Wednesday 30 November 2016

Weedon to Migennes

 
Next Stop Migennes!


Well, well…. Where on earth did the last couple of weeks go?  To say it has been a bit hectic is rather an understatement and as a lot of time has passed, I’ll try and be concise and tell the story with pictures.  In case you hadn’t guessed from the title – WE’RE IN FRANCE!!!

We left the boat at Weedon and headed to York for a few days so Mike could see his accountant and we could catch up with friends before heading across the channel.  We also had a list of things we still had to do, buy for our voyage and ongoing existence in France.  So we shopped, met people, went to the pictures to see Fantastic Beasts, went to Leeds to see Teenage Fanclub and arrived back at the boat on Monday 21st.  It was a brief reunion for Mike as he had had a timely (not!!!) phonecall about doing some work, so headed off to Maidenhead for three days.  I meanwhile started getting things packed up and sorted for the next weekend.
The Fannies at Leeds - great night!
All the breakables taken off shelves and put away safely
Another spanner in the works towards the end of that week caused a huge amount of stress and anger when Mike got his new Apple Mac laptop.  His old one was clinging to life by a whisker and he’d been waiting for the new one with the fancy bar to come out, which wasn’t forthcoming.  However, another timely phonecall from the business guys at Apple in Milton Keynes announced they had one, he could collect on Friday.  So we headed down to MK, purchased said Mac, came back, hooked it up to the Hard Drive Back Up and waited for it to do its stuff.  It’s a clever thing this back up, a Time Machine it’s called, it basically loads all the stuff backed up from your old machine onto your new machine and you’d never know the difference.  A few hours later it looked done, which was odd as it normally takes hours and hours to back up.  Sure enough, I opened a folder and it was empty, as were all but two.  And no emails, photos………..   Thankfully we had a date with Neil and Karen from Chalkhill Blue 2 for farewell drinks in Daventry at Early Doors that night, otherwise the new Mac may have met a wet end at the bottom of the Grand Union.  We had a lovely evening with Karen and Neil and completely forgot to take any photos!!!

Saturday morning we were back in the car to the Apple shop where we explained the problem, and we waited in the car with M&S Sandwiches for three hours before being seen by a ‘Genius’, who, short version, wiped the new machine completely and started a new back up, which after 10 minutes said would take 20 hours.  Confident that the data was all there on the Time Machine and found by the new machine, we went back and continued the restore at home.  Leaving it doing its thing we headed to Birmingham for yet another Teenage Fanclub gig at Digbeth Institute.

On Sunday we had to go back to Apple as most stuff had come over but not the Microsoft Office for Mac products, meaning we could open and look at documents but do nothing with them…….. I could’ve cried. The versions on the Time Machine were too old apparently, so the guy showed us the Mac equivalents meaning we could edit documents and suggested that if we wanted to use MS Office, we’d need to purchase newer versions – fair enough, we’d had a lot of use out of the old ones.  The genius solved enough of the problems for us to keep the new Mac and head home with instructions on how to copy over Mike’s several thousand photos, which had also not come over as the new version of Photos doesn’t speak to the old one.  I hate Apple.  Passionately.  It should have been so easy and it wasn’t and our blood pressure was through the roof.

Anyway, the Mac was put away as we got onto more exciting things, like leaving Weedon and heading south to Gayton Marina where we would be lifted out on Monday 28th November at 10am.  Sunday evening was spent finishing packing and moving things to safe places in case she swung around.
Reorganising the bike locker - who says there's not enough storage on narrowboats?!
Engine serviced and pipes and belts all checked and replaced where necessary by Steve Furniss - Grand Union Narrowboats

Jim and Jack's cunning work to keep our sun shade up!

We've never needed one of these in the UK!!!
The guys at Weedon sending us off on our way to Gayton
We were up bright and early on Monday morning and ready for the team at Gayton by 9am and everything in place for the lift.  Jim, Quaintrelle’s builder, and his son Jack came down to see her off and while we waited for the truck and driver from CPL to arrive, the ladies at Gayton made us all a cuppa – very kind.  The lift couldn’t have gone smoother.  The team at Gayton are experienced and professional and made it look so easy and moved Quaintrelle without a twitch of movement.  Paul the driver of the big truck has also done this before and once she was balanced in the slings it took just 4 minutes to lift and load her – and I managed to keep my eyes open the whole time!!! 

