Sens to Paris......Finally!

Is that the Notre Dame I see ahead?? :)

Well, we finally made it to Paris and back out again, but with a catch up to do, I think I’ll split the last couple of weeks over a couple of entries – don’t want you getting bored……..

You were left last time waiting with us at Sens for the hydraulics chap to arrive, and he did arrive, after a phone call at 1.45pm he arrived 15 minutes later and got stuck into our hydraulics reservoir.  Having explained in pictures and google translate what was wrong, he took off the unit Simon had tightened up, and lo!  There was a warped/perished washer.  He cleaned everything up, changed the washer, cleaned all the screws and gave us a row for allowing Simon to use some Locktite on them and was good to go.  We, however, still weren’t convinced this was the sole problem as this unit is at the front of the reservoir and our weep was definitely at the back.  However, he went off and Mike cycled down to the shop to part with our 70 euros and on his return we cast off and set off for a couple of hours cruise to Pont sur Yonne.

After we moored up, Mike couldn’t face looking under the boards at the hydraulics, so I did the deed and was gutted as the torch showed up a glistening pool of oil on the back of the reservoir.  However, it also showed a golden drip coming from one of the hoses, so we took a photograph and emailed it to the people at Sens, not expecting a reply (the French haven’t entirely embraced email) but not having motivation, not to mention vocabulary, to deal with it over the phone.  We washed the boat then headed into town for a quick look and bought a kebab for tea, getting back to the boat just as the heavens opened for the evening.  Well, at least the plants wouldn’t need watered…..

The next morning was a bit fractious as neither of us wanted to phone the hydraulics people, but we’d had no reply to the email and didn’t know what to do – continue on, or go back to Sens.  I couldn’t bear the thought of going backwards again, so very grumpily decided to phone, basically reading out the email we’d sent.  I got put through to the engineer who had visited us and explained, and he said he’d come back out to us at 2pm, as he was with other clients at the moment.  As we waited for him, Kevin and Michelle arrived on Kendra Erin, so we shared our woes with them, had some lunch and then looked out for the van arriving, which he did at 2pm.  We showed him the leak and he said the hose was loose, which we were surprised at as Simon had tightened it up, but this chap looked like he might burst a blood vessel whilst turning the spanner, after taking the hose off completely and cleaning it.  I guess hydraulic mechanics are similar to IT helpdesks in that respect.  The first thing the IT guy gets you to do is switch off and switch on again, as this often clears any errors.  The hydraulics guys must be taught to take it apart, clean it, put it back together and 9 times out of 10, you’ll fix it.  He was sure this was now fixed and said if it still leaked after that, then there was nothing more he could do ie. thank you and goodbye.  We ran it a few minutes while he was there and it seemed okay, but it had also seemed okay after the last three fixes……..  As he’d had further to travel today, it cost 90 euros for the pleasure and we decided that if it was still leaking, we’d just seek to replace the entire unit as we’d almost nearly paid for one!

We decided to stay put and have a final evening with Kevin and Michelle and took advantage of the tarmac road to do some Ninebotting.  However, this was cut short when the heavens opened again pouring torrents of water over our newly washed boat and put paid to an after-tea trip to the local bar with our neighbours.  We dashed to their wheelhouse instead where we had some wine and nibbles and Michelle gave us a wee pressie to cheer us up.

I've always thought Quaintrelle was hot stuff, I'm glad Michelle does too :)

The next morning we set off behind Kendra Erin, in the rain and approaching the first lock, I went to the front to do the rope, which is when we discovered our long locking rope had been stolen off the front of the boat.  We were really pissed off.  I remember it being there when we arrived at Pont sur Yonne as it was on the port side and I briefly considered moving it to the offside away from opportune seeking fingers, but we were on a pontoon with a gate, in a small town so decided we’d be okay.  How I wish I had now, but it was tied on and I thought it would be okay.  I was doubly annoyed because it had had a bad fray in it from rubbing on the locksides so only a few days before I’d cut the bad bit out and spliced the ends back together.  It was one of my best splices, and had the rope been frayed it might not have been knicked……….  With that heavy on our minds we just knew the bow thrusters would still be leaking.

It wasn’t a great day to be honest.  The locks on this stretch of the Yonne are ‘V’ shaped, and with one of the walls crumbling into the lock, it was only to be expected that at some point a boat would catch the side as it went down.   Well that boat was us.  Despite us polling off the side at each end, she caught on a dislodged brick and started to tipple.  I screamed at the lock keeper to stop the lock, which he did and we got ourselves pushed off and recommenced our descent.  I was shaking like a leaf, blood pressure up somewhere it’s never been before and was muttering all sorts of , “Right, that’s it.  I hate this shithole, just get us back to Migennes, lifted out and back to the UK……”.

In this V lock, there was one short floating pontoon to keep you off the sides, so Kendra Erin was on the pontoon, us tied to her and Potter tied to us..... three in the bed and the little one said.....

We tried to stop at Montereau but the space available was too short and NB Lazy Notes, who we’d finally caught up with, although happy to help us with lines, didn’t seem too enamoured with the thought of us mooring alongside, as when Mike asked if we could, Mr Lazy Notes looked a bit troubled and said, “Oh, well, I don’t have my fenders out at the moment….”  We pulled away and decided we didn’t want to stop there and continued on. The rain had stopped and the late afternoon was pleasant, so we continued on, waving goodbye to Kevin and Michelle as they turned off down the Loing and we continued up the Seine, to our first lock sharing with the big boys!  The locks on the Seine are big and busy with commercial traffic and you have to radio the lock keepers if you want to know what’s going on.  It’s a simple phrase to announce your arrival and request to go down, or up, but sometimes the answer is quite complicated and longer than you’d like, with a hit rate of understanding one word out of 20…………ish……… 

Sharing with the big boys!

