(!)  Clamecy would have to be the end of the line for us, as we have heard dire tales of empty pounds a short way upstream.  So then it will be time to turn round and do it all again in the other direction!

However getting to Clamecy presented its own problems. First, a lock was turned against us where the river crosses the canal and we had to back off into the flood lock to avoid being swept to the weir.  The next flood lock was at a very sharp angle and Alex suddenly decided he was going too fast and did an emergency stop! Which of course disturbed all the water and made getting through all the harder!  Then we went the wrong side of an island in the river (Louise mis-read the map!) and then to cap it all, we took the wide, high, middle arch of the bridge into Clamecy and immediately went hard aground.  This time it was not our fault, as neither the bridge nor our canal guidebook showed the correct arch to use.  Normally, at this stage, we settle down and have lunch, and it WAS nearly 12 o’clock, but the lock keeper eventually saw our plight, and explained which arch we should have used, and said he would lower the sluice on the weir ahead to raise the water level and sweep us back through the bridge arch.  This duly happened with remarkably little turmoil (either for the boat or the captain and crew!)  So then it was through the right arch, into the lock and up into the mooring basin.

On the Way Again

Well here we were back in Pontoise after almost exactly 5 years and the place was much improved.  The public quay had been completely renewed and there is now a long floating pontoon up river of the restaurant boat with water and electricity for €14 per night, any length.  On the opposite bank they’ve refurbished the banks and installed another long floating pontoon, around 100 metres or so, offering no facilities but free to stay.

The town itself also showed signs of investment with the cathedral half cleaned, the squares newly paved and fresh flowers planted in borders and planters all over town.

Our journey there from Seneffe was largely without incident and much of it covered old ground.  We moored at many places we had moored at before which always brings a sense of familiarity and ease.  But one, to our amazement, was completely taken up with commercials and that was at Mortagne du Nord, just over the Belgian border into France.  We struggled our way through the silt to the small plaisance quay on the opposite bank: a bit of shimmying back and forth got us close enough to the quay to get the mooring lines on.  The next day, however, getting away from this mooring and back into the main channel was a bit of a challenge.  We were ploughing a furrow in the mud and just had to let Riccall choose the best route for our escape!  No sharp turns advisable here!

From Peronne southward we were onto new territory on the Canal du Nord until we rejoined the Oise (which was the route we had taken 5 years ago from the Canal St Quentin).

We spent a few nights at Compiègne and this time actually did a tour of the Palais – unfortunately we were a little underwhelmed considering the write-up in the tourist literature though the photos make a good show.  The Fête des Muguets (lily of the valley) occurred on a very wet May Day, and we watched the typical French parade squelching past for hours!

Then a couple of nights in Creil from where we cycled the impossible roads to Chantilly, to view the splendid gardens of the Chateau.  We felt the cost of visiting the house itself was not justified, and this time our Lonely Planet said as much.  Maybe we should have discovered for ourselves, but it was such a lovely day that we decided to stay al fresco.  In retrospect however, although the gardens were not included in the tour of the chateau itself, it would have allowed ample views of the best bits of the gardens anyway, so that would, perhaps, have been the better option.  Despite the fact that it was a lovely day, the 10km bike ride to get there had been so fraught with the presence of 40 ton lorries and fast cars on the roads that we decided to take the train back to our moorings.  As usual we were assured by the ticket office that there was no problem taking our bikes on the €1.70 per person train ride back to Creil.  It was no easy task lugging our heavy Dutch Gazelles onto the train, but there is no doubt it was better than facing the juggernauts and racing cars on the road.

The day before our planned departure for Paris we had a bit of excitement as a huge commercial moored up in front of us.  So far so good, but while the family went off shopping, the barge managed to slip its rear mooring line – Madame had merely attached the rope with a large hook to the armaco of the quayside, very low down.  We were sitting quietly in the wheelhouse, sudoku-ing and crossword-ing when Louise looked up and spotted the back end of the barge gently floating out into the river.  We shot to the barge and Louise shouted to anybody who might still be on board but to no avail.  So Alex ran all the way down the quay to the front end (still attached) and then back down the full length of the boat - 80m+, threw their rope to Louise who secured it round a bollard.  Then we bowsered the boat back in and made it properly secure.

An hour later Madame and the children returned and Alex explained to a mystified Madame what had happened.  She then phoned hubby (who had apparently been on board the whole time!) and gave Alex a rather curt ‘Merci’.  Perhaps she was embarrassed.  Oh well, you can’t win them all!

As well as local government spending on Pontoise, a couple of building firms are about to build several blocks of modern flats along the banks of the river.  The temporary sales office for one of these was right next to our mooring.  After two days Alex could stand it no longer.  Here was a good, strong, but locked wifi signal – so he braved the tall chic lady salesperson who ‘manned’ (‘womaned’) the office each day and asked ever-so-politely, if she could give us the code.  ‘Mais oui’ she said.  Fantastic!  Definitely worth the little prezzie of a pack of choc nibbles we had ready for her, but we had to leave them in a plastic carrier bag on her office door with a note as she didn’t open up before it was time for us to leave for Paris.

The trip to our next mooring at Rueil Malmaison took far longer than we remembered and when we got there at 5.30pm, thank goodness it was empty, unlike 5 years ago when it was packed with cruisers.  But then we noticed the sign, erected since our last visit, which said, ‘NO MOORING BETWEEN 9am AND 6pm!’  What a swizz!  Well, with just half an hour to go, we reckoned it was OK and if we slept in in the morning – bad luck!

We arrived at the first lock on the St Denis Canal at 11.45 am but for some reason the radio wasn’t transmitting our request to the lockkeeper to go up the flight, or at least we were getting no response from him, so Alex tried the hand-held radio to which the response was – about a 20 minute wait.  4 hours later we started the flight!  Every time we thought this is it, another commercial appeared.  Finally after two and a half hours and seven locks, we managed to moor up in the ‘circulating basin’ as they call it at the top of the flight.  We were unable to get to La Villette as the temporary passerelle (pedestrian) bridge they have installed while the automatic lift bridge is repaired, had stopped operating for the day.

