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 21^st.  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 28^th 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……