Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas one and all. It's Christmas Eve and I'm sitting in my parents' lounge in Brightlingsea. Have been meaning to post this for some time but our electricity supply in Nevers has been extremely unreliable, which affects our wifi signal. There was a small team of electricians there as we left and I very much hope it will be fixed by the time we return.
Our journey on the 21st was much better than we expected, having seen footage of the queues at St Pancras. We arrived at Gare du Nord about 1:30pm and were on Eurostar within the hour. The trip was a little slower than usual due to icy tracks, (but not as slow as the Liverpool St to Marks Tey leg!).
I am looking forward to the traditional family day at my sister's tomorrow and hope you all enjoy yours as much as I will. We'll be back in Nevers in time for the New Year and wish you a happy and healthy 2011.

La Neige

Autumn Colours

Nevers

Hello everyone. Thought it was about time we added a bit more to our blog. Internet access is not as easy here as we thought it would be but we are now able to use a FON network signal on the boat. It doesn’t give us great bandwidth (i.e. can’t stream radio 4!), but enough to surf, blog and email.

We have been busy since we arrived in Nevers on 19^th October – a whole month ago! I won’t bore you with all the details as David has written more about that. The port here is quite big and there are several other boats spending the winter. It feels good to be part of a community again.

From the port, we have a short walk/cycle over the Loire to get into town. The river is changing as the year marches on – the water level is rising and it’s flowing much faster than when we arrived. I am enjoying getting to know the town – the centre is medieval with some stunning architecture. There are some great shops and I seem to discover something new each time I go in. I buy most of our fresh food at the market and everything else at the local Carrefour. You can leave your full trolley there and they deliver it to the boat – fantastic!

Blokey Stuff

OK Penny get off the bloody computer, David's turn.

Well readers I am sure you're fed up with the 'we are here or there stuff'' so I thought I could spice things up a bit with some serious news, stuff blokes want to read for instance.

A few people have asked 'what do you do all day, how do you fill your time up'. Easy answer is lots of laziness & time wasting but that's not the whole, complete answer. All is variable so I can describe a typical day only in abstract form.

I get up early, make a pot of tea & sit around taking in the a.m. until it has fully brewed. I take Penny a cup, she gets up later. Usually by this time, following the usual round of ablutions, I am clattering around in the engine room having words with our ancient ford (Henry) T2 about forthcoming events. We do the breakfast thing then I start up the motor & bugger around with mooring lines, power cables & lumps of firewood which litter the decks & wait for Herself to surface. Eventually we're off. Now, canals are not often that wide & our steering gear is not that young so we wander around the canal or river for a bit, a few hours maybe, until we find a groovey looking spot & we stop. Reversal of the buggering around with ropes & stuff for bit, may involve a ditch, stinging nettles, dog poo (very unlucky), may not. Down in the engine room to have another word with the grease gun, prop shaft etc. Then, hey ho, lunch time.

This often involves cycling off to find a patisserie, usually shut, & slicing up some of yesterday's bread with an axe. On some waterways there is likely to be an enforced coffee break as the locks shut 'for lunch' at about midday for an hour or so, I cannot for the life of me get my head around this one. These guys (occassional gals) have a great job in usually great places. Only in August are the ways busy (a relative term meaning the eclusiere has to wind two locks an hour)

Later I often go for a forage, firewood, walnuts, apples, mushrooms, whatever, Penny goes off sight seeing to the local Chateau, shoe shop etc. (all closed) There is also life to deal with, washing clothes in canal water, painting rusting decks, pulling dead ducks out of the propellor, you name it, we do it all just as you at home do only we do it the inefficient, fun way.

We have no TV, read a lot, watch the odd DVD, eat out or in, get a takeaway, all in a typical day.

And now another, further word about Henry the ford. When we bought the boat, the engine worked fine which is more than I can say about some boats we looked at (remember ZZ11) another story. Unfortunately the boat had been more or less static for the last 12 years or so, engine not used much. There was no working alternator, there were rusty pipes, blocked heat exchangers (two) and valves which didn't. I happened to have in stock, so to speak, an old alternator from a Subaru, courtesy Bad Bob, courtesy Robert. This I took to a nice man in Tiptree who cleaned & tested it (working well) & gave me a little black box (voltage regulator) to match.

Ta much. Stuck it on, sort off, & off we went, no volts. Did we ever mess around with that thing. Something, we were assured, to do with a 'excitor'. Whatever does it for you, we used a 6amp bulb.

No go. Finally I changed the battery in the testing guage & guess what. Power to the people, 12v to us in fact.

Next the dreadful oil consumption, not evident upon inspection.

During our trial cruising in N.Holland in 2009, we used the motor quite gently. Less speed good & better for fuel consumption I thought & possibly true. What actually happened was that the engine (120hp) never got worked, never came up to speed whatever. The thing got gummed up. What it needed was a bloody good thrashing. This finally happened on the Seine, powering upstream, the thing coughed & farted a few times & away we went, fuel consumption better (results to be confirmed) oil consumption negligible. We can now make about 7 Kts. Next we need a bigger propellor, that's another budget 'period' apparently, (sounds a lot like NO to me).

Canal lateral a la Loire

Our first stop on this canal was just after the aqueduct. The crossing was pretty amazing but a bit stressful for David who was steering. It was a long way to keep a boat like ours in a perfectly straight line. We stopped near some woods where we could collect firewood, walnuts and chestnuts and have a camp fire. We grilled a delicious steak, roasted potatoes and chestnuts and toasted marshmallows - what a feast!
We're now on the last stretch down to Nevers. I am looking forward to getting there but will miss the variety of the journey. We're currently in Sury-pres-Lere, back in vineyard country. I think this is the first, free mooring where there has been a wifi signal we can pick up on the boat. I don't trust the signal completely and so have been rapidly typing with my diary beside me in case it disappears. The photos to go with these entries are still on our cameras, so I'll add them later. The sun is still shining but it's beginning to feel colder at night and first thing in the morning. Time to start using some of that wood that's all over the deck!
We have just been for a cycle to the Loire and were able to get down to the water where there was a large sand-bank island. Of course, we went for a paddle - we waded almost to the middle of the river - stunning.

Ouzouer-sur-Trezee/Briare

Had a tricky situation with a rope in a lock on the way here. We were descending and my rope got caught on itself around the bollard on the boat and David had to cut it with the axe. The boat did hang a little, but fortunately we were near the bottom of the lock. I had taken my eyes off the rope and was watching the water draining out of the walls of the lock. Inland waterway travel is not without its risks, you do have to be vigilant all the time you're travelling. A positive outcome of losing part of the rope is that I have learnt to splice and have tidied up several of our lines which were just tied.
Visited 2 interesting museums in Briare - one which covered the history of the canal, the Loire and the aqueduct and the museum of tiles and mosaics. There were some amazing, modern quilted hangings in the waterways museum - made by locals, I think. They depicted river/canal scenes and have inspired me. I had already been thinking of making some sort of needlework picture of Johanne and have now decided on a quilted collage.
Our first view of the Loire was breathtaking. A tourist brochure describes it a Europe's last wild river and you can see what they mean. Here, it's wide enough to have small beaches along the banks, backed by sheep pasture. I saw a huge flock of cormorants, ducking and diving, following the fish. Then, almost as one, they took off. The divers emerged one by one and looked around to find themselves abandoned.