The next day we went as far up the Canal de l’Ourcq as a barge of our size can, about 11kms, just to have a look at it and the bankside improvement works.  Then we returned to pass the temporary passarelle into the port of La Villette, where we now discovered that it only opened at pre-determined times of day (mainly to let the trip boats through actually).  So we moored up and had lunch while we waited.  Finally we got into La Villette, which now has a total of 250 metres of mooring spread over three different areas, allocated to plaisance boats over 15m where you are allowed to moor for up to 7 days.

Our last trip to La Villette (2009) had cost us around €17 for the use of the 7 up and 4 down locks and nothing for the overnight mooring, so we sort-of-assumed it wouldn’t be too far off that, allowing for inflation and so stayed for 4 nights.  We did a bit of sightseeing, as you do, met up with Stewart and Lesley of ENDELLION who were moored in the Arsenal Port for a coffee and a catch up, then the next day went to pay the bill at the Paris office (rather than let it be sent to our home address, where we aren’t!!)

Well!!!  Inflation or what?!  €52 for a Paris vignette (lasts a year but we are unlikely to be back this year) and the first night free to moor, then €14.75 per night thereafter, so nigh on €100.  Bit of a shock to the system, but actually I suppose, an average of €25 per night for central Paris is not too bad!

The trip down the St Martin Canal was a bit slow, what with waiting for the trip boats and not getting started as early as we had hoped (paying the bill had taken ages) but we got to our hoped-for little mooring at the junction with the Marne in time for lunch.  Then it was onto entirely new ground, or should I say ‘water’ as we travelled up the Seine.

We managed to find pretty good moorings at the locks for a couple of nights, then in Melun, a very good long quay with water and leccy at one end.  We decided to make full use of the facilities and were charged €12 the next morning.  However, the capitaine said the downstream end of the quay was free to moor (no facilities) so, as the éclusiers were on strike yet again, we moved there for the next night.  Melun itself was a nice town: 13^th century church, numerous other monuments of antiquity, a very helpful Tourist Information Office and a working prison!

A few days on, and we are now in Sens, which has good mooring, free water and leccy and very few big commercials blasting past.  Peter (Mastenbrook) lives here on what appears to be a variety of vessels so he came for lunch with us when we arrived and we had a good catch up chat.  Peter seems to know everything about the barging world and is a positive mine of interesting information so we had lots to talk about.  The last time we saw him was when we were in dry dock a year ago.  Regular readers may remember that we kept being floated, even when we still had holes in the bottom of the boat, so we were rather pre-occupied when Peter dropped by, expecting an inundation any minute.  It was a shame we couldn’t do justice to his visit on that occasion, but have made up for it in his home town we hope.

We have decided to stay here in Sens for the weekend.  It’s a really fine town and Alex needs to service the engine anyway.  We are in no hurry to move along but we could do with some better weather.  When it’s sunny, it’s lovely and warm, but then we keep getting these torrential showers!  . . .

New Zealand and OZ winter holiday

For some years we have been promising ourselves a trip to New Zealand and now the time was right!  Having decided to go as far as New Zealand we felt we had to have a taste of OZ as well, so  . . .

This update is an attempt at a brief resume of what we did this winter, but even so it is quite long!  For those of you who have the time, we’ve picked some nice pics out of the millions we took!

We arrived in Auckland 26 hours after leaving Birmingham, having travelled on three planes and having had almost no sleep, but managed to cook supper in our hotel room and stay up till 8pm.  We got up at 9 am the next day feeling fine, despite dire warnings of jet lag and picked up our hire car.

We spent a couple of nights with friends Pierre and Anna in Auckland who had been Alex’s tenants in Harrogate.  We’d all become very friendly and we’d met Anna’s parents Ric and Jenni, in the UK too.  Pierre and Anna showed us around the city and took us for an amazing Asian-style barbi at a friend’s house. They also booked us a trip up the Sky Tower where we had lunch and watched people throwing themselves off the top!  Yes, really – a 300feet vertical free-fall which people pay hundreds of dollars to do!  Then we spent a night with Ric and Jenni who treated us to a lovely evening meal at the local fishing port, and lunch the next day (so kind). Then we travelled on to the Bay of Islands where our good friends Ken and Rhonda ex-owners of the barge SOMEWHERE now live, to spend a few days with them.

While we were there we drove to the very northern-most tip of the North Island – Cape Reigna – and to Russell and Keri Keri.  It was great to see K and R again, catch up with their new landlubbing life, and bring them up to date with the French canals. But ‘rain god’ Alex was weaving his usual spell and rain and showers were the order of the days.

Then Rhonda kindly helped us plan our trip down to Wellington at the southern end of the North Island.  We stayed a night at Rotorua in a motel with a hot sulphur pool where Alex languished for half an hour or so, relishing the 42C heat and the smell of sulphur!  The following morning we saw the hot springs, boiling mud and water geyser. And sun!

We spent a night at Napier which is a town built during the art nouveau period, where there happened to be a historic car weekend just coming to a close, which was great.  Everybody was dressed in 1920s clothes and that, together with the old cars, was quite a sight.

At Wellington, in the short time available, we took the cable car up the hill for a great view of the town, and drove round the harbours.

Early the next day, we dropped the hire car at the ferry terminal and caught the Inter-Islander ferry to Picton on the South Island.  Halfway there the ship was joined by a school of dolphins much to everybody’s excitement.  The weather though was not so good again with a strong wind and the ever present threat of rain.

At Picton we caught the train for the 5-hour trip south to Christchurch.  For half of the journey the line runs beside the Pacific coast, which provides some excellent scenic views before it heads off inland crossing many wide dry ‘braided’ river beds on its way to Christchurch.

At Christchurch, we were met by Alex’s cousin’s son Ghazi, who gave us a bed for the night and whose wife Rebecca gave us a delicious supper.  The following day we borrowed Rebecca’s car and drove to the campervan depot at about 10 am.  They apologised and said we would have to wait about an hour while our vehicle was prepared.  At 3.00 pm!! we eventually drove out of the depot with not the booked 4-berth van but a 6-berth (complaint letter is on its way) in convoy with Rebecca’s car, to drop it off for her.  Having done so we returned to the depot forthwith, to point out that the handbrake didn’t work even on level ground and the van pulled to the left.  They agreed to sort the problems while we waited – again!  So finally, just after 4.00 pm we set off!  Our destination for the first night was to have been the town of Akaroa on Banks Peninsular, about 90 mins from the depot but in the event we didn’t go quite so far, and parked up on the verge between the road and the beach at Wainui on the opposite side of the bay to Akaroa. It was a lovely spot for our first night ever in a campervan (and Louise’s favourite).

