Blog #2 2019

Written Sunday 23^rd June

Remember the wind gusts forecast on the 7^th June? Well, around 8pm we were eating dinner and Sue looked across at the English-owned barge - Redquest – moored along the bank from us and saw the ladder on their wheelhouse roof lifted into the air. They had gone back to England the day before and the ladder was supposed to hold down the tarp covering the solar panels.

Next thing we see our French neighbour, Bernard, on the Redquest fighting with a solar panel that had blown off the roof. It was dangling over the water on its electric cable.

I dashed round to join him together with another ‘batelier’ to lift it back up into place.

We secured it with one of our spare mooring ropes.

The next morning I went into the port office and Vincent rewound the security film and we watched the moment when first the ladder blew off, followed by the tarp, followed by one of the solar panels!   "Mon Dieu"   "Ooh la la"

When the poor owner (from Sunderland) had arrived a couple of days earlier, from the South of France in his camper van, we watched as he tried to repair the air conditioning unit on the roof of the van. This had been virtually torn off when he went under a too low bridge. He’s said to be touring the Lake District now!

Saint Florentin is dominated by a huge church on top of the hill in the town centre. 

You can see it from miles around. 

An Englishman who spends his summer moving hire boats around, told me that the stained glass windows were spectacular so, as I was in town on Friday afternoon, I went into the Bureau de Tourisme to ask for the key to the church.

I approached a young lady seated behind a computer terminal and made my request.

• -       I need your ‘Carte d’Identité’ monsieur, s’il vous plaît
• -       We don’t have identity cards in England

She looked totally bemused.

• -       But the computer needs your identity number
• -       I don’t have one. We don’t have them in England – but I do have my driving licence in my wallet with my photograph on it

I produced it and she turned it over in her hands looking at it suspiciously – obviously disturbed by this unheard-of anomaly

She called to an older woman for help in satisfying the demands of the computer programme.

After a thorough search of the licence card, front and back, horizontally and vertically, she found two letters followed by an 8 digit code in miniscule print on the bottom right hand corner of the reverse side.

This satisfied the computer and the young lady finally handed me a huge, wrought-iron, key, but only after she insisted on handing me a map and a guide book, even though the church was, literally, just across the road.

• -       Go through the big red doors and lock them behind you when you’re inside (rather worrying) and lock them behind you again when you leave.

The quantity and quality of the stories illustrated in the glass panels was amazing and I spent more time there than I expected.

The lock rattled as a party of 3 French came in, and I duly locked them in behind me when I left.

• -       Where have you been (asked Sue on my return)
• -       To the opticians to get my glass fixed but I nipped into the church to have a look.

I don’t think she was impressed with my extra-curricular activities.

Latest weather forecast :

          Tomorrow    Monday       34ºC

                               Tuesday       35ºC

                               Wednesday  40ºC  (104F)

                               Thursday      39ºC

                               Friday          39ºC

There’s absolutely no way we are travelling in these temperatures but we are happy to stay in St.Flo with French friends and some old Australian friends just arrived in port. So we’re drinking chilled wine and catching up and, of course, we have a nice cool car to travel round in if it gets too unbearable.

Back on the ID subject, I took great delight in telling the French locals who come to the port every day to sit under the trees that, when we went to vote in the recent elections, we needed to produce no documents whatsoever and that we had a pencil on a piece of string to mark our X in the box and that was it.

Horrified expressions all round.

I manged to restrain myself from saying that, unlike France, we were not brought up in a police state where we can be randomly stopped by the police and asked for “papiers, s’il vous plaît”.

Sometimes it is good to be reminded of our relative freedoms in the UK.

 SCENES FROM 'DOWNTOWN' ST.FLO

LEADEN SUN - ANNOUNCING THE HEATWAVE (canicule)

Blog #1 2019

Monday 27^th May – Friday 7^th June

Without anything special happening it’s been non-stop these last 10 days.

Despite my fears about driving down to Kent on Bank Holiday Monday, all went smoothly through the road works and we were in our hotel in Wisques in Northern France by late afternoon, and Laddie happily romping on the lawn.

French motorways are the only place I can use cruise control – with light traffic and smooth surfaces it’s absolute bliss, and stress-free (we have to pay of course but worth every cent).

Day 2 (Tuesday) mid- afternoon saw us arrive at our Burgundy base of Saint Florentin (St.Flo) to be met with warm greetings by Vincent the port manager as we pulled up by ‘Blue Moon’.

Sue’s face dropped ‘it’s moored the wrong way round!!’

The side door was on the opposite side to us so offloading all our stuff would mean going up to the top deck and then down into the cabin and our boxes and bags were heavy. Young Cedric (local adolescent schoolboy) appeared to help Vincent and their two pairs of hands attached more ropes fore and aft and turned the 32ft long, 10 ton boat by hand, on a sixpence (or less than a Euro at least) in minutes.

Crisis over and unloading began.

That afternoon and the following day, we were embraced and kissed on both cheeks (sometimes twice) by a succession of male and female French boat owners and locals so many times we lost count.

In between the ‘grosses bises’ we toiled in the hot sun to wash the green winter slime from the boat’s exterior. Fortunately, the interior had been left neat and tidy by our neighbours, Michel and Nathalie, who had delivered the boat back for us last season from Decize to St.Flo. but the many boxes and bags took a couple of days to be stashed away so we could actually get onto the boat without tripping over them.

Laddie found a young playmate Victoria, a hyperactive 12 year old French schoolgirl, who tried her best to tire both of them out from dawn to dusk, which was a mostly a big help to us (but boy was she annoying, especially when she was still trying to get Laddie to play late evening and we (and Laddie) were looking for some peace and quiet).

Her dad, a Lyonnais from Paris sent her to invite us to an impromptu Ascension Day holiday drinks party on Thursday May 30^th. 2 Germans, 3 French and 2 Brits we sat at a picnic bench under the trees on the marina ‘lawn’ and drank mixtures of strong beer, Chablis and Ricard pastis and told anecdotes in as many languages, though mainly English. Common experiences too as the German lady knew well a pub in Baden, Switzerland where I would drink beer with my old friend Uri. Small world.

We finally got our dinner at around 9pm, leaving the others to continue until well after dark.

A week later and we now have another ‘Fête National’ weekend starting today, Friday 7^th June until next Tuesday when schools and industry return to work for another 4 day week. This time it’s for Whitsuntide. This is known as ‘faire le pont’ (to do the bridge) in France and happens whenever a bank holiday falls during the week. Last week we had Ascension Day on the Thursday so the ‘bridge’ went from Wednesday thru to Sunday night. Where did we go wrong?

With temperatures up to 34º this last week, the weather has now turned to rain and gusts of up to 50 mph are forecast tonight.

This next week we are hoping to get our small, hardwood mast back from a fellow, local, boat-owner, Bernard, who took it away to strip the flaking varnish off when I asked if anyone had an electric sander I could borrow. When I saw him yesterday he said (in French of course) ‘I’ve got 3 coats on it so far’.

I feel a ‘thank-you’ bottle of whiskey will be coming his way soon!

More soon