Joigny to Sens, With a Bit of Bouncing Back and Forth

Time for Ninebot Practice

So we are in Sens, having cancelled our booking for the Arsenal Basin in Paris and rescheduled it for later this week, we may have to shift it again…….. 

We spent another two nights at Joigny and it suited us not to be on the move in the searing heat.  On a late afternoon walk on Monday evening, with a ‘Mind your feet!’ (the French are terrible at picking up after their dogs, despite bag and bin provision in most towns), I realised that one particular dropping had brown fur and ears.  It was a wee bat who for whatever reason had not made it home to its roost the previous evening.  I flicked it with a hanky, thinking it was dead, but to my angst, it twitched.  My heart sank.  It was alive, so I’d have to help it and I had no idea what to do.  I picked it up and we looked for somewhere suitable and safe to put it, but my instinct was to get it water, if it had been out in the scorching sun all day.  Mike popped into a wee corner shop and bought a bottle and we poured it onto the ground and sat the bat in it, thinking it would cool it as well.  We could see it drinking and it started to move around, heading off down the street and flagging every so often so we thought it had died again.  A woman saw us out of her window and came to help/look and eventually we decided to take her offer of a box and put it in there, leave it somewhere high, away from cats and hope it would fly off come nightfall.  The bat didn’t like the box and it was too weak to fly just now, so that would not work.  We ended up with it in the box and took it back to the boat planning to keep it safe til dark then try and fly it off, but it wasn’t to be.  The wee thing just got weaker and less responsive, was almost dead by nightfall and completely dead by the following morning – RIP Battie.

Coming into Joigny surrounded by vines

Lovely Joigny mooring with vines in the background

And looking the other way across to the town.

Wee Battie

Meanwhile, we had also spotted a young sea bird (or river bird) wandering up and down the quay near the boat.  It seemed to have been separated from its parents and was big enough to fight off a couple of crows, wander around and peck food from the ground, but unable to fly and not ready to go in the water yet.  So we put out some seed and a dish of water for it and hoped there were no cats in the area.  He was still hale and hearty the next morning, so on Tuesday I picked up some sardines on a last visit to the supermarket and fed him them before we headed off, back the way we’d come towards Simon Evans’ yard to see if our seals had arrived yet.  We stopped at Laroche St Cydroine, close to Migennes, but a nicer mooring and bumped into Kendra Erin again, so enjoyed catching up with Kevin and Michelle, having a drink onboard before bar-b-queing our tea and then a quick walk around the town before bed.  They were off just after 9am the next morning but we remained for a couple of hours, to allow the post to arrive at Simon’s yard before we headed there.  We sat at Simon’s for most of the day, Mike working on documentation for one of his clients, chatting with other boaters waiting for work to be completed and Simon checked his mail for our seals, but they weren’t there.

However, just after 7pm he popped over had another look, went away to get some tools and agreed with our diagnosis that the weep was coming from what seemed to be a blank at the rear of the reservoir unit.  He could only tighten it up a little, so wasn’t convinced he’d made any difference, but we ran the the engine, tried the bow thruster and it seemed to be okay.  Mike went with Simon to the office to settle our bill and just before 9pm we headed back to the little mooring at Laroche.  We headed off sharp the next morning for a longish day but were gutted when we checked under the engine hatch at lunchtime to see that the weep was still there.  We continued on towards Villeneuve sur Yonne, but coming out of the last lock of the day, Mike went to get something from the gas locker and the lid came off in his hand!!!  At that point, I was ready to go back to Migennes and get lifted out and come back to the UK…… what else was going to go wrong?!  Mike got the lid fitted back on, not really sure what had happened to the hinges, for them to give the way they had, but thankfully it seems to have been okay since.

Leaving the River Yonne, going onto a canalised deviation.

Arriving at Villeneuve sur Yonne

 As we pulled into the port at Villeneuve, a chap jumped out of a car and took my line for me.  It was the chap from Narrowboat Lazy Notes, whose wife we’d met and chatted to in St Florentin briefly.  After passing my line back to me, he went astern and offered Mike assistance, but Mike was already tying off, so we thanked him and he ran back to his car and headed back to Sens where they were moored.  When I told Mike who he was, Mike sighed and said, “He’s the hydraulics expert that the DBA guys told me about…….”.  We had missed a chance for further help potentially, but we had no contact name or number and searching for their boat on the DBA site and online generally threw up no clues at all.  All we knew was they were moored at Sens, so we decided to head their early next morning to try and catch them.

