Monday Blues Verdun

For much of our working life, if we’d had a particularly relaxing weekend one of us at least didn’t feel at all like going back to work on Monday. 

Much of France is like that, and while it does take some time to become accustomed to the undeniable fact that the country is pretty much closed on Monday.  This is historically we think, because things were supposed to be open on Saturday but  invariably after closing early for lunch on Friday, aren’t.   Some businesses to be fair are open for business but to be equally fair, the ones that would be useful to us never tend to be.  It's a sort of random thing that means that we only ever plan to do things on Tuesdays or Wednesdays except if that means visiting museums because that's when they close.

Today it was the turn of the buses that tour the battlefields.  We had planned more or less to tour that route yesterday but when that didn’t transpire, knowing that the buses don’t run at all on Mondays meant that we would have a day in which we could top up our nowhere near dwindling supplies and generally just hang around happily engaging in meaningless banter with fellow wastrels.

It also meant that there was little distract from the thus far futile effort to find a longer term solution to our wifi woes, as our ageing laptop slowly disintegrates in much the same way that Mr Perkins once did.

Tomorrow we will be tourists again.

Perhaps.

Sunday Verdun

Finally a day where the freneticism around us was displaced by genuine tranquility and a seven Euro lunch.  There’s nothing like spending Sunday variously in bed in a cafe and an afternoon just pottering with stuff between hail storms, to recharge oneself for the rigours of touring in the coming week..

Non-cruising friends often ask if we ever get bored living the life we live.  “No” we reply, but is difficult to explain the degree to which we remain completely occupied.  My stock answer that we spend our days doing absolutely nothing and never seem to get finished doesn’t seem to satisfy their curiosity at all.

Today though, after battling with bits that may keep my aging and terribly unwell MacBook alive for just a few more months, I was giving some technical advice regarding some blogging software to someone who had lived permanently aboard their boat for fifteen years. When conversation came around to blogs and he discovered that I posted daily, at first he thought I was kidding, then he seemed genuinely astonished.

“Where do you get the time?”  He asked.

I had to admit it’s not easy.  Sometimes we have to go without our afternoon nap.

Today we did not.

Peace, tranquility and racing bikes. Verdun

The last drum beat died out some time after two this morning, at about the same time the storm terminally dampened the rest of the celebrations, and our blanket of tranquility descended once again, just long enough to allow us to catch a few hours sleep before the weekend hit with a vengeance.

It does come as a shock after a few weeks of rural virtual solitude to be in the middle of a city, and particularly a city which seems to understand exactly what weekends are for.  

It  began quietly enough, in drizzle, with hangover sounds and someone mopping up the spent sky rockets from the wet pavement.  Anyone not required to work remained in bed until the sound checks began for tonight’s concert at exactly ten past get up time, or was it ten to coffee time, but in any case it not indecent, yet still a time when most not yet mobile.   By the time we returned some time later from our sightseeing visit to the subterranean world beneath the citadel and it’s stories of wars, the full rehearsal was in swing at the other end of the port. Of the several words that could be used to describe the cacophony, perhaps “loud” is the most succinct.  

Even more ominously perhaps, for those dreaming of a quiet night of conversation, dozens of the dozens-plus-three boats in the port were being decorated in the orange colour of their national football team.  The concert less than a hundred metres away not withstanding, this was not going to be a quiet night.   That was before we began to wonder why the traffic had stopped on the roads surrounding us.

Traffic and racing cycles don’t get along apparently, not for three hours at any rate.    

Coincidentally on the first day of the Tour de France, a local event was being held on a circuit through the city streets and around the port.   The madmen dashed around the cobbles on a five kilometre circuit lap after lap, while the bands played and people on boats just grinned deafly at one another, either pretending to enjoy the concert or with their hearing aids turned off.   By eleven it had stopped, but in its place the match had begun.

Lying silently in one’s bunk at one am, in a port that is a thinly disguised echo chamber, it’s jaggy coastline defined by bars and restaurants each with a television set and half of the population of Holland within, variously holding its breath and releasing it in unison while a World Cup penalty shootout is underway, is an experience approaching unforgettable.  

As each penalty was taken, the gasps alternatively of delight or frustration sliced through the deadly silence that preceded them while the shot was being prepared.

Then it was all over, a few cheers, a few horns tooted, the sounds of happy crowds vacating bars and extraordinarily within minutes the day was over, just as silently as it had begun.

It's just a game- Lacroux-sur-Meuse to Verdun

It’s the fourth of July, a meaningless date in France, except that today happened to be the day that France played Germany in what we think were the quarter finals of the Football World Cup.   

We arrived in the very centre of the city of Verdun and moored beside the lost Englishmen, not entirely tranqully between cafes and bars and mad clowns in the sort of dress which marks them either as one-eyed supporters of the home country, or as deranged beer stealing lunatics.  As the fireworks and drumming and tooting of horns carries on into the wee small hours of the morning, and the bridges are closed by people simply parking on them to celebrating the loss and perhaps fire off the odd skyrocket, we are starting to feel a tiny bit grateful that France didn’t actually win.  It's hard to imagine a more enthusiastic celebration although perhaps there would have been no tears.

