Summer on the Saone

Last time we trekked south from Toul we took the Moselle upstream and then the Vosges, but this time we decided we wanted to cruise the Nancy 'embranchement' en route to the Vosges, so we headed off downstream on the Moselle to Liverdun for our first night away from Toul. This is one of our favourite moorings, having the most wonderful away-from-it-all feel when moored on the ducs d'Albe outside the little port area. We've never ventured into the little backwater off the Moselle, always a little nervous of depth, but we love the mooring on the river itself.

As we left our mooring in the morning we could see there were a few rowing pairs and fours on the river. Two were well in front of us near the left bank so we gave them plenty of room as we set off down the river. Then one pair started to move out towards the middle so Alex gave a hoot on the horn and instead of making for the bank again the pair started to try to get to our right basically heading straight for us. We had to do an emergency stop or we would have run them down. What an idiotic pair, but no apologies from them as we set off again.

Then, into Nancy itself. Lunch topside of the lock just off the river, and then we stopped at a double red bridge light. Of course, we telephoned VNF and were given the answer that it would open at 'dix-neuf heures'. This of course was nonsense as the canal itself closes at 6pm!! But, difficult to argue with limited French so we accepted defeat and stayed put. In fact the mooring we eventually backed up to, at Malzéville, turned out to be one of the best in Nancy so we were content enough. Eventually a German couple on an English Fairline cruiser came along and we explained the position. The lady wife spoke good French so she managed to discover that the reason for the unexpected closure was that there was to be a 'feux d'artifice' display later that night and the bridge was closed for safety reasons: VNF's Health and Safety policy didn't allow any random boats to pass while the fireworks were set up. So all was explained, or at least we thought it had been explained, but when there turned out to be NO fireworks later that night, we were all left a little perplexed!!

So onward the next morning towards the embranchement canal, 

Almost hidden from view

which we enjoyed doing, even if it was thirteen 'uphill' locks – each 3.15m deep, which caused some hilarity when we tried to get our ropes on way above our heads! You might think we would have got our act together, at least by the time we'd got to the top lock, number one, but NO – we were still taking three and four attempts to get the blasted things on! We thought that despite those slight delays we had done the flight in a pretty good time, but of course, pride comes before a fall, and the top lock was showing a double red – i.e. not operational. Now that would have been OK if there had been anywhere to moor, but no. We were flailing around immediately below a major road bridge with nothing to tie to save a VNF railing. So eventually, Louise climbed down the bow using the forecabin porthole, clambered up to the lock and eventually discovered the intercom to alert VNF. They came very quickly and we were through onto the summit level. Now 10 years ago we were unable to cruise this canal because it was closed because of a landslide on the summit level, which we were able to pinpoint on this trip because of the lack of any tree cover whatsoever! Then there was a narrows to negotiate, controlled by traffic lights, and then a slightly unwelcoming mooring for the night, but it was raining and a bit miserable so it was a TV night!

Then off bright and early to tackle the 5 downhill locks onto the Vosges, the canal we've been looking forward to re-doing for ages. It is a lovely canal, especially after its summit level, which we would arrive at in about a week's time, but before that we had another lock failure to contend with, another climb down the bow for Louise and another intercom call to VNF.

The next couple of gentle days passed by without incident, and then we arrived at northern Thaon, and moored up on a splendid concrete quay, complete with fendering and good bollards which was under construction 10 years ago. 

Thaon mooring - strange but great!

Well, it looks much the same now, adjacent to a wilderness area with Super U and Aldi 500m away on poor paths. No-one knows quite what this mooring is about as there is a strange jutting-out section between two good quays which seems to have no use, except to attract fishermen or bathers, but even they were sparse on the ground. This mooring is just into the rat-run for the 4 specially-built sand and gravel commercials which ply backwards and forwards over 5 kms and through 4 locks all day every day. The gravel barges load up at PK 76 and offload at PK 81 and start at 6am. They stop, seemingly wherever they are, at 7pm.   (We were hoping that they didn't work on Sundays as that would be our day for several ROFFs - roof off the wheelhouse for low bridges - as all-day sunshine was forecast.) 

Lovely Thaon conference centre

The barges' constant trundling makes mooring up in, and looking round Thaon a little problematic, but a bike ride from the outskirts with or without rain should sort that out!

