First of all, many apologies for the lack of emails we are sending out.
We are STILL suffering from the absence of GPRS on our mobile phone and having
to make do with the much slower GSM signal. It's a bit like watching paint
dry, only slower! Also it doesn't help that when we do get on line we can
have over 100 junk emails. In fact we may take the email address off the website
and see if that reduces the junk mail.
So back to the update .....
By the middle of June we had arrived on the outskirts of Paris and found
a very good spot for the arrival of Pamela's sister Pat from Charles De Gaulle
Airport. The place is called Nogent Sur Marne and it seems to be quite an
affluent suburb. There is a lot of rowing on the river at Nogent and even
some of the people who live there have to row on a daily basis as they live
on one of the islands in the middle of the Marne.
Some of the people who live on the islands use craft that look a bit like
floating four poster beds - complete with curtains! We even saw one where
the seating resembled a Louise 14th settee!
FOUR POSTER BOAT
The chap rowing in the next picture told us that his parents live on the
island and he was just looking after the house for them while they were on
holiday. It did however give him the chance to have his friends round for
a party and as you can imagine every guest had to be rowed to the island and
back the next morning.
WHILE THE CAT'S AWAY
Pat arrived on schedule and found the journey in from the airport was very
quick at about 20 minutes by taxi. As you can see in the next photo, getting
into the swing of Nogent sur Marne didn't take long at all.
IN HOLIDAY MODE
Our cat Gromit sometimes finds it hard to keep cool on hot days as most
of the fur on his back is black and it soon warms up. So David made him a
canvas parasol for his throne and it does work well but when its not too hot,
Gromit has another use for it, as you can see.
GROMIT'S HAMMOCK
By the way, we are still eating food although it hasn't had a mention yet
in this update.
Pamela picked up some rather large garlic at one of the markets and the
cloves were enormous, with only 5 to the bulb. If a recipe asks for 1 clove,
then these will blow your socks off!
BIG GARLIC CLOVES
Since we met Claude and Raymonde earlier in the year, we watch out for some
of the stranger looking cheeses. The next two are no exception and if we are
not mistaken, two just like these were posted to someone who loves his cheese.
"Don't you Lawrence?"
RIPE FROMAGE
The solar panels we got this year are working well, or so we think. We are
not sure if the battery monitoring system knows what is going on though as
it isn't taking their contribution into account. Maybe they need to be wired
into the system differently. But that can wait until we meet someone who knows
more about it. Meanwhile, you know who is keeping an eye on them.
QUICK RE-CHARGE
We thought that the piece of kit in the next picture was interesting. Its
the sort of gadget that would be knocked together where David worked back
in Mirfield. In this case it is a floating "road" sweeper for canals
and ports.
PORT SWEEPER
Whilst in Paris, we moored the boat at "The Paris Arsenal" which
is right in the middle just by the Place de La Bastille. Quite a simple and
pleasant walk along the banks of the Seine to Notre Dame too, so that's what
we did.
NOTRE DAME
Once here in Paris, it seemed that an open top bus tour was going to be
the best bet for our feet. You can get on and off the bus as you please so
it really was a good move. We hadn't realised before that you could go to
the top of the Arc de Triomphe so this was a must for us. David counted about
250 steps to the top so having given up smoking for him was also a great help.
SIGHTSEEING
We're not really sure what to say about the next picture which is of 4 people.
3 of them seem to think that they are very beautiful and need to look their
best at all times. The 4th person is not quite the same. She is an old crippled
beggar who none of the 3 girls appeared to be aware of. It certainly is a
strange world!
WHO?
The Eiffel Tower reminds us of going to Blackpool by bus when we were children.
Everyone wanted to be the first to spot the tower. David spotted it in the
next picture, probably just before the chap with the pony tail sat in front
of us (wonder if he got it from a Piebald pony?)
SPOT THE TOWER
It is many years now since we went down to London to see The Phantom of
the Opera, Pamela's favourite. So seeing the old Paris Opera House just as
we imagined it to be was a bit of a thrill (David had to stick 2 pictures
together here but it's not too obvious we hope).