We made our way down the east coast visiting and or stopping at towns of interest, such as Timaru, Dunedin and Invercargill.  Throughout this though the weather wasn’t brilliant with at least one night of torrential rain.

Having reached the southern-most tip of the South Island, we turned north to Te Anau and pre-booked a boat trip on the fjord at Milford Sound, then parked up overnight in the last permitted campsite on the way.  (Camping is strictly controlled in this highly guarded ecological area.)  This Department of Conservation site was beside a lake and fortunately we arrived early so there were only a couple of other vehicles already there, and we were able to park our huge van in a good spot.  By evening, the place was packed with cars and vans and more were coming in to have a look, and driving off again disappointed to find no space at the inn.

We were up very early in the morning for the spectacular one-hour drive up to the tunnel and the pass through the mountain ridge, and down the other side to the Milford Sound cruise quays.  The only other thing at Milford Sound is a hotel, staff quarters and a pay-to-stay private campsite which was fully booked when we had asked.

The rain of the previous day had passed and we had a warm and sunny cruise out to the fjord entrance which was great:  we saw seals basking in the sun on the rocks and were again joined by dolphins swimming beside the boat.  We had also paid for a visit to the underwater viewing pod, which was very interesting but just a little disappointing, as we didn’t see any of the large fish, including sharks, which are said to sometimes swim past.

We retraced our steps to Te Anau and thus to Queenstown.  When we arrived there, the weather improved markedly, and we were able to have drinks outside at our overnight stop at Wanaka with a magnificent view of the lake.  We walked up close to Fox Glacier but decided the cost of a guided tour on the ice itself was not good value for money for us.  But Alex had a plan!! And the next morning we drove to a campsite north of the Franz Joseph glacier, which was shared with a helicopter over-flight outfit.  The 4-person helicopter was just taking off on a trip as we arrived, but the ground staff said we could have an 18-minute trip when it got back.  But as it happened, another couple arrived just after us and also wanted a trip.  We left them to discuss.  Shortly after that, Alex got into conversation with the organiser who said the second couple wanted a longer trip than us, and could we come to an arrangement?  So we ended up with a half hour trip with the other couple for a lot less than they were paying!  And it was worth it too.  Quite spectacular and arguably the most impressive bit of the whole holiday.

Our next night was spent in another Department of Conservation campsite which was, for Alex, quite the best we had stayed in so far.  It was about 3kms off the main road down a dirt track with the parking places spread out between bushes and trees.  And, best of all, a lovely stream running beside the site  with permission to pan for gold in it if you wanted (provided you didn’t use any mechanical devices).  There was a father with his 10 year old son already trying when we arrived so Alex asked him how you actually did it.  The father told Alex that his son was terribly excited as they had already recovered 3 slivers of gold.  (Not enough to buy a cup of coffee, the father assured us, but something, none the less.)  Alex was stripping down to his shorts and grabbing the frying pan and a bucket before you could blink!

However, what he failed to do was to cover himself in anti-sand-fly spray. Within minutes of trying to pan, his legs were covered in sand flies, then in blood from all the punctures left by the little devils.  He suffered on for a bit, but had to give up in the end and felt it was too much to spray up and try again: but for all that, it was a good laugh, in lovely weather.

Next day we dropped the van off at the depot and made our way back to Ghazi and Rebecca’s house for the next couple of nights.  But between those nights we had booked the Trans Alpine train from Christchurch to Greymouth and back over Arthur’s Pass.  When we got on the train we were a bit disappointed to learn that the tunnel at Arthur’s Pass was no longer allowing passengers to be taken through (something to do with health and safety – pah!).  Instead we would all have to disembark and travel the 15kms by bus.  But in practice this was a very good thing, because instead of 10 minutes in a tunnel in the dark on the train, we got a 20-minute ride over the top, with a running commentary from the driver, complete with the usual feeble jokes, but amid glorious scenery.  Despite the fact that the journey both ways took the whole day, we weren’t bored at all.  The track itself and the scenery were just so amazing.

During the day before our flight to Sydney we managed a couple of hours in Christchurch city centre.  This was a very sad experience, because what looked literally like a bombsite had been in fact the epicentre of the 2011 earthquake.  The city was in ruins: most damaged buildings had been torn down already, leaving huge gaps in the cityscape, but the cathedral, subject of great discussion as to whether to demolish or repair, was still standing, propped up with huge girders: a sorry sight indeed. 

We arrived in Sydney for our 4 night stay and look around, taking in a ferry trip to Manley, the usual open top bus tour around the city and out to Bondi beach, and another ferry trip to Cockatoo Island, which has been many things in its existence, including a prison, a girls’ school, a naval dockyard and now is an open museum and organised camping and glamping ground.

Then on to Melbourne by air, where, after a night’s stay, we picked up our hire car to drive the Great Ocean Road to Adelaide.  Of course, we happened to be in Melbourne on the weekend of the Grand Prix so the place was packed, but we managed to avoid the worst of the crowds and traffic and the F1 cars, and made our way to the outskirts and the road to Apollo Bay, our first stop.  But as usual we took the ‘long’ way to get there by driving to the opposite side of the huge sea lake where Melbourne is situated.  Apollo Bay itself and the surrounding area has lots to see including the lighthouse at Cape Otway and The Twelve Apostles or is only Eleven now? and ‘London Bridge’ (half of which has fallen down) – all rather spectacular sea stacks.  So we arrived in Portland a bit later than we had intended and after an abortive search for somewhere to eat, we bought a cheap microwave meal, and regretted it!!

