Bordeau to Villeneuve-sur-Yonne

 If we had a diary it might read something like this:

"Left early, had a spot of lunch after walking round a mediaeval city (Sens), bought a chocolate eclair for afternoon smoko,  arrived early and walked around a mediaeval city (Villeneuve-sur-Yonne), talked to a coupe of people, had dinner, went to bed - another nice day."

I fear the river has become repetitive, but we have a plan and we're sticking to it, like chewing gum to a post, we are going to be in the Burgundy Canal by week's end, which when I think about it, occurs tomorrow evening.

We actually did think we'd leave our charming mooring mid countryside early, get to the lock at opening time, good start to the day, that sort of thing and for once that's exactly what happened.   We arrived in fact a nice polite ten minutes after start work time for lock keepers, but were perhaps not at all surprised to find no one home.    After mooring in difficult circumstances, and wandering around in search of an errant lock keeper for a bit while doing a bit of quiet wondering to myself, a head appeared with a body attached to it, from the keeper's cottage door.

"I'll be with you in a tick" is more or less what it called over one shoulder "I just have to take the kids to school" and with that both head and body disappeared in a direction which was of entirely no help to us.

So we sat, and waited and thought about how we could still be asleep, until he arrived back without apology and got the show on the road almost an hour late.  

To be fair, he did phone ahead to ensure we were treated very nicely indeed for the rest of the day, and he must have been important because we were, except for the occasional time when someone let a thunder storm drop on us from out of the blue. 

 Presumably thunder storms are run by a different department.

Prejudice Moret-sur-Loing to Bordeau

Having almost, but not quite broken ourselves during our marathon yesterday, we wandered around Moret-sur-Loire for a time, had a coffee, conferred with the Swiss guys who had decided quite wisely that they had done three days work yesterday and weren't going to move again for at least that long, then quietly resumed our journey.

Quietly except that the wind began to make its presence felt and if we were to feel displeasure at travelling on the river while tired, that would surely have added to those feelings.

Despite the strike being abandoned, the locks seemed busier than yesterday, and we had delay upon delay when we left the Seine.  The locks on the River Yonne are horrible things for us, with sloping sides which took just a little more from the pleasure of being where we were. 

We were on the verge of trying to decide if the day was becoming unpleasant, or whether it was just less pleasant than usual when it happened.  We'd heard of it a few times, a couple of our friends have experienced it, and now so have we.

Half way through the day, having been delayed by more than two hours on the first three locks, we arrived at one which was ready and waiting for us with a green light  and we thought our luck had changed.  The green turned red as soon as we called on the radio, and a rather blunt message barked to the effect that we were to wait.

We did, for ten minutes or so, until a ship came from nowhere and filled the lock.   Puttering around in the water below the barrage was fortunately not too difficult, as we heard the eclusier tell another ship that he would wait for his arrival with the lock filled.   So for thirty minutes, almost forty we sat puttering into the rapids, until eventually that ship arrived, and taking all the time in the world, eventually departed and we were waved in.

The lock keeper was profuse in his mock-apology, but seemed taken aback a little when I responded without a sign of frustration, that we understand completely, the ships have to make a living, and we are after all, on holidays.    I then apologised for my terrible French and thanked him for instructing me to enter with a clear "OK", which shocked him even more.

When I responded to his question (prompted by my language-apology) about where we were from, his demeanour changed to one of horror and humility all at once.   He apologised more profusely than ever, so profusely that I actually started to believe him, and when he explained that he had thought we were English, things became very clear indeed!

So we talked about Koalas and sunshine for a bit, wished him well, and for the rest of the day by some miracle which may or may not have had anything to do with a phone call or two having preceded us, every lock was prepared, gates open, green light on, and hugs and kisses all round on our arrival.

Bah to the English I say!

Not Cruising Port Cerises to Moret-sur-Loing

A small problem had developed overnight and it had a little to do with working out where we were going and a lot to do with working and who is and who won't be.   It seems that there is talk of a national strike, and no one can be sure that the waterways will not be affected.  

With a trainload of grandchildren and their parents arriving to an as yet undisclosed, and for that matter unknown place on Saturday, the responsibility falls on us to find a suitable location that we can reach in time, has access to all services, particularly railroad from the South and for lots of reasons it would be good if this were on a canal rather than a river.  

Rivers are big and wide and fast flowing and full of rather large ships which travel at twenty kilometres per hour, and while the chances of ever coming into physical contact with one are very slim indeed, sometimes as they zoom past it's hard to avoid the sort of feelings that one imagines a lady bird must have while flying along a major motorway.

We didn't intend to travel for twelve hours, that's not anywhere in any of the colour brochures we've seen, but we had woken early and we did leave, turning into the outer suburbs as quietly as Mr P could whisper, so as not to disturb Swiss guys.    They in turn, also not intending to travel for twelve hours noticed that we had gone once our fog had cleared and set off in hot pursuit.     The river locks themselves are two ships long and two ships wide, and our length is less than their width and every ship that ever there was was on the river today to get to where they were going before the strike, so at each lock we two ladybugs waited and slipped in to the cracks between the fleet that had passed us since the previous stop.

On the penultimate wait, Phil and Julie caught up in their much more fleet of foot barge, having that morning received a call to be in Singapore tomorrow for business, so during the wait they busily unloaded all their perishables into our little blue boat.   

We caught them eventually, at the end of day, and they came for dinner made from their ownwe  groceries, then fell gloriously unconscious, wondering how on earth, and why on earth for that mattter, we'd come to break our distance and time record in one day.