THE OLD OPERA HOUSE
Now we don't want to sound like tour guides or have you think we have just
swallowed a guide book, but Pamela picked this next bit of info up on the
earphones on the tour bus.
Apparently the Opera House actually does have a lake beneath it. When it was
being sold many years ago, the new owner found the underground lake and immediately
went to see the Mayor. The Mayor said "that's your problem now".
So the new owner made a feature of it and allowed the opera goers to visit
it. But it then became an unsafe practice to go down there and the visits
stopped.
Back on board Lea Crest in the Arsenal and who should have slipped into the
next berth but Nils and Irma with there boat ROVER. They are from Sweden and
were in the H2O harbour at St Jean de Losne during our first winter. It was
great to see them again.
ROVER
After Paris it was time to just chill out and relax. We did this at a place
called Lagny sur Marne and decided to stay on the opposite bank to the new
marina as it seemed better and greener for Gromit after his stint in the big
city. It was also a very good position to people watch from.
PEOPLE WATCHING
The family of ducklings in the next picture amused us as we often use expressions
such as the "ugly duckling" and the "black sheep of the family".
Maybe someone other than Mr. Duck was responsible for the little yellow one?
ODD ONE OUT
We had no sooner moored at Lagny when Alain, the man on the next boat, came
out to tell us all about the port and town. Alain was very friendly and couldn't
have been more helpful. Anything we needed was no problem as he had his car
with him every day and if we wanted anything, he would take us to the relevant
shop for it. Alain has been refurbishing his boat for 3 years or more in his
spare time and it really looks great. We invited him around for a meal and
had a very pleasant evening. Hopefully we will see him again soon.
ALAIN AT LAGNY
Our next quiet stop was La Ferte sous Jouarre. We were greeted by a couple
from New Zealand who, like us, didn't seem to be in any great hurry. Their
boat TRITON used to be powered by steam when it was built about 100 years
ago and it is for sale if anyone out there is interested.
JIM & VAL ON TRITON
The mooring at La Ferte was at the back of an island off the main part of
the river. It was very peaceful with a nice town and shops just a short walk
away. The day after we arrived there was a very large market there. It took
us over 2 hours just to walk through all the stalls. A few days later we moved
on and another place we really enjoyed was Damery. The village is heavily
into Champagne Houses and the local bar actually sells it by the glass! It
was very hot at this time and as you will see from the next picture, even
Pamela felt the need to cool down.
COOL DUDE
To celebrate Pamela getting this far into the Marne we called for one of
those glasses of champagne at the local bar.
CELEBRATION
A family on holiday walked into the bar when we were there and the mother
wanted a glass of pink champagne. When it arrived the father asked about the
champagne and wanted to know if it was local. The waitress said that it was
local and that in fact the owner of that particular champagne house was stood
at the end of the bar. We looked across to where she was pointing and there
he was drinking a glass of beer. What else!
Back at the boat and sat on the roof people watching, David saw a tiny flash
of light as the sun caught a fisherman's line. The line stretched out right
across the Marne, a long way from where the chap was standing and we soon
realised that it was a fish that had taken his bait. There seemed to be plenty
of activity around him and a landing net was being taken down to the waters
edge by one of his pals. By this time David decided to put down his binoculars
and he headed off down the bank with the camera. By the time he got there
the fish was on the bank and being prepared for a weigh in. It was a "silure"
and weighed in at 10 kilos (that's about 22.2 lbs in old money).
ONE FOR TONY AND LINDA
We are reliably informed that the silure was introduced into France by accident.
They are from Malaysia or Indonesia originally but grow much bigger over here.
In fact we've just looked back at a photo from the May 2005 update and we
have a 58 kilo specimen (almost 128 lbs) the photo was titled "No Tiddlers
in the Saône"
We next arrived at a place called Mareuil sur Ay, where we were due to have
a reunion with Paul and Pauline who we hadn't seen for about 28 years! It's
a long story and in some ways nothing has changed as the last two times we
met were in Scotland and in Wales, so France seemed as good a place as any.
