The cleaning - Lagarde

Winter can do funny things to a boat, or anything that’s left outside if it comes to that.  Even though we leave everything as clean as we can, we always seem to return to a mess, a vessel covered in a thick grime of pollen mud, green slime and muck.

I have to confess that we have thought about the futility of cleaning things before we go, but there is a trigger somewhere in both our heads that won’t allow us to relax in that state of mind.   Therefore while one of us took herself away to Maggie’s for the day to catch up on a little mending, and probably just to catch up, the other set about scrubbing the decks and running the mooring lines through the washing machine, so they would be fresh and soft for next year and would smell vaguely like lemon.

It’s odd though, as excited as we are about returning to the Antipodes for a time, and that builds as we bustle around, there’s a certain dullness that is exactly the opposite emotion that creeps in to oppose it.   Now matter which side of the world we are on, these conflicting emotions descend.   Perhaps they are something to do with some sort of nesting syndrome that causes this wild rash of cleaning.   Do birds tidy up before they fly south for the winter?

Perhaps we should just lie down for a bit and it will pass!

Mondayitis - Lagarde

We thought we’d spend a night in Lagarde, perhaps head out again for a few days or even a week, before coming back to a frantic half a week or so of concentrated effort.

That was before lunch yesterday of course, which left us in no mood to do anything at all, not even to move the boat.  We had a classic case of Mondayitis.  Later in the day the sun came out and it seemed like the obvious thing to do was to wash everything that wasn’t hiding somewhere already freshly washed.  This of course gave us the opportunity to intersperse short bursts of loading the machine and hanging things out, with longer periods of inactivity.

We thought about checking our lists of things to make and do, and we thought about making new ones, but mostly we thought about not thinking about much because it didn’t seem to be the day for it, so sat in the middle of a row of empty boats, mostly reading and watching the washing dry.

The last leg - Einville-au-Jard to Lagarde

A “brocante” or as my dictionary describes it, “junk dealing”, is a tradition that happens in many villages once a year.  Curiously “once a year” turns out to be three or sometimes even four times if one actually counts them, but in order to maintain the level of excitement that only an annual event can muster, when they are held at other times of the year, similar (also annual) events are called “Attic Sales” or even simply held in conjunction with a summer fete.

Collectors and bargain hunters and people who would like to own two decades old baby toys flock from everywhere to find something that they will no doubt regret purchasing long after the thrill of the hunt has subsided.

We are not collectors or bargain hunters, so would not have been up early enough under normal circumstances to wander the streets as the stalls were being set up, but we do like to watch though but we really did have to be in Lagarde in time for lunch so we really did have to depart in time to get to the first lock when it opened, and that left us with precisely ten minutes up our sleeves to browse the kilometres of stalls.

We moved for just a few hours through clearing fog, past throngs of Sunday fishermen, with the old familiar happy-sadness creeping in to the periphery of our brains as we entered each lock, drawing inevitably closer to the end of another season.

We consoled ourselves with the thought that Lagarde wasn’t supposed to be a homecoming.  We were just going to stay for lunch and return in a week or so to start the wintering process.

But as the day and the conversation rolled along we felt ourselves settling in, becoming comfortable in our old surrounds, among old friends, and wondering if we have moved for the last time this summer.

Diversion of the pleasant kind - Nancy to Einville-au-Jard

With a concerted effort, an early start and everything going our way, it’s possible to  travel between Nancy and Lagarde in one day.

So it was that with that one thought in mind, we timed our departure faultlessly to arrive at the first lock at precisely the time its gates were opening for the day's business.    Our perfect plan was going well until that point and didn’t start to unravel until the time came when one would normally exit the lock.  All that is required to enable forward motion is for the gates to open automatically as they are supposed, and that is exactly what they failed to do.  

At this time of year itinerant lock keepers are a bit thin on the ground it would seem, so it was a little less than an hour until we were set free and able to continue happily for another few kilometres until the next lock once again required manual intervention, this time leaving our plan looking decidedly unachievable.

But the sky was blue and even the smoke from the salt works gave us a cheery wave as we passed, so there was little reason to feel any angst.  A new plan would surely form given enough time.    