The Seine is still busy with commercial barges working away.

We managed though and at 6pm pulled in at Samois-sur-Seine, which is behind a little island and gives shelter from the wash off the river.  There was a space we could only just fit in, but the lovely family from Cherbourg in the boat behind came out to help with our lines and then moved back a bit to give us more space.  We were just settling in when they then knocked at the door and handed in a plate of homemade chocolate chip cookies, which were absolutely delicious.  After a difficult day, this restored our faith in life and the kindness of humanity – it’s the little things.  It helped that a peep under the floorboards showed no leak from the bow thrusters….!  But we’re still pissed off about that rope.

We had a wander through the little town, where Django Reinhardt lived and it is an incredibly pretty little town which we were happy to spend the night in.

Our kind neighbours from Cherbourg on their way to the Meditarean

The beautiful waterfront at Samois-sur-Seine

Django's pad

The next morning we were off at 8.30am battling the waves and big boys on the Seine – actually it was fine and reminiscent of parts of the Thames with big houses and gardens along the riverfront.  There was a fairly misunderstood conversation with a lock-keeper on this stretch which to this day I still have no idea what he was asking/telling me, or whether he was indeed speaking to me at all……..  I picked out ‘rive gauche’, pour vous, normalement and quelle, but the rest was lost to me, but as the conversation stopped and no boats were harmed I assume all was well.

Big river, lots of room to avoid the big boys.

Always be polite and let them go first - well, we don't have a choice with that, they have priority over leisure boats.

Houses of every shape and style line the Seine.

Some of the big boats ignore you but others are quite amused to see us and wave and give the thumbs up :)

Horse having a cool down and socialisation session with the Canada geese

Yes, there were even a couple of thatched houses!

Personally it's not a stretch of water I'd fancy skiing on with all these huge barges around.....

Rain was forecast and we’d hoped to get up to the Port de Cerise at Draveuil before it started, but we didn’t and when Mike phoned them, they were full up having just given up the last berth for the evening.  We tried another port nearby but one number was unrecognised and the other was a rather confused, but terribly pleasant lady, who clearly didn’t have any moorings in her garden.  When we passed this port, it was clearly no longer managed, with the gate broken, the sign hanging down to one side and the port full of house boats, reminiscent of London.  We continued on in the pouring rain with our last hope of mooring being a floating pontoon at the end of the lock mooring above the next lock.  If that wasn’t there, or full, we’d have to turn around and come back upstream and moor up on the side next to some penniches.  This would be fine, although the area didn’t look great and we’d be banging against a concrete side all night with the wash, but it would do.  Our luck was in though and the pontoon was clear, and our bow thrusters still not leaking – there is a god!  We were knackered but decided on an early start again the next morning which would mean we would be in Paris by lunchtime!

The next morning I was up with the binoculars trying to work out which lock was being used as there appeared to be one on each side of the weir.  Our large commercial neighbours who had moored next to us on the lock Quai had departed and as we pulled out I radioed the lock keeper and asked permission to descend.  I managed to comprehend “aller a l’ecluse a droit barrage”, so we headed into the lock to the right of the weir – phew!  Tricky stuff this French malarkey.  We pulled up to the front of the lock and another three boats joined us; two pleasure boats and one commercial.  The cruiser and commercial pulled away ahead once out of the lock and we travelled close to Sina for a while.  

Doubler

The large town of Melun on the outskirts of Paris

Sina provided some company for a while

Approaching Paris the scenery gets increasingly industrial.

We do like to catch a train in the pic!

An awful lot of water just for little old us!

Our last lock at Port d’Anglais took us on the really busy waters of Paris and we lost Sina as she turned right and headed up the Marne.  There was a lot of chat on the radio between the other boats, at least most of it was until I heard the words ‘bateau anglais’ and ‘votre silence’.  Shit!  They were talking to us.  Not only that, they were wanting me to talk back to them…..oh crap………  At least, I think they were………  Then I heard another message with ”Saint Michelle” in it, then silence.  Oh bollocks…….. “Nous sommes le petit bateau de plaisance anglais.  Pardon, mais je ne comprends pas bien, mais nous allons a la Bassin d’Arsenal.”  I figured that would do; if they were looking for a response, they’d had one and they knew where we were going.  If they weren’t talking to us, then they’d think how kind I was announcing who we were and where we were going…….or that we’re just daft English tourists on a boat who have no idea what they’re doing on the radio…..  After that there was silence, so I think they were satisfied.

Pont de Bercy, with train

Lock entrance to Paris Arsenal - can we come in please!

Hingin' aboot waiting for the lock

Going up?

And here we are. Central Paris.  How feckin' cool is that!!??!!

And here is our mooring in the sun :)

We were getting really excited as we started passing landmarks we’d seen on our visits to Paris by train, exploring the river and our potential routes.  All too soon we were coming under the central bridges and radioed ahead to Arsenal to announce our arrival, as entrance to the basin is through a lock.  Another boat was just going up (the cruiser who’d pulled ahead of us), so we had to wait 10 minutes and did a few circles, avoiding the Bateau Buses as we did so.  As we waited it started to rain again but soon we were in the lock and on our way into the basin.  We were moored alongside another narrowboat, adapted with a wheelhouse, but they mustn’t have liked the company as they headed off early the next morning, after rousing us from a long lie and deferring our bacon butties until after they’d moved out and we moored up again – in the rain.

But how exciting, here we were, in our home, in the centre of Paris, under the Bastille – it takes a lot of beating!!

Rain, rain go away!!  Go away to the UK!

Our selfie with the Bastille in the background.  Note to self: Must wear glasses next time!!!  Yes, it's a lampost, the Bastille's behind my head!

All dolled up for a delicious dinner at La Chemise - mmmmmmm

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.......