But actually in the sunny light of the next morning, we discovered that Portland was a lovely place and there were places to eat, though much further away than we had walked the night before.  It had a great harbour, vibrant commercial shipping docks, an old tram and several other noteworthy objects of interest.  We discovered at the Tourist Information Office that we were about to cross from Victoria into South Australia and that we would not be allowed to carry certain foodstuffs across the ‘border’.  Fines are heavy and the rules strictly enforced.  We reviewed our stocks – tomatoes, asparagus, mushrooms, plus butter and garlic.  Well, we couldn’t throw all that away could we? And the Tourist Information Office had pointed out the free-to-use electric barbecues in the park.  So we turned one on and barbied the whole lot on skewers and very good it was too, if a bit eccentric.  (Louise was a bit sceptical at first, but Alex persisted that it would be great – and it was!)

We left Portland and dipped off the road to see a ‘petrified forest’ and yet another spectacular viewpoint but wanted to arrive early at our next overnight stop, because after booking in haste we had noticed that some of the reviews were terrible: “lakeside location spectacular, shame about the room” etc.  They were right but we decided to make the best of it and stay anyway.  We did a drive round the lake, crossed by the free ferry where we had an interesting chat with the ferryman and took pictures of pelicans on posts. Then back to the motel where we watched the sun set over the lake through our window, and ate in the town hotel. In the morning we were greeted by several pelicans swimming not 10 feet away past our window. So it was a great setting – the best in fact of any of the motels we stayed in, but the room itself, and particularly the bed, was a disgrace. (Warning to self – always read the reviews carefully before booking!!)

We diverted from the direct main road to Adelaide to go south to the ferry terminal for Kangaroo Island.  The landscape was interesting and involved another free ferry crossing over the Murray river, but the township at the terminal was forgettable so we hightailed it to Adelaide where we were staying at the Oaks Plaza Pier hotel at Glenelg – very smart – and for some reason they upgraded us to a suite with balcony.

Next morning, with a crack of dawn start we drove to the airport, dropped the car off and caught the 6.30am flight to Perth.  Three and a half hours later we landed at local time 7.30 am in a thunderstorm (rain god Alex again) and Alex’s daughter Alice was waiting to pick us up.

We had a lovely three days with Alice, Mark and Bea in Perth, trying not to do too much as by this time we had reached the stage of longing to get home, but had the horror of the 26 hours of flights and airports ahead of us.

So we visited the harbour, the old town of Fremantle, the wildlife park, had a really good sushi lunch courtesy of Alice (thanks Alice for proving that sushi can be delicious) and took a quick train trip into Perth town centre plus an obligatory ferry ride over to the north side.

Finally we caught the flight back to Adelaide, spent the night once again in the Oaks Plaza hotel, spent the following day looking around Adelaide and then started the dreaded return flights in the late evening.

We both picked up colds on the aeroplane and arrived back in the UK, at Birmingham airport, pretty knackered. Alex’s son Will was there to take us back to his and Laura’s house for lunch and later supper, but again we managed to avoid too much jet lag by waiting till around 9.00pm before collapsing into bed.

It has been a fascinating and memorable trip but we both agree, if there is to be a next time, it will have to be by boat!!!  (Not Riccall!!!)

Back to Seneffe via the Roubaix

We were back on the Canal du Nord and heading for the Royaulcourt Tunnel again but this time going north.  We had hoped to moor for the night above the last lock before the tunnel but it was full of commercials. However, we knew that there was a mooring possibility at an old quay and turning point a few kilometres on.  It was empty except for a rather disgruntled fisherman as we had to moor right next to him, but apart from that, a very good spot.

The next day we went through the tunnel behind one commercial with whom Alex had had a chat while we waited for the green light.  When we reached the passing place in the middle it took Alex some time to realise that there was actually a commercial coming towards us: the lighting is rather confusing in there and he thought at first it was the barge in front of us! Plenty of time thankfully to move over to let him pass through!

We stopped for the day a bit early just above the first ‘downhill’ lock, where we had moored some weeks before in solitary isolation on that occasion.  At 2pm when we arrived we were the only boat again, and we cycled off to nearby Havrincourt for a mosey around.  During the course of the late afternoon, commercials began to moor up with us, one of which very nearly side-swiped a barge passing the other way. By 11pm that night, when the last one arrived, they were two deep all the way along the very long quay!

A couple of days later we were back at the lovely Gare d’Eau mooring south of Lille.  But we were getting a bit low on fuel so next day we stopped at Harbourdan, a suburb of Lille, for lunch and asked at the Mairie if they could help us with a delivery by fuel tanker.  They tried but without success, so we motored on to the Bras de la Citadelle mooring which this time did have another barge moored there, but plenty of room for us.  In chatting to Joseph and Madeleine on WEITSKE we learnt that the Belfry, Lille’s tallest building was open with free entry for that day only, so we shot off on our bikes and enjoyed seeing Lille from a different perspective. 

On the way into Lille we had spotted COSMA and later rode round to ask Stephan if he could possibly help us get enough fuel to get us to the Captain Neptunia fuel barge at Antoing where we were heading on our way back to Seneffe (via, we hoped, the Roubaix and l’Espièrre canals).

So we put 4 x 20 litre containers into his van and drove to the local garage, where, with a slight worry about the police car which pulled in to fill up halfway through our own can filling, we succeeded in getting enough fuel for the next few days.

We rang Camille who asked us to be at the 2^nd lock of the Roubaix at around 9 am on our chosen day.  We should pick up a remote control at the Grand Carré Lock just north of Lille which would operate the first lock on the Roubaix.  So an early start for us at 7.30 (!!!) got us to Camille just about 9.30am.  Camille is a lovely young woman who is the public face of the Roubaix Canal and assists in the passage of boats using it.  She gave us lots of information about the town of Roubaix and the surrounding suburbs and warned us that a one kilometre section of the river before the next lock would be a bit shallow.

All went well till we reached that section.  We started to slow down.  Alex reduced the revs to stop the back end sitting too low in the water and we slowed even more until eventually we were down to 0.5 kms per hour!

The lock was by now very close, but round a 90 degree bend, so there was no other option than to put on lots of power and force a way through the silt and round the corner.  What a stink came from the disturbed mud on the bottom of the river – quite disgusting.

Once into the lock everything was fine for the flight of 5 locks, even though the helpful and friendly lock keepers had no sense of efficiency whatsoever, but who cares, we were in no hurry!  After a stop for lunch and a few more locks, and lift bridges, we arrived at the next obstacle – a roundabout!