Plants safely stowed in the shower
Quaintrelle's outerwear stowed inside

If the cupboards can't open then stuff can't fall out :)
Here we go!!!!
Slings getting moved in

Lining ourselves up to drive into them
Nicely done Mr Q!
Ready for the lift
Up
Round
Round a bit more
Nearly there
Truck moves in
It was so nice of them to send a truck to match Quaintrelle :)
Tightly tied on
Off she goes...
We then bade her a safe journey and we headed on our way first by rental car to Daventry, then train to Milton Keynes, bus to Luton Airport, plane to Paris, train to our hotel.  We got to our hotel 11pm local time and went straight to bed – shattered.  It had been a long and emotional day for us.
Can you spot the Eiffel Tower?
We spent the next day in Paris, having a look at the Arsenal basin again and then walked to the Parlache cemetery where many famous people are buried.

Arsenal Basin in Paris
Oscar Wilde's grave.  Unfortunately they've had to protect it with this glass box as people were defacing it.  They still kiss the glass leaving bright red lipmarks which I found really disrespectful, especially as his surviving family have to pay to have it cleaned!!
It's a beautiful cemetery just to walk around for an hour or so
Jim Morrison tucked away in a corner with railings round it
The afternoon was spent in the room trying to do more planning and sort out passage from Migennes on the River Yonne to Auxerre.  At this time of year if you want to travel, you have to book as the canals and rivers are generally closed.  Unfortunately the nice ladies on the end of the phone didn’t speak any English and my French is fine for getting a bottle of cough mixture at the Pharmacie, but useless for asking to book passage on a river.  I’m sure that’ll change over time.  So I came off the phone not knowing if we were booked or not for passage on 1 December……. I thought me and Google Translate had managed to ascertain that we wanted to book, but the woman seemed to think we didn’t need to book, that it was open……  Yet online, their advertised ‘Horaires’ said you did have to book.  We’d sent an email earlier, but weren’t confident of a response hence the follow-up phone call.

It was an early start the next day on the 7.37am train to Migennes.  We’d had a text from Paul the driver on Tuesday afternoon saying he and Quaintrelle had arrived safely, which was great.  We got to Migennes and Paul, the truck and Quaintrelle were there, but no one else was around at Simon Evan’s yard.  We had a good chat with Paul in the frost, then Mike headed off to find Simon.  We’d arrived at 9am, it was now nearly 10, so it was time for the guys’ coffee said Simon, then we’d be lifted off……. It’s a French thing which we’ll have to get used to – time is slower in France – not a bad thing in my opinion…..

Bourgogne Train to Migennes
Auxerre is this way!
Quaintrelle at Migennes
Touching up the blacking while we wait
While they had their coffees, we climbed up into Quaintrelle on the truck and checked her out.  Everything we’d stored safely was as it was.  A couple of the shutters over the windows had flown open but with no damage.  However, when we went in we saw that the bi-fold door between the salon and bathroom had leapt out of its fixings and was on the floor, with a cracked pain of glass, and a chunk out of the wooden floor.  It hadn’t even crossed our mind that this might happen, but we’ll know to take the door down next time.

We decided to have a coffee as well, which is when we heard the Heritage Stove rattling……  We couldn’t work out what it was, but the bulkhead behind the Heritage is now shoogly, so there must have a been a reasonably sudden stop at some point which pushed the 3 tonne Heritage against the bulkhead……  However, it’s all working and the rattling has now stopped so fingers crossed.

BUT, it does show that no matter how good your crane and truck drivers are, there is still movement on the boat.

After coffee she was finally lifted off the back of the truck, and put on the quayside.  There was another boat sitting in the space for dropping her in which his chaps are working on, and it’s not got a very strong engine.  As there was a bit of a flow on the river Simon felt it was too risky to move this boat out of the way to get us in, so we’d be dropped in tomorrow.  With that knowledge we got ourselves as settled as we could for the rest of the day and decided to make the best use of her being dry-docked and touched up the blacking and paintwork at the water level.  I didn’t like living on her on land at all.  It’s not right! 

In France you need a licence from VNF (equivalent of CRT) to travel.  You don’t need it if you’re moored up, so we would only need it for the day to move to Auxerre.  It cost 74Euros for the pleasure so we hoped that nothing would hamper our plans.  Then we had an unexpected pleasure – the VNF office replied to our email to book passage confirming that passage was booked (this is free) and a lock keeper would meet us at the first lock at 9am and accompany us up the river.