As it happened, Rob and Janet, trapped by the ship-lift still broken in the opposite direction,  themselves still coming to grips with their own change of plans, had them changed again when we pulled in behind them in Einville for a belated lunch time stop.  It didn’t take rocket-science for any of us to work out that in all probability none of us were moving again today, and that the probability of achieving the statutory eight hours sleep was not entirely large.

It would be nice to have a lottery ticket with the same winning probabilities, but it’s hard to imagine that a winning ticket could provide a more enjoyable outcome!

Happy Trails - Nancy

We gave Trev a bit of a whirlwind-around-Nancy quasi-guided tour, before stopping for a relaxed lunch in the market and gently bunging him on a train for points south.

After that we high-tailed back it to the harbour to try to catch up on as much harbour news as we could.  Petra has moved in for winter, Stéphane has almost finished insulating his boat at last, Ronald has his busker organ working again, and so it went.   They all suggested we should stay another night or two and perhaps we should, after all we like it here and we like this eclectic bunch of stationary itinerants far more than our all too short bi-annual visits would imply, but we are now being drawn upstream like a moth to a flame.

I would have said we are being drawn upstream like a pair of spawning salmon, but would in all probability have received a disapproving sidelong glance so I refrained.

We have a bit to do before we leave, but as we have for the moment at least plenty of time to do it, things for now are quite under control. We we are quite aware however that in two weeks time when there is a pure white vapour trail scribed against the clear blue Autumn sky,  it would be quite nice for it to have been made by an aeroplane on which we are travelling, so we will move tomorrow and relax later if there is time.

In our own back yard - Champignuelles

As we watched the evening close in from our spot in Champignuelles it felt a bit as though we’d entered our own back yard after a journey, and only had to walk up the front path to get to the house.    Tomorrow we will spend the day in Nancy with Trev, and the next day we’ll be “home”.

We are in no hurry to get there of course, hurrying is futile on the waterway even if we tried.   We thought we’d be in Nancy tonight for instance, but when we arrived at the first lock it was so badly broken electrically that a nice lock-keeper brought a technician to repair it AND a generator to power it so that we could get through, it was a sign that perhaps we weren’t going to make it.    The angry Kiwis who seemed to have the impression that the delay in their progress was somehow caused by us may learn patience in time, or perhaps they'll take up bus tours as a more suitable method of touring on a tight schedule.

Seeing “Matilda Rose” tied innocently at the landing in Pompey was another sign, as indeed was the smell of baking fig tart wafting from her open ports.   So we allowed Graham and Jill to feed us one more time, taking modest portions of tart so that Muttley could demolish his fair share as soon as our backs were turned, bade our sad farewells once more and then turned gently out into the wilds of the river in search of one last cruising sunset.

Suddenly we were here, back in the suburbs of Nancy, where there will be more farewells and “see you next years” and then we will be preparing the boat and sunset will be truly upon us.   

Almost Sunny - Toul

The clearing fog could well be a metaphor for the beginning of the end of the extraordinary run of luck with Mr Perkins.    After a couple of days of fitting, re-fitting, bolting and unbolting then bolting again, we had found the cause of every one of the several leaks in the fuel system that had been plaguing us all year.   

Each one was maddeningly intermittent, which meant that as soon as we thought we’d found one it would immediately stop only to reappear after an hour or a day or two.   Replacing all of the parts with new should have fixed all that with no fuss, but when the microscopic crack in one of the new castings made itself apparent, we all felt as though we had been beaten.    But this was just a battle, not the war, so we fudged a couple of the old parts to keep us going until the replacement arrives sometime over winter.

Eventually the jigsaw was reassembled and dear old Mr P was running even better than at the beginning of the year.    We looked at our calendar, and realised with a tinge of disappointment that we’d have no chance of catching Rob and Janet on their arrival in Lagarde, so made an executive decision not to launch off at a mad rate of knots.

Tomorrow would do, there’d be no fog at all by then.

So we hastily changed Trev’s travel plans and wandered off to the station to meet him.