A world without colour Thursday 11th July - Lamotte

Ever since Sunny bequeathed us her orchid as she left on her homeward journey almost a decade ago, we have bought a new one at the beginning of each cruising year, just so that we can watch its flowers slowly fall off over the months that follow.   An annual replacement has become an essential purchase except for one year when in a fit of daring, a bromeliad turned up in its place.  This actually turned out to be a lot harder to kill but we still managed to disfigure it significantly over the course of our summer.

This year for a number of reasons that seem too complicated (or shallow) to reiterate, we never quite got around to procuring our plant for the year, so one of us has contented herself by collecting daily doses of wildflowers from the river bank, making them into posies and placing them in vases in such a way that even the other has to begrudgingly admit that a little extra brightness is added to our lives by their presence.

That was until this morning when we discovered, no doubt under the guise of maintenance, but we suspect in a deliberate effort to curtail this illicit poaching, the river banks had been maliciously slashed leaving them devoid of coloured life.  It is a little early to tell what the impact on the interior of our little boat will be, but we are attempting to keep our chins up.

Easy does it. Wednesday 10th July - Amiens to Lamotte

We probably walked further today than we travelled by boat, which is not to say that we walked very far.  

Had it not been for that one last visit to the supermarket this morning before heading off to the very fringe of civilisation as we have known it for the past week, we may not have left the boat at all.   

After all, when one stops in a rest area, one feels a certain obligation.

Somewhere unpronouncable. Tuesday 9th July - Amiens

They are called floating gardens, but really the only thing that was floating in the Hortillonnages was us, or more correctly the little boat in which we were sitting zoned out completely as the commentary, droning on in a mechanical and expressionless way in a language we barely understand was no doubt taking us through the marvellous history of this complex web of tiny canals and islands.

We’d read much of it before, of the centuries when it was one of the great “food baskets” of the region, of the fights to preserve it in the face of changing agricultural methods, and of the necessity to embrace some change to preserve the essence of the place for future generations.

It is curious and beautiful and there is still a smattering of market gardens among the weekenders and overgrown allotments and a museum which does its best to remind us that once, life here was hard, and the edges weren’t retained with timber, and the boats which are curiously shaped to allow them to be loaded from the banks didn’t always have electric outboard motors, but at the end of the day, it was a lovey hour spent on the water so who could ask for anything more?

A Day Off Monday 8th July - Amiens

Downtown it was as though the city was taking a big deep breath after the weekend, perhaps a little hung over even, but no doubt setting itself for another big week of crowds and music and holiday celebrations, because summer is here and it’s seeping into every corner of the city.

Pop-up playgrounds of astonishing complexity have sprung up, climbing trees and beach volley ball courts have just appeared in places that were only park a day or two ago, accompanied by supervised activities both scheduled and ad hoc for the benefit of holidaying school children, and visiting Australians alike.  In odd little corners of the city, deckchairs are appearing as though the seeds were sown in early spring and it’s taken till now for them to germinate. 

The contrast between the celebration of summer throughout Europe and the almost non existent effort of our own town which derives its living from tourism, could not be more stark.

Lay Day Sunday 7th July - Amiens

Last time we were here on a Sunday and we wondered if we could find a reason stop on the way back.   The weather was chilly grey and overcast and the mood of the town seemed to match it as we walked the deserted streets in the middle of the day trying unsuccessfully to find just the merest hint of life.   

That impression could not have been more opposite to the one that the city conveys in summer.  Now there is a palpable buzz, a vibration if you believe the banners, that seems to bounce off the clear blue skiy, which itself seems to glow as if it’s been custom-built just for the town to enjoy.

Even though the centre of town was effectively closed for business, or perhaps in spite of that, everyone seemed to be out and about, convincing us that perhaps we should stay for a few more days to see if we can discover the cause. 

Let there be light Saturday 6th July - Amiens

We’ve seen light shows before.  Some of them are good, some great and some (and we’re looking at you Nancy,) are really spectacular.  We don’t want to sound like jaded travellers when we say that somewhere close to really spectacular, but for the absence of a gigantic square and with “only” the largest Gothic Cathedral in the world to use as a projection screen, lies Amiens’ nightly summer show.

Our lingering memory of it will not be of the thirty minutes or so of brilliantly clever animations which variously deconstructed the building or draped it in a luscious cloak nor any of the other special effects, mesmerising though they were, but of that final static illumination, “painting” the building as historical study suggests it may well have been in the middle ages.    

We stayed as long as we dared, walking up, wanting to touch, knowing that the paint wasn’t real but unable to convince our brains otherwise.  What happened, we wondered as we walked home around midnight, to our aesthetic sensibilities over the last thousand years or so, which allowed this wonder to turn beige?  Perhaps it’s time to give the man from Dulux a call.

What a difference a day makes. Friday 5th July - Amiens

When we passed through a month ago, Amiens was asleep under a blanket of cloud and chill that felt as though the dregs of winter were going to hang around forever. Even our mooring in front of the English Pub, notorious for the late night shenanigans of its patrons was if not entirely silent, at least quietly subdued.

When we suggested to Anthony, the ever cheery ever helpful controller of river traffic on the Somme, that we might wait until after the weekend before moving “downtown”, he was very quick to suggest that could well be a bit less peaceful there now that the sun is out than perhaps it was on our last visit, and since there is almost no traffic on the river and our little spot opposite his office was quiet and shady to boot, we would be best to think carefully about not moving at all.

We walked around to the other place in the early afternoon where our decision to stay put was firmly vindicated. We were quite amazed at the difference a bit of blue sky can make.  With ten hours or more until evening, the shadows were already seething with bodies intent on not wasting a minute of their weekend, some already no doubt planning new ways of keeping the port awake all night.