We went to tell Simon, and mentioning it to one of his lads on the way he looked quite concerned and said, ‘You’d better speak to Simon, it’s not an early start round here, as you saw this morning….’.  We told Simon and he said we wouldn’t be in the water to be able to be at the lock by 9am, tell them 10, 10-30.  So we replied to the email with this update.

We were very nervous the next day, mainly because everything was outwith our control.  However, Simon’s lads were up early with us and despite incredibly heavy frost which made everything very slippy, had the other boat moved out of our ‘space’ by 9am.  As good as his word, Simon appeared around 9.30am, warmed the crane up and had us in by 9.45.  And then we were off!!  I was a bit shocked and kept saying to Mike, “Is that us?  Are we heading?  Now?????”  I have never felt so relieved and excited in my life!!! 

A Frosty Yonne awaits
Hope those chains don't slip.......
Brrrrrrr........
Ready...
Steady........
Please don't drop her now....
Nearly there...
Back where she belongs :)
So how was our trip???  Next entry……


Tuesday 15 November 2016

Milton Keynes to Weedon - Cruising Up the GU for the Last Time!



Campbell Park may never look the same again

It struck me on Sunday that two weeks yesterday Quaintrelle will swing briefly through the air on the end of a crane, then drop on the back of a lorry and head to France.  Gulp.  I don’t know if I’m ready…….  But before I get my knickers in a twist and come over all emotional, how’s the last week been??

We were becoming institutionalised and enjoying our mooring at Campbell Park, so much so that we couldn’t be bothered to move on and stayed until Saturday 12th.  We might have stayed longer, but we needed water…….  Wednesday was spent doing boat jobs and getting started on our Christmas shopping and on Thursday we spent the day at the cinema.  Having gone to the 12.30 showing of Arrival, which we really enjoyed, fab film, we left the cinema and noticed that there was a 16.50 showing of Girl on a Train which we hadn’t seen and wanted to.  So we toddled off to M&S for some food shopping, grabbed a bite to eat at a fast food noodle place and headed back to the cinema in time for the picture starting.  We had indulged in a large bag of PicknMix for the first film but felt a second would be too much, much to Mike’s disappointment.  Having read the book, we expected to be disappointed as films are rarely as good but we did enjoy it.  Not as good as Arrival, but most enjoyable and I thought Anna Freil was a great alcoholic!

Friday dawned bright so we set off southwards to Fenny Stratford to get water, dump our rubbish (which was sitting in a bag on the front deck and had provided a midnight feast for some little furry friends), wind (turn) and come back up again.  NB Betty had moored up behind us whilst we were at the cinema on Thursday and we managed a quick chat before we headed off and I suppose telling them we were off to France in a couple of weeks is when it started to sink in.  “You must be really excited??!” they said.  “Yes.  I think so.” I said feeling more unsure than excited, to be honest.  They were keen to hear of our plans as they’ve been thinking about going over to France, so I hope we do meet them over there at some point.

At Fenny the fast water tap had us filled up in no time and we continued on to the winding hole turned and came back down the lock.  We moored up with just enough time to get the other side of the boat’s blacking touched up before it got dark.  
Rather than wind right above the lock, it was such a nice afternoon we cruised to Water Eaton to wind
This time of year often presents looking glass conditions on the canal - lovely.

As it was forecast for rain most of the day on Saturday, we decided to stay put and get on with some more tasks, a major one for me was to sit (and hopefully pass) my CEVNI test.  The CEVNI is like a highway code for European Waterways; signs, light signals, sound signals on land and other craft, so that even if you don’t speak the language you will understand instructions and what other vessels are doing.  Mike did his online a couple of months ago whilst I was in the throes of swotting for my VHF Radio course, but once I’d passed that, I had no excuse.  So Saturday was the day.  I’d been having fly study sessions with the book, but it wasn’t really sinking in, but I sat and went through it all again, then got bored so went online and did a couple of practice tests I found.  Then I did the formal practice online with the school we registered with, passed both parts, so with sweaty palms and raised heartbeat I logged in to do the exam for real.  It’s multiple choice and timed and you get two shots at it, so really I needn’t have worried – there is just enough time to flick open the book (if you’ve marked the pages well enough!) if there’s one you’re not sure of.  I got 13/15 for the first section and 15/15 for the second – woooohooooo!!!!  So from that respect, we’re all set to go……