But there’s also something a bit odd happening in our heads as we brace ourselves to visit some of the surrounding areas over the coming days.  Verdun is a living reminder of a grim world history and it's a grim irony that the same protagonists were at the centre of that history all those years ago.   The contest of a hundred years ago, left almost six hundred thousand people lying permanently in the surrounding areas and another eight hundred thousand wounded.   

Many of the trenches and battlefields remain untouched to this day.   Fields have remained unploughed for a hundred years, as they were at war's end.   That was a contest no one could win, nor did they, and the trophies from that one are perpetual.   

Perhaps that constant reminder puts losing a game of football into its proper perspective, and the celebrations too, win or lose.

Out in the midday sun St-Mihiel to Lacroix-sur-Meuse

For a few days we have been travelling in company more or less with an English couple with whom we'd arranged to catch up at this evening's stopover.  They'd left earlier than us, and even suggested we could moor alongside them if space was at a premium.   The bounders (that’s what they would have called us if we’d done the same thing to them) weren’t at the next stop when we arrived after all.  We guessed they’d been enjoying themselves so much they just kept going.  It's disappointing really, when someone makes an arrangement then doesn't stick with it.

It had been another perfect morning until we realised we'd been stood up, except for having to navigate for a few lengthy spells through the weed growing in the canal.  Weed in the clear waters is a wonderful thing behold, particularly with the numbers of fish and animals we see among it, bit it is also our achilles heel, wrapping itself around our propeller and rudder and limiting forward progress to the point where we have to stop and remove it every so often through the conveniently located and aptly named weed hatch over the propeller.  Mr Perkin’s coolant leak even stemmed to a mere sniffle in sympathy.

But we arrived and determined to have a good time by ourselves anyway.  It was only after visiting each of the town’s sixteen fountains, and the baker of course, having failed to find the “best butcher in France” open at the time of our passing, when were quietly relaxing in the heat of the midday sun,  without mad dogs or Englishmen, that I glanced at the chart to have a think about what tomorrow may bring.

There I noted that we had travelled ten kilometres yet again, and a further ten kilometres beyond where we had stopped was the town that I may have inadvertently mentioned as our next port of call when making our informal arrangements last evening.  We fear that somewhere a few locks downstream from here, there is a boat with an English crew, who have just confirmed their suspicions about the reliability of we Antipodeans.

Another tough day. Sampigny to St-Mihiel

We are quite anxious not to overdo this cruising thing, not to press ourselves too hard, but every now and then with a particular destination in mind one has to leave early.

It may well have been a perfect day, but we couldn’t just sit there enjoying a leisurely breakfast.  No, we had places to go, people to see, things to do so we had ourselves more or less tidied and fed and the trusty Mr P ready to do his thing by the dot of eight thirty, ready to make the first lock by the time it opened at nine.   For almost two hours thereafter we slogged our way through a perfect sky and post-card countryside, battling a complete absence of wind and tide,  until finally we reached St-Mihiel, thankfully well in time to catch the bakery and visit the tourist office as well before lunch.

Sadly our Mr P has not settled into his new state of being as well as we might have hoped.  He has developed signs of some bodily fluids emanating from an orifice which thus far remains hidden from view,  so we shall have to watch him over the next few days.

In the meantime, if all else fails, there are worse places we could think of to be stuck awaiting help.

Not bread alone. Commercy to Sampigny

There’s something mildly comforting about waking in the morning already looking forward to lunch.    

With that mild comfort in mind, we strode off through the streets of Commercy post breakfast, following the tourist trail, past Stanislas’ favourite home, the church, the place where the abattoir once stood, taking a wide berth around the shop selling Madeleines lest we once again fall into its clutches, and into the bakery where we bought yesterday’s perfect baguette.  At least we would have walked into the bakery had it been open today, but it wasn’t.  Not on Tuesdays when we are in town apparently.

“Best baguette ever” was the way one of us described yesterday’s fare.  Nothing else was going to compare. Our lunch plan was if not in tatters, at least a little ragged at the edges.

We did find a near if not quite perfect impersonation of yesterday’s baguette, in another bakery which also sported a rather large range of pastries the likes of some we had never seen before.    Normally we are quite disciplined about such displays.  We have a rule that usually allows the purchase of such items only on Saturday, although in the event of a Saturday being quite some way off, exceptions can be made on a day ending in the letter “y”.   Fortunately today was such a day and after a quick discussion, we managed our return to the boat for morning coffee, armed with a thing called a “Nougatine”, a glorious device containing all essential food groups except perhaps meat and vegetables and possibly fruit, but absolutely all the others. It certainly took away almost all of the pain of being stuck with a slightly inferior baguette when lunchtime came  around.

When lunchtime did come around, we were sitting beside a small forest clearing no more than ten kilometres further downstream, overlooking farmland opposite, wondering why we would move again today.

So we didn’t.