Huuuuuge church in Villeneuve sur Yonne which seemed out of proportion to the rest of the small town.

Town gate.

Fantastic sky at Villeneuve sur Yonne

We were in the lock at 9am sharp the next morning for the short cruise to Sens, arriving at 12.35pm to find the port completely deserted.  Lazy Notes was gone.  Not only that, but finding what should be a busy port deserted on a Friday, we then wondered if there was something we didn’t know…. Did it get rowdy on the weekend, did the locals get drunk and disorderly and up to mischief with the boats moored??....  We didn’t stop to think, Mike was wondering how we could catch Lazy Notes and thought we should go on, but I said what if we did that and they’d done a long day and we didn’t catch them and what if they weren’t the hydraulics expert after all??  Besides, we had had a text saying our new bank card had arrived at the branch in Auxerre and we had to go and collect it.  Our pin number would also have been delivered to the Port there (our ‘home’ address) so I had planned to get the train that afternoon from Sens back to Auxerre to collect everything, as there were good train connections here.  Mike decided that he would take the train to the next port at Pont sur Yonne and see if Lazy Notes was there, and while we waited for our respective trains he rang Simon to see what he could suggest; either go back to Migennes, or we could contact the hydraulics experts he knew in Sens. 

Having found no sign of Lazy Notes at the next port, Mike came back to Sens, put his bike together and cycled out to the hydraulics guys Simon recommended.  They were a big, professional organisation but no one spoke any English, so Mike explained with some drawings and sign language what the problem was.  They said they would have a look at it and would send someone on Monday, and we should wait at the lock for them, which is just a short drive from their place.

Meanwhile, I had collected everything at Auxerre, bought a couple of Saint Pauls from Maison Roy and was on my way back to Sens.  Back at our mooring another couple of boats had arrived, including Vidal, with Graham and Jean on board so we relaxed a bit and enjoyed a glass of wine (with it being Friday!) and a bar-b-que before trying to watch Glastonbury on tv.  We kept losing internet, so eventually gave up with the tv and Mike had to make do with Radiohead on the Radio.

By Saturday afternoon, Kendra Erin had arrived, plus another French boat and a couple of hire boats so we were glad we’d got there when we did.  With free power, we did a load of laundry and eventually managed, with Graham’s assistance, to get water from the mains.  We did a supermarket shop and topped up our diesel from the garage across the road from our mooring.  The last couple of weeks have been really, really hot and it’s been unbearable to cook on the Heritage stove, so we’ve been trying to bar-b-que most of the time, wind permitting.  On Saturday, despite the lure of several Indian Restaurants in the town, we opted to get a kebab for tea. 

Gorgeous stained glass windows in the market hall

The market hall at Sens

Sens war memorial

The hot weather is making for some wonderful sunsets

The night view from the kitchen... love this wee church.

Sunday, after a leisurely breakfast, we played on the Ninebot for a while before heading to town to visit the Museum and Orangerie and Gardens.  We’ve not Ninebotted for a while so thought we might be back to the start in terms of skill and confidence, but we weren’t, we were about where we left off and felt a lot better when we found online somewhere that you can expect to take two full days to master the basic going forward in a straight line.

 

Two feet on!  Neither of us is good enough to let go of our 'helper' long enough to let them take an action shot!

Roman stuff in the cellar of the museum.

The Orangerie and garden of the museum.  Both well worth a visit.  Cathedral in the background.

Graham from Vidal popped by with diagrams of his hydraulics which are the same as ours but a bit older and he’d had exactly the same problem a few years ago.  He had ended up replacing the pressure valve as it was the wrong pressure for the amount of pressure there was (or something like that) meaning the oil leaked out.  After replacing that valve with a higher pressured one, he has not had a problem, so we think that may be what we have to do.  Now, whether that can be done easily and quickly, who knows……

It was slightly cooler on Sunday and we really, really fancied a roast, so we did potatoes and chicken and managed to see some of Glastonbury on tv before the internet seemed to jam again – most frustrating.

This morning we were up early and away from our mooring at 8am, as the hydraulics people opened at 8am and Mike’s understanding was that they’d meet us at the lock first thing.  It’s now 12.20 and they haven’t phoned or appeared yet……… It’s France………..

Big one coming down while we wait for the Hydraulics people.

Even bigger one going up a few minutes later!!!  Busy wee stretch this.......