Thaon was a nice little place with all sorts of independent shops (plus the ubiquitous Lidl), but more importantly, for us, a post office as we had an urgent birthday card to send for little Jasper coming up 6 years old. Then we set off to encounter a double red light at the first lock! A Dutch boat similarly stopped had rung VNF who said it would be a 2 hours delay while the engineer was called. We managed to reverse and moor up on one of the commercial gravellers and Alex went off to investigate. Between the engineer and Alex, the gate problem (a sheared bolt) was fixed and Alex had saved the day!!!!

Although we had seen Epinal by bike some years ago, we had never dared to enter the 'embranchement' as it was marked just 1.4m deep years ago. This time we were assured by VNF that it was 1.6m so we cruised in to meet up with EMMA (Paul and Jacky) and ETTIE again (Richard and Julia). 

A lovely port and so nice to be able to visit by BOAT!!

We stayed just the one night and set off bright and early to attack the 14 locks of the flight up to the summit level. All went pretty well according to plan and we achieved the whole lot in 3 hours despite having two hold-ups which required VNF presence.

Les Forges mooring was empty and we moored up in full sun perhaps not realising that we were in for a full fortnight of dazzling sun and exhausting heat! That was the first day we were badly affected, not by mosquitoes, but no-see-ums, those devilish little biters which you literally CAN'T see.

The descent of the Vosges from the summit is one of the loveliest on the whole canal system and we had been looking forward to it hugely. It was just as lovely as the first time we had done it in 2010, and we were able to moor in all the out-of-the-way places we had hoped for. In one of them, we had a storm to beat all storms in the late evening which was brilliant, and at another, we moored up with and met M-J and Michael on OLIVIA ROSE and enjoyed drinks and nibbles on RICCALL while chatting over boaty stuff.

EMMA had overtaken us on the summit and arrived in Fontenoy-le-Chateau ahead of us so was able to keep us informed regarding space (or not) on the quay. 

Excellent, if ruined chateau at Fontenoy

Moving bird of prey at Fontenoy

If you fail at Fontenoy, it is a long way and several locks before you could find a decent mooring. The mooring at Pont du Bois, while lovely, can only house one barge and when we did arrive, it was fully taken up by a strange looking craft called WILCAT skippered by Fred and his wife Francoise.  Alex was fascinated by it and had a long discussion with Fred, who had kindly helped us moor up on a tricky bank. The boat is entirely electric, powered by PV panels over the whole roof,  and was built by Fred from scratch.

WILCAT - congrats to Fred

The heat continued unabated while we were at Corre, (nice supper in the shade with Mike and Randi of GLISTENING STEEL – a shared boat). Now the temperatures soared to 44C, and France apparently had its hottest day ever recorded, and how we knew it without being told! It was impossible to keep RICCALL even vaguely comfortable despite our best efforts with shade cloths and regular wetting of our white sheets laid on the deck!

We managed to find a nice pontoon with shade, not for RICCALL, but for us to sit under, so we moored up and spent the afternoon under the bamboo bushes in reasonable comfort. 

A relief to find this mooring with afternoon shade for us

The adjacent house owner, however, decided to mow his lawn – all of it – twice, taking much of the afternoon to do so. Then the farmer, doing something noisy in his far-off field, decided to do the same in the field on the opposite canal bank. This went on until Alex finally came to bed at 10.30pm! We set the table for breakfast next morning on the back deck to take advantage of the cool of early morning, when a 10-year old boy arrived with his remote-controlled Tonka toy and started roaring it round the pontoon and adjacent grassy bank. Louise, in her best French managed to ask if he could possibly play with his vehicle somewhere else while we had breakfast! He left, wishing us 'bon journee'!

So to Conflandey, with its shady quay. EMPTY!! Amazing! 

RICCALL be-decked with her shade cloths

We had been there just a short while when the house owner came down to ask if we had any rubbish to get rid of. Also amazing! We said no, we were OK thanks. Then he explained he had to mow his lawn and was it OK? Of course, we said yes, and so out came the ride-on mower (2 hours) then the electric hand-push mower (1 hour) and then finally peace. 

Householder on his blasted mowing machine!

And then - Oh no! A hire boat arrived with 9 people on board, who proceeded to throw themselves off said boat for the next two hours, then have a barbecue on the pontoon, and then by some miracle, set off into the distance! You couldn't make it up!