On Sunday, we left Milton Keynes for the last time, stopping en route at Bridge 86 to walk 15 minutes to the Waitrose at Oakridge, or Oakville or some other name beginning with Oak… It’s a new small town within the boundaries of Milton Keynes, full of new houses and streets with a shopping centre in the middle.  Back on board we continued our journey for the day, passing through Campbell Park for the last time, which even if we do ever come this way again, may not look the same!  On one of our forays to MK Centre, there was a large stand showing plans for the development planned for Campbell Park; houses, shops and restaurants and a marina.  We were gutted.  The thing we like about it is that there’s nothing there, it’s a park and a well-used, well-laid out, well-kept park for that matter.  I hope it doesn’t go ahead, but suspect it will.  Anyway, I started to feel a bit maudlin and emotional as we passed through and felt that way most of the way up to Cosgrove in the winter sun, passing a few other winter boaters on the way.  All was quiet at Cosgrove and I did a quick 20 minute run, getting back in the almost dark, whilst Mike emptied the rubbish.  It’s very different boating after the clocks have gone back.  In the summer, we’ll boat on sometimes til 7/8pm but if not, usually stop around 6ish.  We then do some jobs and before we know it it’s time to start cooking dinner, hoping to eat around 7.30/8pm.  Now we’re moored up by 3.30/4pm and it’s dark, so my stomach is looking for its dinner by 6 o’clock……  We don’t get up any earlier either to make use of the daylight.  I think we’re getting worse!!!  I struggle to get my arse out of bed anytime before 9am…..
There were about 30 of these guys racing from Giffard Park to Leighton Buzzard - 15 miles!  Too much like hard work....


More mirrors on the outskirts of MK

Cosgrove
Monday morning was overcast and drizzly, but before we headed out of Cosgrove (for the last time….), Mike touched up some paint work and I went to post a letter.  I’m glad I did, because I found the Horse Tunnel that goes under the canal, which I thought was brilliant.  We’ve passed through Cosgrove many, many times, but only stopped twice recently, so hadn’t really explored the village, so I’m glad I had seen this.
The canal is at the top of the steps and the houses you see are on the opposite side.
The tunnel leading to the other side of the village and the Barley Mow pub
Although it was a bit damp, it was very mild so not altogether an unpleasant cruise up to Stoke Bruerne, where we stopped for water at the bottom of the flight and made use of the time sitting to have some lunch.  Jules Fuels were there so we took on some diesel (for the last time…..) hoping that as we lingered, someone else would appear to share the locks with.  They didn’t and we headed off up on our own.  There was quite a bit of traffic coming down however which made it easy for us as all the locks were set in our favour and gates were left open for us a couple of times to.  The top lock was our last UK lock.    Then Mike remembered that it had also been our first lock when we set off in June 2014 – very fitting.
Right time and place to get some fuel
Approaching what had been our first and is now our last UK lock
The best Indian Restaurant on the UK Canals - Spice of Bruerne - red brick building.
Whilst cruising we chatted a lot about what we still need to do for France and what will need packed up and how we’ll stop stuff shifting about on the boat when she’s mid-air.  My next task is to make the Blue Board – further details can be found at CEVNI.

For the first time, we didn’t go to the Spice of Bruerne for a curry  - and it would have been our last time……. (see the theme here??)…. as we had food we needed to use up. 

This morning we were up a bit sharper, 8.50am, and enjoyed breakfast outside on an extremely mild morning for November.  Mike touched up a bit more of the paintwork and I got us ready to set off, not looking forward to our first obstacle of the day, The Blisworth Tunnel.  It was with great joy that I thought, “This is the last time…….”  As we entered the tunnel, we were surrounded by mist and I couldn’t see where we were going so had to take it steady.  It was really spooky and I was imagining all sorts of ghost boats following me, but about a quarter of the way through it cleared and we could see the pin prick of light at the end of the tunnel.  We managed to pick up speed in the new section in the middle which is nice and wide, so were through in 27 minutes again and enjoying our morning coffee as we progressed northwards to Weedon.
The entrance to Blisworth Tunnel at Stoke Bruerne
Where did this mist come from???

Always glad to reach the new section in the middle as it's nice and wide - and see the end of the tunnel!
Lime glistening on the walls of the old section
No, not last night's supermoon, it was too cloudy to see it where we were.  End of the tunnel getting closer..

Popping out into daylight and still water at Blisworth, 27 minutes later.
And Weedon is where we are now and where we’ll be until a week on Sunday when we’ll head south for seven miles to Gayton – and the crane – gulp!!  So this may well be my last entry written on UK soil!!!  Unless I can find something interesting to write about Weedon Boatyard for next week...........   Yikes!!!!!