Suddenly Camille re-appeared as well as our lock keepers.  Ah, she said when we asked, it requires a team of 4 people to stop the traffic, operate the lights and barriers, while the two lift bridges on either side of the roundabout are raised.  So in the middle of the rush hour, all the traffic trying to enter the roundabout was held up as we cruised sedately through.

Our mooring for the next two nights was just past a gypsy encampment beside the canal which was a bit worrying, but the lock keepers assured us that they had never had any problems.  The advertised electricity supply was eventually located under a man-hole cover in the middle of the lane next to the mooring and had we needed water, it too was under a man-hole cover.  Not exactly user friendly, but they were both free.

The next day we visited Roubaix, in particular the Piscine Museum, transformed from a 1920s art deco swimming pool into a stunning art gallery.  Yes, I know it sounds most odd, but it was very effective, and included every 10 minutes or so, a short recording of the sounds you hear in a swimming pool – children screaming and shouting in a very echo-y environment. Very atmospheric.  We had lunch in a strange little bistro called ‘The Garage’ in a very down-at-heel part of town (interesting) and followed the canal arm up into Tourcoing on our bikes.

Our visit to Roubaix was a mixed bag – the Hotel de Ville, the church, the main square were as lovely as they usually are in France and The Piscine was uniquely great, but the whole area has been down on its knees and looks it, despite the millions that have been and are being spent on it.  But the important thing is that it is a canal that has been re-opened and that is just the start of the regeneration of the whole area.  In years to come the surroundings will hopefully echo the high standards which have been incorporated into the canal and we would strongly recommend that other boaters use the canal to show appreciation for those huge efforts.

The lock keepers were ready for us 9am but we were not ready for them!  Alex asked for a half hour delay as he had a mission before we could start.  He had spotted a flower shop 50m away which was to be his saviour as it was Louise’s birthday the next day!

That night we moored just over the France border into Belgium, again with free water and electricity though this time with a proper bourne for access, and Alex checked that the little Maison du Canal would be open for dinner – Yes!

The place was packed with locals and the choice on the menu board ran to three items: so we shared a ‘planche’ of cheeses and a planche of charcuterie meats, a carafe of rosé and frites.  The ambience created by the simplicity of the fare and the engaging locals made for a brilliant evening, even if we could barely understand a word: and all for under €20.  (So along with a 40^th birthday card which Alex had found in our card store on the boat – a bunch of flowers and this ‘sumptuous’ supper, that was it for Louise’s birthday!)

The Belgian side is a total contrast to Roubaix’s urban environment.  The Canal de l‘Espièrres is a lovely, tranquil rural waterway, and we were sorry to leave it.

A couple of days later after the morning mist had cleared we were able to fuel up at the fuel barge in Antoing, and we were very glad that we had failed to get a fuel delivery near Lille as our draught would have been even worse on the Roubaix shallows with 700 extra litres on board!

So now we were retracing our steps towards our winter mooring at Seneffe.  A night in the lovely basin at the top of the closed Pommeroeul-Condé Canal link, a late start due to fog and another night in the Grand Large at Mons, a lift on the Strepy Ascenseur and we were back at Seneffe – our home for the next 5 or 6 months.

Stats for this year 2013:

1331.3 Kms

99 Locks

21 Lift and swing bridges

2 Inclined planes

4 tunnels

2 Dry docks

1 Rip-off bottom repair!

1 Good value complete bottom overplate and paint!

On the Somme

So now we were truly on the Somme and were feeling quite optimistic about the trip though mooring may not be as easy as elsewhere, or so we thought at first.  When we reached Cappy the next day, Danni and Elspeth (from Switzerland) helped us moor up, which was no easy task given the shallowness of the water, but we were able to move along to the pontoon mooring later and they came for drinks and a really good chat.  They liked RICCALL’s fit-out and we had a look at their boat L’ARC EN CIEL. It’s brand new this season, a 13m x 4m state of the art cruiser: and it’s quite amazing what can be fitted into a relatively small footprint.

Now we were into the thick of the First World War arena of the Somme.  We all tend to think of it as mud and trench foot, of ruined landscapes pockmarked with craters and littered with ruined villages.  And of course, this is just what it was like 90 years ago, but now it is hard to comprehend bearing in mind the total transformation.  The towns and villages have been rebuilt, often to the exact likeness of what had been before, the trees have all re-grown or more likely been re-planted, the trenches have been obliterated by farming and there is hardly a trace of it all, apart from the relentless progression of cemeteries across the landscape, the monuments to the dead in every town and village, and war museums everywhere.  But the memory is being kept alive of an extraordinary waste of life in every corner of this area.

Among many memorials in the area, in Chipilly there is the famous sculpture of a soldier comforting his dying horse – for Alex the most moving memorial we saw.

We cruised down to Long with its wonderful chateau and hydroelectric generation plant and had a bit of trouble mooring up due to the current flowing towards the weir right opposite the mooring, taking RICCALL with it, but with the help of a boater also on the mooring we were able to bring the back end in – eventually!

This village owed its wealth to peat cutting and was one of the first in France to have hydroelectric power.  The power was limited, however, and each house was only allowed one light ‘on’ at a time and only at certain times of the day – but progress nevertheless.

We were due to catch up with our good friends Peter and Nicci on AURIGNY at Pont Remy.  Alex knew there would be quite a strong flow and had wondered how best to cope with it, but in the event we were there, approaching AURIGNY before we realised it!  The mooring turned out to be on the right hand side, whereas for some reason, Alex had imagined it on the left so hasty decisions had to be made.  We couldn’t turn round before reaching AURIGNY because there was a small historic barque moored directly opposite (we wouldn’t have been thanked for smashing it up) so taking a good chunk of tree with the back end we tried to turn opposite AURIGNY – not quite enough width – abort – ‘Sorry’ about the scratch in AURIGNY’s paintwork and we were carried down 1km in the strong flow to the lock.  The gates of the lock were closed of course, so we had to come to a stop on the rail which protects the weir!  We rang the lock keeper who arrived within 15 minutes and quickly understood the problem.  A quick suss of the area below the lock showed that with a bit of care, and using the flow re-entering the cut from the weir, we could turn there in order to retrace our steps.  The lock keeper let us through the lock to carry out a textbook about-turn (making up for the fiasco just minutes earlier) and back we went up the lock to moor in a controlled fashion upstream of AURIGNY.  Phew!  Alex calculated the flow at about 4kms per hour - not easy for mooring while going downstream! And impossible for RICCALL with her dramatic paddle effect to the left in reverse.