Still  suffering from intense heat, we managed to get onto a part-shady pontoon next day, almost under a very smart new footbridge, which turned out to be rather noisy particularly when skate-boarders crossed. But that was the least of our troubles. 

Mid-afternoon there arrived three early twenties, one girl and two boys. They were DETERMINED to go swimming and we had taken their pontoon, but that didn't deter them. They came down onto the pontoon, not a metre from our back deck and two metres from Louise's chair, laid out their towels and proceeded to sunbathe and throw themselves off the pontoon, climbing the footbridge and throwing themselves off that!! And you just CAN'T concentrate on reading when all this is going on. Eventually our vibes must have had some effect as they gathered up their gear and took themselves off.

Is it just us?!!!

Having been disappointed by the lack of space at Soing village moorings, partly by too many boats, and partly by lack of depth (even outside a moored cruiser which kindly offered to have us alongside if there had been enough depth) we moored up on a fantastic 'private, but please respect this place' woodland location. This gave us good depth alongside, shade all day and into the evening and total peace and quiet!  Perfect!  One of our best moorings ever, but we have not been able to find out just who it belongs to, who takes care of it, etc.

Ahhh!

So we decided as moorings were pretty rare in this district, we'd just use ducs d'Albe at locks for the night and did just that at least three times. In Gray, which is a very nice town and the first place for weeks where real food shopping can be done, we moored on the VNF quay, with full approval from VNF. It was a Friday night, they were all getting off home early, and they clearly didn't give a toss if we moored there or not! So we did. For two nights and had another peek at the town, a meal out and re-met Sean and Lynn who we'd met 3 years ago in Namur. A meeting like this is just great. We had a coffee on RICCALL and chatted about our last 3 years cruising. It's great!

Sean and Lynne of ELLE - nice meet-up

Surprisingly, as we left Gray and came to Mantoche, we discovered it had space on the quay and though we expected it to be too shallow, it was actually fine and we managed a good mooring. The same cannot be said of Pontailler, our next stop. We DID stop, but were so anxious about the underwater shelf that we cast off an hour later and moved on, to find another duc d'Albe.

So our next mooring was at Auxonne. Despite tales of the pontoons being totally empty, when we arrived they were of course totally full, so with some trepidation we motored down to the 'steps', which boaters may know are downstream of the road bridge. Although there was a hotel barge moored up, DANIELE, there was plenty of room for us. The steps are 17 risers high and 80 metres long and there are 4 bollards on the very top, so another down-the-porthole descent for Louise. 

And here we stayed for 2 nights to investigate Auxonne, which we've never managed to visit before - a very nice town with a very handy railway station for collecting the car from Toul.

Our stay on the steps was pretty good, if a lot of gongoozlers around, but a couple of youngsters arrived and placed themselves on the steps right next to the boat with blasted RAP playing loudly!! - our least favourite music!  So we had no option - we closed ALL the wheelhouse windows and doors and put Elbow on the CD player at the highest volume setting! Well, sometimes you have to suffer to escape suffering!    Then that evening at about midnight music started to blast from a parked car.  After about half an hour of this Alex went up to the wheelhouse and shone his laser pointer into the car. One of the occupants got out and walked along the quay to see what was what. Alex glared at him then took fright and disappeared back down the stairs. This seemed to do the trick as they then drove off.  To cap it all we could see they were setting up for a festival the next day so we cast off and headed south.

Clearing of the steps for the festival

So then it was to a mooring in the Saint Jean de Losne old lock for our month's return to England. 

It's been a lovely first half of the year, despite the heat. The intensity of the heat however, has encouraged Alex to look again at air con!! I can only keep my fingers crossed. 

The route we've taken, probably like much of France, seems obsessed with cycles!!  Here are just a few of the strange, but clever structures we've seen over the last few weeks.

Spring 2019

Well, here we were again, all anxious to get started on this year's cruise, though it may be a few weeks yet and may well be a long one!  Louise has taken over writing the blog and as her style is a lot less pithy than Alex's you may have to have a few more minutes to read the following!!-

We booked into Decize for July/August to enable a return to England for a protracted summer stay.  Last year we decided, after sweating it out for weeks in France in mid-July, that it would be rather nice to enjoy some of what England (and Scotland maybe) has to offer in the lovely summer weather at home.  There's so much that we don't get to see and do, being in Europe for the summer.

