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August 2004 Update
Hello to everyone. We hope that you are all well and enjoying the long summer days. We haven't had bright sunny weather every day although it is always warm. Some of the rainstorms (with thunder and lightning thrown in) are quite impressive, but we have always found this to be the case in Europe. The other thing we have noticed about France is that they seem to have stopped growing grapes! We haven't seen a vineyard since we arrived three months ago. Luckily you can still buy wine (although it's probably made in India or somewhere).
Sorry if we are harping on about the old chestnut of not having internet access and/or a French phone, but nothing has changed regarding this. Never mind. Maybe when we moor up for the winter we can sort something out.
We said on the last update that we had arrived at Verdun. As mentioned before, a very large monument and crypt honour the forces killed here. The names of all who fell are kept here and if you came prove a relationship with any of them, the guardian will open the cabinets which hold the information and give you some sort of document to verify it.
THE MONUMENT AT VERDUN
On a lighter note, they hold a free concert in Verdun every Saturday night in July and August. They are held outside the post office, on the back of a wagon and if we had turned up a week earlier we could have attended the opening concert. The band that night was Bill Wyman and the Rhythm Kings. They say it was a great night.
SATURDAY NIGHT AT VERDUN
Verdun is quite a big place compared with some of our stops and after quite a few trips to the local ironmongers we managed to get some French gas connections in readiness for the changeover to "Butagas".
It was quite amusing really as the man who owned the shop ran it with his mother, who sat on a tall chair and dealt with the paperwork and cash. She was very old but very smartly dressed in jacket and trousers. Unfortunately she was also rather short of hair - almost bald in fact. The son (who must have been in his seventies and also smartly dressed) was a dead ringer for Peter Ustinov and although we made it clear that we spoke very limited French, he carried on discussing the connection, regulators and propane in French. This was why we made so many visits to his shop, taking various parts of the gas system with us so that there was no misunderstanding. Alas, each visit and each piece of kit that we took brought a shake of the head. He did however mention a firm called "Mr. Bricolage" which as far as I know B&Q bought some time ago. Although a bit of a trek and finding they don't open on Sundays, we tried them again on Monday and got the connections we required.
Of course we didn't fancy carting bottles of Butagas all the way back into town, so we went back to the boat, collected our trolleys and called, yet again, at the ironmongers. We showed him our new connections and asked him for a couple of bottles of gas.
He went off into the lift (just like the one David had at the mill) and after a while, came back with two bottles of "PrimaGas". Neil exclaimed "No monsieur, ButaGas".
The man's face dropped as he thought this was going to be a dead cert of a sale at last! The man apologised and said he didn't do ButaGas, so as he set off back into the lift with the bottles, Neil asked if he had a bottle key. The man studied and checked for any useful gestures and hand movements, then went off in the lift. He came back, gave Neil a bottle key and beckoned to his mother "two Euro's". A sale at last, even though he had to sell Neil his own, well worn bottle key!
The next picture was of a building on the quay which had obviously seen better days. When they built this hotel, they obviously didn't expect large crowds. And I suppose that it soon became full at the height of the season.
LE CONTINENTAL
Caught Pamela at this crossroads and signposted to the right appears to be "The Duc" (we used to frequent a place called the Little Duck in Mirfield).
BAR LE DUC
Although we opened a French bank account in Calais, we seemed to struggle to collect the actual debit card from a pre-arranged branch. It seemed very strange that at 6 kilometres per hour we were arriving in towns too soon and had to get the card sent further along our route. We had the idea of taking our canal map to the bank and this helped the lady at one branch to plot which town we would be in relation to the speed of the French banking system and the Postal Service. We finally caught up with the new French debit card at a place called Commercy.
Now in Commercy they seemed to celebrate Bastille Day by going fishing and the next picture taken through my binoculars shows some of the competitors going around the bend!
READY STEADY GO
At this point we had been on a small canalised river called the Meuse for some time as we went down through the department of Lorraine and headed in the direction of Nancy. We were expecting our first visitors in the middle of July and wanted to be somewhere pretty rather than anywhere big and industrial. Not easy if you haven't been before and the maps are more concerned with the canals. The next picture shows the first big boat we had seen since we left the big canals of Northern France and we didn't want to be amongst them when the visitors arrived. This one measured 95 metres long by 9.5 metres wide and was 1775 tonnes laden. For comparison ours is 12 metres long by 4.2 metres wide and 26 tonnes laden.
ON THE MOSELLE
Now we are back on the smaller canals the boat below is as big as we see. They measure up to 38 metres long by about 5.2 metres wide.
ANOTHER WORK BOAT
Without wanting to get boring we will, in this update, give you some facts and figures regarding the journey so far. But first, a word from David about some of the lock keepers.
A WORD ABOUT LOCK KEEPERS
WOW !!!!!!! They certainly brighten up the day and if it gets any brighter David and Neil might not be able to cope.
Well it was soon time for our visitors and they hadn't holidayed in France before, so we wanted them to enjoy the whole experience. Boating isn't new to them as they live on a narrowboat in Aspley Wharf Marina at Huddersfield. They arrived at a pre-arranged spot (Charmes) after having a good journey down with no hitches and apart from one day, the sun shone all week.
