Auxerre - Hingin' Aboot

Waiting..........

I was looking at another blog I follow this morning and hoping that the writers were okay as they’ve not posted anything since 17 January, which made me check ours and realise that it wasn’t just a couple of weeks since I’d written but nearly a month!!  So I hope you’ve not been worrying about us…..  Despite being busy doing nothing much, I’ve decided to doctor the date and do two entries to catch up.

We now very much feel that we’re hingin’ aboot, waiting for the 1 April so we can move.  I’ve been quite homesick recently, but not sure where home is to be sick about.  I feel displaced and long to pop into a shop and be able to pass the time of day with the shopkeeper without looking blank and getting my Collins Gem up on my kindle app……..  I am able to speak more French now,  but am completely unable to understand any response to my attempts – so frustrating.  Anyway, whilst ticking the days off til we can move, here’s what we’ve been up to.

Firstly we were off skiing and had a great week in Les Gets with the Coleys, Majors (x2), Ali and Stewart.  The weather was fantastic which made for some great days on the piste, but meant there wasn’t a lot of snow left by the end of the week!  The lifts are all a bit dated in Les Gets as well, compared to the 3 Valleys, and seemed to have to stop a lot to help people who’ve fallen getting off and on.  Mike was one of their victims and took a tumble on the first day coming off a particularly nasty chair, and winded himself, bruising a rib, which is still sore now.

Looking back down to Morzine (I think!)

Not that you can see him, but Mike is in these trees, looking for his snowboard after it went off down the piste on its own :D

An efficient way to warm up after a day in the cold!

Or a hot bath, with poor lighting....

Amongst the last coming down.

Mike exploring alternative employment.

Ski Buddies!!!!

Once back from Les Gets, we had a week until our first guest of the season was arriving.  Having hand-sawn most of logs we’d reached the big ones at the bottom of the pile that really needed a chainsaw.  Mike has been thinking about a chainsaw ever since we moved onto the boat really and finally bit the bullet.  Bizarrely, it was cheaper to order it from the UK, have it delivered to a friend and get them to send it over to France, than buy a similar model in France!

Taking H&S seriously with goggles, knee pads and his snowboarding helmet.

Also on our return from skiing we got a bit of a shock at our weekly weigh-in with Mike realising he was the heaviest he has ever been.  So began a regime of cutting down on the wine and trying to do daily exercise.  We’d started off doing daily planks and stretching before the ski trip to try and strengthen Mike’s legs to help take pressure off his knees, but added into that was now a daily walk (trying to reach 10000 steps on my fitbit for both of us) or a cycle.  We had a lovely ride down to Vermenton, along the river, around 25k, and took the train back.  It absolutely knackered me and I was starving by the time we reached Vermenton – I hadn’t realised we were going so far so hadn’t brought any snacks, just water.

Les Pompiers at the Port for exercises - not quite the same as our exercises....

Thinking ahead to sunnier days I have made a curtain to shade us from the sun coming in the houdini hatch.

Cute sculptures at the riverside park in Auxerre

This will be our first lock out of Auxerre on 1 April

Auxerre's pretty clock tower

On our Sunday promenade through town

This vineyard is in Auxerre, next to the psychiatric hospital and apparently one of the oldest in Burgundy

Is that thunder I hear or just my belly rumbling??

Free ride on the train as the station at Vermenton is closed and no one came round to sell us a ticket!

Not that we're fixated on this, but here is the lock that will be our first on 1 April - again!

On 6 February we headed off to Paris for an overnight stay, taking the Flixbus this time which takes about the same time as the train from Auxerre but only costs around 10euros – bargain!  Our room wasn’t quite ready for us on arrival at the hotel, so we popped across the road to a wee bistro for lunch, and had our first experience of the waiter trying to rip us off.  When he brought our bill, he didn’t put it on the table but kept a hold of it and took Mike’s card to pay, without letting us see the bill.  As he processed the sale, Mike stood up and reached over and took the bill from him, at which point the waiter immediately ‘realised’ he’d given us the wrong bill, that this was someone else’s.  It was too late to cancel the card, so he fished in his pocket and gave us the 5 euros difference of what our bill should have been and what he’d charged – not impressed. 

We took advantage while in Paris of going to the VNF (Voie Navigable de France – CRT equivalent) to buy our Vignette (licence) in person, as if you do this before 31 March, you get 17% discount.  You don’t get any discount if you buy online and print it off yourself but you do if you go to the office where one lady processes the transaction and prints off your receipts and licence and then takes you to another lady who is the keeper of the card machine and takes your cash…..  The total amount was 527euros for the year, which seems much cheaper than a CRT licence for the year until you remember that the canals in France are closed from 1 November to 1 April, so you’re only really getting seven months of cruising – unless you go north on to the commercialised rivers which are open all year.  In the evening we had an early dinner and headed out to a gig.  Yes, for the fourth time in six months we were going to see Teenage Fanclub.  It was a good gig, although I didn’t think the sound was very good but Mike thought it was better than in Birmingham.  Then, like a pair of rebels, we went to the bar next to the venue and had another drink, not getting to bed til after midnight!!

The Paris gig

Stunning Notre Dame

After breakfast the next day we walked down to Notre Dame and had a look around and then made use of our last half hour on our Velib bikes and returned to the hotel to collect our bag, which we’d left there.  We then walked up the Canal St Martin which was empty for repairs when we were there last March, had a coffee at the basin and then headed through the dodgiest bit of Paris we’ve encountered to Gare du Nord to meet Vicki off the Eurostar.  After some early dinner/late lunch, a quick glass of wine and then a rush back to the bus station at Port Maillot to catch the 19.50 bus back to Auxerre.  Back on board by 10pm, we prepared for our wine-tasting the next day by opening a bottle of Bourgogne Cremant – the local sparkling wine!

 

Canal St Martin in water

Le Raptor arriver