Our return to RICCALL was timed to avoid the dreaded Brexit!!  And so we returned on the 27^th with minimal fuss and no delay.  Of course, the first job was to stash all the stocks we had brought from home and which are un-available in Europe.  Then we had to turn our attention to the state of the boat itself!

Inside, everything looked dusty and rather down-at-heel, so a total spring clean was in order.  But more importantly, from a pride perspective, was the exterior of RICCALL!  She was looking more than a little down in the mouth – dirty and uncared-for.  Last year, we did a good job of painting the topsides of the saloon – taking the old paintwork down to the metal and starting from scratch.  That paintwork has survived remarkably well over the winter, so we'll be doing the same thing with the well deck this year.  It's normally a bit of a storage area, and can as a result become a bit scuffed.  Our new two pack paint will help but it will require a complete back-to-the-metal approach again!  Ah well – we need something to keep us occupied.

While we were in Seneffe doing these essential maintenance jobs, we took a couple of days out to visit friends, Paul and Diane of BEATRICE, winter-moored near Gorinchem (by car!) who live aboard their barge.  The usual great socialising was the order of the day, of course.

A visit to Holland isnt' complete without one of these! 

 We'd planned for departure day to be around the middle of April this year, but we then heard the sad news that we had to return to England for a funeral.  With almost 3 weeks to go though before the funeral, we decided to return to Kent and carry on with house stuff, perhaps taking a trip up to Scotland for a weekend, all of which we managed before the event: as ever, a sad affair though beautifully managed to be both respectful and uplifting.  Then it was back to RICCALL and set off the very next day.

Lovely to get back aboard and on the way – a little later than expected admittedly – but we have heard that there are serious concerns about water levels in middle France which may require a change of plan.  To The Midi or not?  Who knows?  So on we go, with a few weeks to go before we have to make a definite decision on our route.  A hold-up at our second lock however caused us to decide to stay topside overnight but then we safely crossed 'lovely' Charleroi!  Although still heavily industrialised there are signs of improvement – the industrial site opposite the steel works (chemicals?) is now being demolished, though it will be some time before it will be completed.  But perhaps some time in the not-too-distant-future Charleroi may be rather less daunting for the boater!

Well, the traverse of Charleroi was done without incident and we moored up for a night with fellow boaters Lynda and Steve on LYNEVE at Auvelais.  The fair was in full swing as we arrived but on the opposite bank, so perhaps we wouldn't be disturbed!  And so it was.  The conditions of use must have decreed a close-down by 9.30pm as all was quiet. 

The countryside after Charleroi is always something of a revelation, even though we've done this route several times.  It is quite lovely, especially in springtime – rural and seemingly very remote. 

After this pleasant interlude came Namur – allegedly a rather interesting city – where we met up with Julian, our narrow-boating friend (on SANTANNA) who had found a free mooring in the city. (Julian is just marvellous at finding free moorings!)  He reckoned there was plenty of room for us. 

And there was indeed plenty of room in the 'cheap seats'!!  We had a great evening with Julian on RICCALL, and were invited for a return match the following evening.

In between, we did a short reccy of Namur and we both feel that we must have missed something, because we were somewhat underwhelmed by the city.  A little more research required next time we think.

When we did eventually set off the next morning, the weather had deteriorated somewhat, so that we encountered cool temperatures, 'April' showers and at times sleet and even snow in those showers!  But the River Meuse was mercifully devoid of any kind of traffic, commercial or pleasure so we had the locks largely to ourselves.  One of our favourite moorings was on the near horizon, so we made for Anhée/Houx – a mooring which we'd used several years ago, along with Nicci and Peter of AURIGNY, who were painting their hull.  Part of this quay is at river level, meaning you can paint the hull of your boat right down to the water-level.  This is a rarity, as most moorings are much higher than river level.  Unfortunately, although we would have liked to paint the sides of the hull, the weather was just too cold.  Another missed opportunity!  But then we thought - hang on! We're going to come out of the water this year anyway, so we'll do it then.  Of course, this plan all depends on WHERE we end up towards the end of the season! 

The Meuse was running moderately fast as we battled through squally showers of sleet and snow at one point, but the next day was much quieter.  The season hadn't started up yet so there were very few boats around making lock use much easier.