TONY AND LINDA
We intended to do short cruises for three days then turn around and for the second half of the week, head back to their vehicle which they left at Charmes. As luck would have it though, there were staff shortages on the locks we had come through so we just enjoyed the place we had cruised to, that was Epinal. We met up again with Neil and Carol on the way to Epinal and managed to moor up next to each other. Epinal is very pretty and the river Moselle ran through the town.
THE EPINAL SIX
Tony and Linda like fishing and found lots of fish to watch and/or catch. We aren't sure of the regulations about fishing permits but the one we were told that suited us was that if you are on holiday on a boat, you can fish off the boat without a permit.
So if anyone had approached us, this was the ruling we intended to quote.
GONE FISHING
EVENING SUN AT EPINAL
When we were at Charmes, Tony went for a row in the tender and we thought he had absconded as he was away so long. So when he suggested setting off again, David thought that he would go with him and take along some provisions.
CHILLIN' OUT
We wanted Tony and Linda to have a good time and they really did enjoy the holiday.
We are sure they will be back as soon as they can and maybe they will bring Pat and Dale over if "Hudderfield Nil" aren't playing. After Tony and Linda had gone back home, it didn't take these two long to assume their normal positions.
NOW WHERE WERE WE?
Quite often, we only cruise for half a day and as long as we have somewhere to moor we manage with what we have regarding food and drink. As you may know though, baguettes don't keep very well and are best bought daily or, even twice daily. Our bread machine is OK but David wonders if the flour is getting old as the loaves are slightly sadder than they were in England.
After we were through one particular lock one lunchtime there was nothing except the lock keepers cottage (very pretty) and a picnic table. The lock keeper came to talk to us so we offered him a drink of cold lager and he didn't need his arm twisting. He asked us if we intended cruising in the afternoon and we said no, as it was too hot so we asked if we could stay there for the night. "No problem" he said. "Would you like me to fetch you some bread in the morning?" You hear these tales of course and wonder if they are true, but this was certainly was. He brought us two baguettes and four croissants at 9am the next morning and at normal Boulanger prices.
A NICE STOP OVER
Although our lettuces have kept us going for a couple of months, I think they will soon be finished, so we're looking for some replacements.
ENOUGH FOR TWO
We stopped for a night at a place called Fontenoy-le-Chateau and it reminded David of what Tony had said when we were in one of the villages. He said that "all the houses seem to have old shutters and probably don't look any different than they did during the last war. You can just imagine snipers behind them." Fontenoy-le-Chateau was a good example of what Tony meant and David was lucky to catch the biker on a relatively older looking machine so couldn't resist this one in sepia.
ANYONE SEEN DONALD SUTHERLAND GO PAST?
We have the boat windows well netted up to keep the flies and things at bay but some sneak in when we are going in and out of the boat. If we didn't get rid of them before bedtime, we wouldn't get much sleep, as Gromit chases them all over the boat.
DON'T GET THESE IN MIRFIELD
When we were back at Aspley, Sainsbury's were selling garden Gazebo's for £10 and David thought that one would fit nicely on the boat roof for protection from the sun. Not sure if it does, but found that using half of the uprights allowed us to leave it on whilst cruising. Carol on the narrowboat Comfrey, says it's like the Queen of Sheba coming down the Nile. But over here, nothing looks wrong and we've just seen exactly the same thing on another boat!
THE BIG TOP IS IN TOWN
Neil and Carol have just had some friends "Andrew and Val" over from England and we have all had a couple of good nights, the first one being at a place called Corre. We had a barbeque that night and then just sat talking and having the odd drink. Somehow music got a mention and we found that Andrew and Val liked "Cajun" music, which comes from Louisiana and has a French influence. We have quite a few CDs of this music and so we put one on. The strange thing was that almost immediately, we could hear what appeared to be an echo of the music. It turned out that some Dutch people on a boat about 100 yards away also liked Cajun and had done exactly the same thing at almost the same time and were playing a very similar track! "Very strange" - we put it down to the heat. Anyway, David took this picture of Andrew and Val, well into a two step.
THE BEAT GOES ON
We've been on the journey now for almost three months and are still about 100 kilometres short of our first main destination, which is the Dijon area. We don't often do full days and might stop for a night, or in some cases almost a week. We are currently in a place called Port-sur-Sàone and they are having a folklore week with fireworks and the like, so we are going to have some of this entertainment as it's free!
We have just filled our diesel tanks and have used about 664 litres over here with approximately 250 run hours on the engine (ready for a service). So we are using just over 2.5 litres per run hour. We have been running at 2000 rpm of late and it seems to run well at this. The canals have kilometre markers, so we know we are doing about 6 kilometres per hour. We consider this to be a sensible maximum speed for the boat and in most cases it's the maximum speed on the canal. Up to 15 kph is allowed on the rivers we have been on, but of course we can't achieve that speed anyway.
THE ROUTE SO FAR
That's all for now and we will do another update in a month or so.
Love from
David and Pamela (& Gromit)
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