Peter and Nicci have had their car with them all this season, so with their encouragement we borrowed it and moved our own car from our Tournai Yacht Club mooring to Seneffe, our winter mooring (a rather longer trip than we had realised). We also drove down with them to St Valery on the Baie de Somme where the Somme enters the Atlantic.  This is a wonderful area of mud flats and shallows, with nature reserves and bird watching hides everywhere.  There is also a narrow gauge steam train which runs round the bay to Le Crotoy where we had lunch in a restaurant – the ubiquitous ‘moules frites’ before the return trip to St Valery and thence back to the boats by car.  The weather unfortunately was dreadful – cold and very wet, but the company more than made up for it.

We decided not to take RICCALL any further than Pont Remy, some 25kms shy of St Valery on the coast, as the current on the Somme was surprisingly strong and this would mean our upstream journey would be slow and somewhat tedious, particularly as the last 15kms of the canal is a straight concrete trough, the Canal Maritime, built in 1835 to improve what had been a difficult part of the Somme to negotiate.  Instead we cycled the 10k to Abbeville beside the river all the way.  We had visited Abbeville on our way south by car some 20 years ago and had spotted a British barge moored up.  We were very impressed by the whole idea of this way of life and I’m sure it was one of the things which encouraged us to make our fledgling dream a reality.  So, once again in Abbeville (not in itself a very charming place!) we tried to find the spot where that barge had been moored: and eventually we think we did find the exact place!

Amiens on our return upstream journey, was wet and windy so after a quick trip to Lidl and an express tour of the cathedral – the largest in France and big enough to hold two of Paris’s Notre Dames! – we sheltered back on RICCALL promising to re-do Amiens if and when the weather improved.

Corbie was all that we could hope for mooring-wise and the ‘Simply’ supermarket provided all we needed (including fresh milk for Alex).  We had been given an invaluable tip by Roz and Graham of OPABRADOR that the end bourne on the pontoon at Corbie gave out over 10 hours of leccy (and water) for your €2, instead of only 4 hours, so we immediately bagged it when we arrived!  They also suggested having a good supply of €2 coins for the Somme, as all the bournes will only take €2 coins, so it became a task for everyone who went shopping to try to get €2 coins in their change!  Not as easy as it sounds.

Our friends Mike and Jean arrived for a few days while we were there and we had a great time catching up with news of their recent house move and family stuff, and also an enlightening time visiting the Albert War Museum, which is housed in a 250m long underground tunnel and which was excellent, another narrow gauge railway - the Petit Train d’Haut Somme - which had been built to provide provisioning for the Allies at the front in 1916.  The 1916 front line runs very close here and the little railway line was used after the war until the 1960s to transport sugar beet from the depot on the plateau down to the canal.  We drove into Amiens (a bad move really – the train would have been better) and while Alex and Mike climbed the tower of the cathedral, Louise and Jean enjoyed a little time out with a glass or two of wine in the bistro next door.  It was a great couple of days and we were lucky with the weather which was largely fine and dry if cooling off for autumn.

The day after Mike and Jean left however was hot and sunny, so we felt the pull of Amiens again.  We caught the train this time and visited the two things we had so hoped to visit and which had escaped us the day before – firstly the area of Amiens called St Leu, sometimes called the Venice of the North - which is the old port district with its unusual buildings and many water courses running through it.  The present day canal bypasses this area so you don’t see it when passing through Amiens, so that was a worthwhile diversion. 

Secondly to the eastern side of Amiens is the area known as Les Hortillonnages.  The ancient marshland had been worked for peat many centuries ago, and these little allotment plots were gradually reclaimed from the marshes, banked up and used as market gardens.  The area covers 300 hectares and there are 65 kms of small canals criss-crossing it.  Nowadays few of the gardens are used for commercial production of fruit and vegetables as in the past, but it is possible to venture in amongst them by traditional boat.  We just happened to arrive at the booking office with 15 minutes to go before the small flotilla of boats was due to set off.  Success!  It was a great trip, even better for having cloudless skies and warm sunshine to enjoy the gardens and wildlife.

We cruised on to Chipilly where we breasted up on AURIGNY and had another great evening of dinner, drinks and jaw! 

And then we went our separate ways, for some months at least, while AURIGNY motored on in the search for winter moorings, and we ambled along looking at things of interest, one of which was an excursion by bike to the small town of Bray which does still have a canal branch leading into the town from the Somme, but which looked a bit uninviting when we passed by boat.  We eventually discovered the so-called Halte Fluvial  - a 20 metre wooden quay with a few small cleats, but to get to it, we would have had to negotiate 3 kms through a narrow canal and a wide open lake area.  The town once must have been vibrant with commercial boats coming and going: a Hotel du Port and a café du port at the terminus had catered for the batelliers, but now all was closed down with only a small Carrefour supermarket and a bar left as far as we could see!

So now we have left the beautiful and tranquil Somme for the Canal du Nord.  We had thought it would be good to visit Peronne on the way, but the moorings proved to be difficult.  On one side of the basin the bollards were far too far apart to moor safely and on the other side it appeared to be impossible to leave the mooring through a locked gate.  The Port de Plaisance was too expensive for a boat of our size, so having moored up on the expensive pontoon, we stayed for lunch for free and set off once again onto the very commercial Canal du Nord, promising that we would explore the ‘Historial’ Museum of Peronne and the town another time.

Milling about near Lille

So . . . after our failure to get onto the Canal de l’Espierre and Canal de Roubaix, we headed off south to get to Lille to meet Robert, the long way round, via the Escaut, Dunkirk-Escaut Waterway and the Deule!  (We had spent so long in the two boatyards this spring that our original intention of doing the Paris-Marne-Strasbourg-Toul circuit had been postponed till next year, so this year was a good opportunity to tackle some northern waterways.) 