But of course, that was then!   Next day we were 'inundated' by pleasure boats, so much so that when we arrived at Vireux-Wallerand 10kms upstream from Givet, there was no room at the proverbial inn!  We had to make do with a sloping side and rocky bottom for overnight.  Next morning we set off and soon noticed one of the pleasure boats was coming up behind us, which turned out to be a lucky break as our remote control to operate the locks failed to work, as it had yesterday when a  lock-keeper helped out.  Luckily ELISE noticed and interpreted that we were sitting at a red light at Montigny Lock, so operated their remote, which did indeed work.  Louise phoned VNF who met us at the next lock with a remote to exchange.  (So he DID understand my message! - says Louise, somewhat amazed that her French got the point across.)

Glad the Meuse never got this high while we were on it!!

And then it rained, and rained, and rained: so much so that at 1pm we decided to moor up and try for a 'menu du jour' at a recommended restaurant.  It was very swish and elegant, but no they didn't do a menu du jour except at weekends and on jours féries, but hey, wasn't today, May 8^th, the commemoration of the Liberation of France from German military activity?  After all, we saw and heard the band playing the Marseillaise and the maire making his speech as we moored up in Haybes!  

Haybes Mairie

Haybes Maire making his speech in the rain

French holidays are a complete mystery to us; we've been doing this cruising lark for over a decade now and still we can be surprised.  But no restaurant lunch for us that day.

So we moved on and the rain got worse and worse and heavier and heavier.  We hadn't factored this into account until we set off from our Charleville-Mezieres mooring, 

Favourite mooring in Charleville-Mezieres

re-entered the river from the lock cut and suddenly we were making just 5kph, instead of our more normal 8!  Of course this is the inevitable result of a lot of rain but we just hadn't got our heads round it.  We flogged upstream for about 6 kms but had to admit that this was costing us a lot of money in extra fuel and sitting it out seemed a good plan  We knew of a really good floating pontoon ahead at Lumes, amazingly virtually empty, so moored up expecting to stay a day or so.   Well, we were there for three days and still no sign of the river returning to normal.  

In between, we socialised with HAVELOK's Helen and Mathew and PERIDOT's Chantelle and Claude and did a day trip by train (lucky to have an adjacent station) down the beautiful Meuse valley and back, dropping into C-M for late afternoon drinks.  Then the following day we went on a long (very long) bike ride to find fresh milk. Regular readers will know that this is how we manage to see so much of France – looking for bloody fresh milk for Alex's cornflakes!  (NB – we failed to find any milk despite being in the region's biggest Cora hypermarket!)

Still stuck, still waiting for the flow to subside, we decided to make the most of our enforced 'rest' and tackled the now rather forlorn-looking wheelhouse roof.  Just a temporary holding job this time as we will have the job done later in the year when we come out for hull blacking, but it looks just SO much better.  We don't see it of course, but all the gongoozlers standing by the sides of locks as we enter from downstream do and we Brits can't let the side down, can we?  After all with the Brexit saga still playing (or so we gather) we're already in the mire as far as other nationalities are concerned.

So eventually, once the flow had reduced to 2.5kph (Alex has his own method of working this out) we felt it was time to move on and spent a long day still plodding up the Meuse to a lovely spot in Mouzon.  Amazingly the only mooring we can use in Mouzon – at the Capitainerie end of the quay – was free and we shot in.  We think it had been vacated by SIYABONGA earlier in the day because we came bow to bow upon them in a narrows upstream of Donchery lock No 39.  That gave us all a surprise and we were most impressed that SIYABONGA could stop on a sixpence, letting us go through.  However, Alex was quick to point out that he was 'pleased' that even SIYABONGA with her amazing stopping power still ended up across the canal because of her prop walk!  Our own prop walk is much better than it used to be following radical implant surgery on our rudder – see previous instalments.

We were at Mouzon then when we received a WhatsApp from our friends on ETTIE Richard and Julia, asking us where we were.  We'd rather lost any hope of catching them now that we were at least 3 days behind schedule, but it now seemed possible that we just might catch them at St Mihiel in a few days time.  We were both going to stop in Toul for home visits, so if all else fails, we can do our socialising then.  On RICCALL we were both already getting excited at the prospect of a meal in our favourite French restaurant of all time – in the former station building in the little village of Lucey, north of Toul.  It seems that it is still operational, but so many French restaurants have closed especially in small villages.  They really are up against the change in retail and eating habits.

