HANGOVER DAY - SUNDAY 22ND JUNE - VERSAILLES TO PARIS

The view down the Seine from the lock that leads up the St Denis canal says “home” for a number of reasons.   

That lock takes boats up from the river into the Arsenal Port itself, so for those living on boats in the Port it’s very much like turning off your street into your driveway.

Happily that view is also accessible via a small tunnel fewer than one hundred metres from where we are presently moored, so it's a simple pleasure to wander down in the evening and watch the sun set over Notre Dame.

Unhappily, today we discovered a much more convoluted route to enjoying it.  

Having managed a particularly late start to the day after last night’s shenanigans, and an even later breakfast, it was heading towards the hottest part of the early afternoon and well after the time that most of the cleanup had been completed, by the time we arrived back in Gare d’Austerlitz. With only eight hundred metres to walk to home, in retrospect it was probably exactly the wrong time of day for anyone to say “I think this is a shortcut” let alone for the others of us to go along with it, but go we did.

The term “death by misadventure” did cross at least one mind as we crossed the chain designed to keep (everyone else) out, and in retrospect perhaps the signs forbidding entry with warnings that life jackets and safety harnesses were required beyond that point might have been a clue.   

“Death by misadventure” on the face of it seems to be far more romantic than any other kind of death once one attains a certain age, so we plugged our way along the kilometre or so of narrow cobbled dock undeterred.   It was worth it for the view of course, even if the heat exacted a toll, and worn out knees began to complain incessantly, but disappointingly there was no way we could persuade the locked gate at the mouth of the lock to budge.

Reluctantly retracing our steps, the degree of difficulty in maintaining sure footing over the cobbles seemed to have grown proportionally with the increase in heat, which somehow, just at the spot we were, would have done an oven proud.

Even if it did take more than an hour and at least four times the original distance, we arrived home happy, and at least for half of our number, not sore enough to head out later in the day exploring certain retail precincts!