We decided to overnight in the Bassin Rond at the junction of the Dunkirk-Escaut waterway and the Escaut as we had done 4 years ago.  We had loved the mooring then and did now, but 4 years ago it was virtually empty of moored boats but now there were many more, including several ex-commercial peniches.  We moored up with the help of the owner of COSMA, a historic 1960s working barge still virtually ‘as built’. 

The Bassin Rond is a lovely spot, nearly as nice as the Tournai Yacht club mooring but not as big.  Having met Stephan we decided to stay for 2 nights and invited him and his wife Florence for drinks and returned to COSMA for coffee the next day.  We had lengthy conversations with them both on the subject of commercial traffic and how it is regulated in France and began to understand his frustrations at the system, which has seen many of the smaller owner-operated commercial craft give up the struggle.

After another night en route we got to Lille where we found the Bras de la Citadelle mooring completely empty!!  Great! a good spot to rendezvous with Robert who was arriving on Eurostar for a long weekend. 

We sussed the buses to Lille Europe station and caught one the following morning to meet him.  We had a bit of a hiccup on the bus on the way there because the tickets wouldn’t ‘compost’ (stamp) in the machine on board.  Other travellers tried to help but it was the machine which was at fault, and eventually the driver got out of his seat, re-set the machine several times until finally it worked.  We had a good laugh with the driver over that, and amazingly when we returned with Robert, it was the self-same driver who this time had to explain to us in his non-existent English and our poor understanding of French, that he couldn’t drop us at the same spot where we had got on – roadworks had caused a diversion apparently!  Still, it all made for a fun ride.

We had lunch at the restaurant adjacent to our mooring (sadly in the pouring rain) and thus acquired its wifi password, so Robert was happy as he could continue ‘life as he knows it’ with his I-pad.

We decided on a short cruise north to the River Lys and Armentières where we spent a pleasant night with warm sunshine for evening drinks on deck.   Armentières was almost completely destroyed during the war and this was our first experience of being ‘in the battle zone’.                  

                          

The return to Lille went without incident apart from an inexplicably long wait at one of the locks.  This can often happen on the canals and can make planning a voyage tricky, but in this case we just couldn’t understand the lock-keeper’s rapid-fire French, so we just waited . . . and waited.

Having dropped Robert off in Lille after his weekend, we continued our cruise south towards the Somme. 

Out first stop was near to the junction with the now-closed Canal de Seclin, which we investigated on our bikes.  It was a lovely ride of about 5 kms to the terminus and the town, which like many small towns in France has the most beautiful 13^th century buildings, in this case the ‘Hôpital’. 

On the canals we’ve noticed several widenings in the canal called ‘Gare d’Eau’ on our maps.  The one south of Lille – 300m long and offline, behind an islan,d is marked with a ‘P’ sign.  It was entirely empty of boats, so we entered rather gingerly, and found to our surprise that the depth was pretty good on the whole though along the edges some parts were a bit shallow for RICCALL.  Bollards were installed at regular intervals and after some probing with the long barge pole, we found a couple with adequate depth.  A short cycle ride into the village took us to a small supermarket with most essentials we might require.  How come such a good off-line mooring has been effectively abandoned?

We woke up to heavy mist the next morning and delayed our departure but it soon cleared and we headed towards the Canal du Nord. 

At Douai we found a good mooring and went off exploring on our bikes.  We rode along the Scarpe Inferieure which has been closed for about 10 years due to a road bridge at Raches near the Douai end.  After about 6kms we found it, all renewed and with its hydraulics intact, seemingly operational but not yet opened!  This one bridge prevents use of a perfect short cut.  What a waste of a lovely canal!

We also found near Douai an amazing water and adventure park, which was clearly very popular with the local children.  Of course this was during the school summer holidays, but it was great to see everyone enjoying the various pretty new facilities – including a fantastic climbing and tree-top area where children and parents alike wear hard hats and clipped-on safety harnesses and negotiate the high level obstacle course and zipwires.  (A cornet in glorious sunshine provided the ice-creaming on the cake.)

Close to this we also found a brilliant town mooring, in the centre of Douai, with water and electricity, on the line of the old through-town canal now closed, with just one cruiser mooring up on it as we rode up, but we were dissuaded from moving onto it by a very low-looking bridge which would have meant a hasty roof removal.  Not this time, but perhaps . . .

So after these explorations we continued onto the Nord and up to the summit level – 7 up-hill locks to negotiate first, behind a commercial, whose captain we got to know quite well during all that effort. 

However, after the last lock he continued to the tunnel while we (chickens!) moored up 6kms before it for a quiet night.  We had an unexpectedly easy passage through the tunnel the next day which happened to be a Sunday.  The tunnel is 4kms long and in the middle is a 1km long lay-by!!  Boats start at each end at the same time and then in the middle they pass in the lay-by.  Traffic lights indicate who does what and when.

So the tunnel behind us, we continued down the 5 locks to the junction with the Somme, which winds its way through a delightful area of lakes and etangs on which are many little boats and fishing shacks.  Louise had acquired a book ‘Spring on the Somme’ by Arthur R Taylor to read while travelling the Somme, and she would thoroughly recommend it to anyone, particularly anyone making the same trip.  It was fascinating, amusing and very informative.  (It’s always great to have a book about the area through which you are travelling.)

Mooring up seemed very problematic before the very first lift bridge, as GRAND DUTCHY, a narrowboat we had come across in Toul, and a cruiser were moored on the very inadequate quay.  We hovered around a bit looking perplexed, but quickly MV MALANTA’s captain Fred offered to move off, let us in and moor on us.  So kind!  But that’s how some boaters are.  So of course, aperos on RICCALL followed!  A good omen we felt for our cruise on the Somme.

Tournai yacht club and setting off for Lille

We have been back to the UK and had all the dental work done or at least begun.  The rest can wait till winter.

The Clio is sorted at last and now in Jamie’s hands in reasonable working order (another £500 spent but at least we managed to get our £320 back from the useless John).

On our return we learnt that our friends Bob and Sue on JUNO were not a million miles away at Dinant on their way south to the Midi.  So we jumped in the car and drove down to have a lovely lunch with them before they got too far south.