This is not cruising!

On the road again. Paris - Port Cerises

It was a perfect day for a long stay in bed, which made us question what was motivating the Swiss couple in the boat behind as they left before the sun was up.    When we actually checked though, the sun did appear to be up, and the darkness we were experiencing seemed to be due to our eyes not having been quite open at the time, but none the less they inspired us to greater things, and we were at the Supermarket not too long after opening time.

We hadn't set an overly ambitious starting for ourselves for our first day back on the move either, because we know only too well how long it takes us to pick up a few things from the supermarket, and to bid everyone we know in the village a fond farewell, but it was surprisingly perhaps, a little before lunch time when we found ourselves on the Seine and feeling sorry for Mr P .  

The poor old thing now has to push us against a considerable current for days on end, and try as we might to find a compromise, coaxing a cruising speed of not much above six kilometres per hour up river was never going to happen.

  

With Mr P grumbling away in his little box all afternoon we arrived well before dinner time at our evening destination, Port Cerise and to their amazement, we moored in front of the Swiss guys who had left so early.  When we did we couldn't help but wonder if they thought it had been worth their while sacrificing all that snooze time to get away before us.

Much as we truly love Paris, it has to be said that it was terrific to be back on the water and moving again.

Randonnée!

If Mr Perkins can be woken from his slumber tomorrow, today would be our last full day in Paris for a time, so we thought we should spend it tidying up, doing odd jobs and generally getting ready for what will be the beginning of another few months of steady travel.

Immediately after that we thought that a few hundred metres from where we are moored, the Paris Rando was about to start and since we didn't feel like doing any of those things anyway, what better way to gently  round off our morning, and in fact our time in Paris, than to have one last intimate stroll through its streets of Paris, thoughtfully closed for the day along a twelve kilometre circuit.   

The Rando is an interesting, completely non competitive event.  A walking course weaving its way in a loop through twelve kilometres of roads, bridges, parkland and everything in between.   Maps and information about the route are provided, as are apples, caps and bottled water.  The roads are closed for the morning, and the whole event is gently managed to ensure that as many people as possible will get to the finish, and to make sure that no one gets lonely along the way, the circuit is shared with thirty thousand others who start and finish as nearly as possible to the same time.

We started somewhere in the third ten thousand as far as we could tell, and even though the first kilometre was a little like walking through sideshow alley on people's day, once we could assume our normal comfortable walking pace we were clearly travelling faster than many.  So fast were we travelling, that by the half way mark we were very close to the front, although that is no indication of any sort of athletic superiority as among our midst was a blind person, a girl in high heels, and a donkey.

Returning to the boat completely enthused and invigorated, we immediately set about doing nothing at all, before heading off to a long and arduous evening with Joan and Peter, swapping stories we'd swapped before, which presumably means we now have our old ones to tell again.

Tomorrow we must away, first thing!

The return to tranquility!

They've worn us out!

Seriously, they have. 

From the minute we arrived back after making sure they caught the Rocket train to Marseilles we planned to resume what we were doing before the alarm went off, but with only a small detour we managed to find some pastry and the Bastille Art market and before we knew it it was after ten.   

Undeterred, and revelling in our new found alone-ness, we were barely back aboard before we were hijacked by Peter and Joan inviting us to accompany them to a little restaurant they'd found just near Notre Dame, where we could have a proper lunch.    Despite our weariness, none of that seemed like a bad idea at all to us, nor did the walk back via the steel bands and the jazz musicians on the bridges.

Eventually though, we returned and succumbed in one smooth, well practiced action, sleeping soundly for a time in the late afternoon warmth, to the beat of a miscreant drummer who may well have been a kilometre away but had somehow perfected the art of throwing his sound to a point just above my pillow. 

Time to rest is time to reflect, and I was mid reflection when I suddenly felt a wave of concern.  

In one of my letters to Mr Five when he was Mr Four, my illustrations may have accidentally implied that the trains in France are actual Rockets, and indeed that is exactly how he and I refer to them.  They are of course quite fast, for instance the journey they embarked on today is a mere eight hundred kilometres and will take a little under three hours to complete including stops, but the reality is it is also about as smooth as sitting in a lounge room and not at all like riding in what a five year old perceives to be a Rocket.

I do have a week to work out a plausible explanation. . . . . . . if only the drumming outside my head would stop!

The end of the road.

We've worn them out!   

Seriously we have.   

Completely stopped 'em in their tracks.  They can't go any further.  

The parents of the two were up and about almost but not quite before the rest of us and shot off early to the Tower Eiffel, where they had less than an hour to wait till opening time, and not much more than that again to get to the top.

While mother and daughter found some second wind in the afternoon and reluctantly (apparently) dragged themselves into Paris' retail heart, the boys among us were content to sort of hang around.   

The two themselves meanwhile were content to accompany their grandfather to the lock, where we once again practiced our pirating skills without success despite having a succession of captive vessels at our disposal while the lock alternately raised a lowered itself.    I spent the rest of the morning with as little success trying to convince Mr Five that if we can't come away with any booty even after boarding a barge in a lock while waving an actual plastic sword, it is perhaps time he tried some other pursuit like banking or stockbroking (sorry Nick!).

So exhausted were they that they were content to sleep for almost all of the afternoon, along with their father, while the grandfather celebrated his second afternoon as a senior citizen delightfully confined to his own bunk while the Big E used his tummy as a pillow.   

It seems there is some benefit in having forgone the classic "six pack" after all.