Of course we made sure we were at the village in good time and that allowed
us to send travelling info to them before they left home.
Gromit, of course, was making friends with anyone who was prepared to stroke
him and seemed to build up a bunch of admirers (as usual). The young ladies
in the next picture were no exception. They were on holiday with the rest
of their family and were just moored a little further along the bank. Mary
and Charlotte never passed without making the detour onto our pontoon so that
they could pay homage to Gromit. We don't know whether it was our friend Al
or Robbie who christened him King Gromit, but it certainly suits him and we
are sure Mary and Charlotte won't mind being described as...
LADIES IN WAITING
The day of the reunion arrived and last minute redirections because of roadworks
which David spotted while out on his bike brought Paul and Pauline straight
to us. We very quickly and unanimously decided that we all looked like we
did 28 years ago. This did disappoint us somewhat as we thought we might have
improved a little over the years. Maybe it was the flares and platform shoes
that did it!
We picked this particular place for the reunion because it was just a short
cruise via canal and river into Epernay "the heart of the champagne region"
and somewhere that we would remember for this reunion. We were also very well
advised by Alain back in Lagny that a tour of the Mercier Champagne house
was probably the best in Epernay. Unfortunately the Mercier Caves were the
farthest away but it did mean that as we all trooped up the "Avenue du
Champagne" we passed by all the big named Champagne houses.
AVENUE DU CHAMPAGNE
The visit to Mercier was really good and the gigantic carved wooden barrel
which has pride of place in the main foyer is a wonderful piece of craftsmanship.
Eugene Mercier, the founder of the champagne house, had the barrel made for
the 1889 world exhibition which was held in Paris. It would have been the
biggest crowd puller and best exhibit if it hadn't been for the Eiffel Tower.
150 oaks trees were cut down and transported from Hungary and it took 11 years
to complete. They told us that either 3 or 5 properties were purchased and
knocked down just so they could get the barrel (pulled by 12 pair of oxen)
through from Epernay to Paris. 18 horses were also used to give the oxen a
break and it took 8 days in total for a journey of approx 140 kilometres.
The idea of the barrel, which held the equivalent of just over 200,000 bottles,
was to bring Champagne, previously only drunk by the wealthy, to the ordinary
people.
So back to reality and back on board, it was time to "multi-task".
Chatting about the old days while getting Pauline to cream some butter and
sugar for one of our favourite cakes "Germaine's Banana and Walnut"
MULTI-TASKING
The next task was to peel some prawns while keeping an eye on you know who.
These didn't go into the cake by the way.
TEMPTRESS
While we were in the champagne region, and through a recommendation, we
took the opportunity to go in Paul and Pauline's car up to the village of
Hautvillers, which overlooks Epernay. This is where the story of Dom Perignon
starts and is where he is buried.
He was of course a monk and in between getting the local church built, he
managed to perfect the keeping qualities of the drink we now call champagne.
It was basically a mediocre wine and the idea was to get rid of the air in
the bottle that causes wine to go off. Fermenting wine whilst in the bottle
gives off carbon dioxide and this is the preservative. It also makes bubbles
and so the bottles had to be stronger. You end up with the drink we have today
which has turned a cottage industry into an industrial process. It has to
be one of the worlds great success stories.
DOM PERIGNON'S GRAVESTONE
Monks do seem to be good at making alcoholic beverages don't they?
After all this sight seeing and investigating the history of Champagne,
it was time to take a seat, continue to chat about the good old days and enjoy
the view of this beautiful area.
HAUTVILLERS
The next update will include the rest of the summer cruise on the Marne,
onto the Saône and back to Saint Jean de Losne. We are looking forward
to seeing Martyn and Jackie who are trying to catch us up and there are others
we should meet on the Saône as well such as David and Liz and of course
those who have already made it back.