Since then we have been back on Riccall in our lovely mooring, finishing off the last bits of painting which we failed to complete in the last session, and doing some local sightseeing: to the small aerodrome 2kms away from which microlights and gliders keep appearing over our mooring, and also to the old or former canal.

In fact, we could hardly bear to leave the Grand Large at Péronne.  Every day we have had flotillas of sailing boats, sail boards and canoes with children and teenagers being taught how it’s all done: everything from little 6 year olds learning how to paddle, to young people deliberately capsizing their craft so as to learn how to right them again – a great spectacle and such fun to watch.

Then opposite us was an amazing boatyard (reminiscent of our own at Methley Bridge) which was capable of lifting small boats out of the water using straps, and larger craft on a sideways slip, or even in some cases, forwards on trolleys on rails.  There seemed to be boats going in or out almost every day with the lovely Marjorie, the very capable owner and hands-on operator, getting stuck in driving the tractor, checking straps or supports and yelling instructions all the while!  Alex says “What a woman!”

We were surprised one day when we got back to the boat from a short drive to see a cluster of cruisers gathering in the middle of ‘our’ lake round a péniche called Troubadour.  This was obviously an annual event which they carried out on 15^th August - Assumption Day.  All the boats gathered for an all-day party on Troubadour with eating, drinking, music and dancing: that is, until she dragged her anchor in the wind and they all un-moored and milled about while Troubadour re-anchored herself back in the middle of the lake.  The cruisers then all re-grouped and carried on with the party.

So we had electricity, water, nice neighbours and shops in both France and Belgium not far away (and we still had the car) and interesting things happening almost every day, but we were still in Belgium, and here I must make some observations about the Belgians. 

When we had cousins Mary and Martin to stay with us earlier this year as we travelled north from France into Belgium, we were a bit nonplussed at how vehement Mary was about the Belgian people – not a good word to say about them.  But now we see, to an extent, what she was getting at.  Individuals when you get to know them are perfectly pleasant, if a little reserved, (and we must pay tribute to our Capitaine, Yvon who has been marvellous) but on the roads they never give you any thanks or even an acknowledgement when you have stopped or given way to them: far worse than the French in this respect.  We have had many walking past our moorings, looking at us with evident interest but never a wave or a ‘bonjour’ or even a smile.

In fact after a bit, you think ‘sod ‘em’ and stop doing it yourself, then when you get into France, as we often did to get the internet through our SFR dongle, you are surprised because everybody smiles and says ‘Bonjour’ when you see or pass them.  And in the usual French fashion, when someone comes into the Post Office or shop for example, they say, ‘Messieurdames’ addressing everyone in the queue!  It’s just great and only 200 yards across the border from Belgium!

Yvon never did tell us how the ‘give way to the right’ rule works, but we think we have at last worked it out!  Yellow diamond signs every half kilometre or so mean that you have right of way until you get the sign with a diagonal line through it. Then  if you are expected to give way, there will be a small crossroad sign such as we used to have in the UK before WW2! i.e. an x not a +.  But this does not tell you if this is a genuine crossroads or a road entering from the left or the right.  Even if you are on the main road when you see this crossroad sign, you are expected to give way to any traffic emerging from the right!!  There are even instances where there are signs warning of a DANGEROUS CROSSROAD AHEAD, where visibility is limited, and rather than just making the side road give way they warn of the danger.  Balmy!!!

However, we have at last left the Grand Large on our trip to Lille where we’ll meet Louise’s son Robert who arrives for a 3 day weekend shortly.

We decided it would be fun to go by the recently re-opened (2010) Canal de l’Espièrres and Canal de Roubaix which we have been encouraged by our Barge Association to use, as a lot of money and effort has been spent in re-opening it.  The canal crosses the border between Belgium and France so two authorities are involved in running it, and you need to contact both to make arrangements for moving through the locks.

We tried to ring the French branch before we left the Grand Large but the office was closed for the holiday, we assumed, so we decided to wing it and go that way anyway – just a day’s cruise to get there and find out the situation.  As we left the Grand Large through the lock the lockkeeper asked us our destination, as they all do, and when we said Lille via the Canal de l’Espièrres he appeared to insist that the other, southern route was the one to do.  We tried to explain our intentions but our French not being good enough for him, he gave up on us and vanished into his eyrie.  Our computer program had been quite happy about our intention to do the northern route and it would have come up with a CAUTION if there had been any problem, so when we got to Tournai we stopped for lunch and free wifi and downloaded the latest stoppages list just to be on the safe side.  No problem listed, so we decided to carry on.

The entrance to the Canal de L’Espièrres is unmarked and achieved through a rather uninviting 5m wide flood lock (now obsolete).  We made the usual jokes about The African Queen etc, as you do, and with some trepidation we made our way towards the first lock, some 1.5 kms up the canal.  It was obvious that there was no official mooring so we hurled a grappling hook at the bank and managed to get lines round a couple of trees.  Then we rang the Belgian Waterways who agreed to pass us through the first lock at 8am the next morning.   A bit early for us, but there you go.

By 9.15am the next morning, after several phone calls and contact on the VHF radio, a lockkeeper arrived to pen us through the first lock.

In the meantime, however, we had at last got through to the French section of the canal authority and had learnt that though the canal is normally open, it was however closed for at least the weekend due to lack of water!!  The situation would be reviewed after the weekend to see if the levels had risen at all. 

So we considered the scene for a short time – should we go through two locks and 3 lift bridges to the French border, then sit there for who knows how long in the hope that the water level can be sorted out.  No thanks! 

Well, decision made, but we then had to work out how to turn round in a canal too narrow for the manoeuvre, and as 1.5kms is a very long way to try to get Riccall to go backwards (!) we went into the lock, explained our problem to the waiting lockkeeper, checked the width and depth of the pound above the lock, and then rose in the lock.  We then proceeded to do a very tight about-turn in the pound above.  The eclusier quite understood and said we were the 5^th vessel that month to abandon their attempt and leave the canal.  Most, being smaller and more shallow-drafted than us, had gone a little further than us before admitting defeat.

So Goodbye l’Espièrres: we tried, we failed.