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Narrowboat 'Idling By No.2' cruising the waterways of France.

News for July 2005

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Our stay at St Quentin went well. We were delighted to chat to the harbourmaster David, his wife Crystelle and their two lovely children. After returning from the 18th birthday celebration of Leanne we sorted out the usual domestic things like shopping, washing etc and intended to move on the 14th July to pastures new. Big mistake! We had forgotten that the 14th July is Bastille day and an important celebration for the French, a bank holiday. We became involved in the celebrations on the previous evening with a group of people inviting us to have a drink with them. The contact continued the next day with a BBQ early evening and then all of us getting onto a fairly small boat, which rocked quite a bit with 8 people aboard, to watch the formal firework display from the centre of a wide canal. It was an evening of fun and finished with us being given an address for us to keep in touch. It is lovely to have so many friendly and welcoming people around us.

We have continued to have some exciting and interesting times boating. We are learning, as the days go by, about automatic locks and how it is not very clever to stop part way through a set of locks. Having boated between 2 locks (after stopping to do essential shopping) to try and locate sensors without success we were very pleased to see a VNF (Voies Navigable de La France) man who was able to set up the locks and enable us to continue with the journey.

We have also encountered a different way of starting the lock sequence. Some 300 metres before the lock, a tube hanging from a cable suspended across the canal is carefully approached and twisted a quarter of a turn to operate a switch.

As we have travelled along the waterways we have seen some lovely countryside and some very floral towns and locks. Equally we had encounters with some big barges that have bounced us around quite a bit. We are beginning to become more accustomed to seeing the big boats travelling towards us but there was a recent occasion when we were keen to get moving because of the impact of the barges on our moored boat. We were at Berry de Bac and unfortunately had to moor away from the bank because of shallow waters and a sloping side. This meant working with a plank to get on and off the boat. I do not like doing this and our long suffering dog, Ben, likes it even less. We used ropes to literally hoist him off and on the boat. He co-operated beautifully, he is very trusting. Unfortunately, in our haste to depart , we managed to get a rope wrapped around the propeller which needless to say created a problem. Half an hour later with me being on look out on the bend for big barges and Paul working away in the weedhatch to free the propeller we set off again to our destination Reims.

The morning walk to buy bread was a delight with the wonderful cathedral of Reims at the end of the road. There was some nostalgia for Paul and I as we have often visited Reims at the end of camping holidays and visited 'Le Continental' restaurant for a meal. Fortunately we had an excuse to go back to the restaurant to celebrate the fact that we met 20 years ago. The food and service was up to expectations.

We are now moored at Sillery, a quiet port with pleasant surrounding countryside. There is a war cemetery across the road from the port, not an unfamiliar sight in the north of France. Thankfully there is also a supermarket not too far away which has enabled us to use the jerry can (20 litres) to fill the tank with diesel although this took 5 journeys.

Well, that is our brief up date for the month of July. I will be in touch again towards the end of August. Meanwhile we have a recommended address in Conde-sur-Marne for good champagne at a reasonable price. This must be worth exploring.

26th July 2005