Then onto the 'manual' section of the Meuse where the locks have to be operated by a roving éclusier.  This makes the whole experience more of a race against time than a quiet go-as-you-please cruise, as you have to tell the éclusier where you intend to stop overnight and your preferred set-off time for the following morning, which means you can't easily stop at a place you happen upon and like, though you can, of course, telephone to tell them your intention.  Of course, you don't do that, as it seems unfair to have an allocated éclusier for the day and then stand him down!  So it's two or three days of this imposed timetable and we'll be happier when we can go back to automatic lock operation.  Why this section has missed out on upgrading we don't know.

Lock cottage at Alma - our absolute favourite (for renovation)

Consenvoye was next in our sights and we set off to recce the little town and see if we could perhaps find somewhere to eat, it being a Saturday evening, and we had failed at Mouzon.  We briefly spoke to Paul and Jacky of EMMA who were moored up when we arrived.  There was indeed a little restaurant, and yes, it was open, but no, we couldn't eat there that night.  Our limited French failed to quite grasp why not, but it was very clear that there would be no cooking that night in the auberge, or at least not for us: perhaps it was going to host a private party, or they didn't have a chef?  Who knows?

So it was back to the boat for curry with all the trimmings!  But when we approached the boat our faces fell as we saw five young lads on off-road scrambler bikes, unloading their paraphernalia for their overnight fishing experience!  But we have to say, they conducted themselves perfectly, even for two of them to come to us on our boat and apologise for the noise they were making, of which there was none!  It was so funny to watch them putting up their tents: it was like a scene from It's a Knockout!  

The lads camping and fishing overnight adventure

But the night passed without a sound and they were up early in the pouring rain, keeping their fire alight and making hot drinks.  When we left they gave us great waves and 'bon voyages'.  It was great.

Our next mooring was at Stenay - on an old high quay.  Perfect for us of course, but not, it became apparent, for the swallows whose nests we had masked: they spent some considerable time flying at our portholes, trying to find a way through!!

We set off at 9.30am - a time chosen by the éclusiers (and a bit early for Alex!) for the day's travel to Verdun: an easy day with a pleasant lock-keeper who earned himself two bottles of beer!  Considering the paucity of boats around we were somewhat amazed to find Verdun rather occupied, though the quay which we wanted was empty, so all was well.  

For some reason we were both exhausted by 8pm so it was an early night for Louise and a stupid sci-fi film for Alex!

We set off from Verdun for a 10am start at the first lock upstream, but although the gates were open for us when we arrived, when the éclusier tried to close the tail gates, there was something preventing one of the gates from seating properly.  Something was clearly on the cill.  He must have had a premonition of what it might be as he immediately went for his long pole, then his grappling hook!  The pole failed but the hook caught a very long piece of ancient rusty chain.  Once that was on the side, we were off again.

Lock gate failed to close

The offending chain!

One more day with an éclusier and then 'freedom'.  This time our éclusier was a rather dour chap, but he softened a lot when he realised that Alex would do his share of closing and opening gates, even to the extent of taking our ropes, quite unnecessarily in several locks.

A lovely quiet night in Ambly mooring, 

another sociable night in St Mihiel, two overnights in Sampigny, where we sought out the lovely Musée Poincaré (Poincaré was President of France after the war) 

From the sublime . . .

to the ridiculous!!

and one stop for stocking up in Commercy.  

We were very lucky to be able to moor on the pontoon in Pagny with three other boats although mooring above and below locks is easy enough on the Meuse at this point.  Then it was into Toul, but not the Port de France for us!   We moored below the lock out of the Port de France on a long, free, wooden staging and there RICCALL stayed for the whole of Louise's trip to England.  Luckily, our friends Richard and Julia were returning home themselves for a christening and wedding (separate events!) and were happy to give Louise a seat in their car.  Purpose of Louise's visit? - to meet her new granddaughter Joni.

Back at Toul, we moved RICCALL down the canal to the TSNI moorings (formerly Lorraine Marine) 

and spent three days while waiting for fuel painting the hull sides – remember those hull sides which needed repainting way back when?  The very same, but we got them done this time!

 

Alex hard at work

Job's a good 'un!