France: Canal Boat Trip, Day 7, Lere to Chatillon-sur-Loire

11 May

From the journal:

“We both woke up feeling really ill this morning. The day was grey and rainy, so instead of exploring Lere further, we stayed on the vessel, eating delicious eggs, and of course ham, cheese, all the usual, and with good books for company. We stayed like that until mid-afternoon, knowing we didn’t have far to go to reach Chatillon-sur-Loire, but not feeling up to doing much at all. 
 



Looking back

 When we eventually set off from Lere, wonder of wonders, the sun came out again. The air was beautiful, the birds were singing, the sky was blue. It was warm and wonderful sitting up on top of the vessel as it glided, you could almost say slid, along the sparkling surface of the canal. 



Just lovely.

The scenery was really beautiful, with lots of lovely canal-side homes to check out. All of this, of course, overseen by that nuclear power plant. No doubt about it, this is what must be responsible for the obvious affluence in this area.

 

 

Fabulous scenery

This is not an area of old, tumble-down, character-filled houses but of beautifully kept places with lush gardens. 

 

How beautiful are these canal-side homes.

 

 

Coming into Chatillon-sur-Loire was just delightful – absolutely beautiful countryside to enjoy, all to the fabulous soft sounds of jazz playing from the iPod. Forget what music you think you will want, on a slow, lazy boat trip jazz wins hands down, particularly lots of syrupy saxophone or piano that sounds like ice-cubes clinking together in a glass of whiskey.  

 



You would have to learn to bake if you lived here, wouldn't you.
And probably take to wearing aprons, high heels and red lipstick.
And simply have to call yourself Monique or Sandrine



 

As we eased to the end of our canal boat trip, our lovely friend, Monsieur Heron, did one final fly past, and then turned and headed back down the canal again, no doubt to act as the lead for the next boat of happy cruisers. He added so much to this trip as it was fantastic each morning to stand on deck, look around, and see him rise from the bushes and set off, flying low over the water ahead of us, always beckoning us to follow. What a wonderful added bonus to any cruise.

The French government should employ me to
travel around and check out their town halls.

Chatillon is a really large marina/port, and there were boats there of every size and description, which of course the man revelled in ambling around and photographing, no doubt imagining himself captaining some day.  We tied up at the dock in front of Connoisseur/Crown Blue. As I say, the port was really full but there was a really helpful Crown Blue staff member, an Englishman from Norfolk more used to the Norfolk Broads, who guided us in and tied off the mooring lines for us. That was really appreciated when parking the boat in such a tight spot. 

 After securing the vessel, we walked up to the centre ville (centre of town). Chatillon is really a lovely looking place, with some wonderful architecture, and, as with other places we had stopped at along the way, we really wish we had more time to spend here. It’s a good sized town also, with quite a lot of shops. We went into a pharmacy, and, touching my head for effect, I managed to tell the pharmacist “J’ai mal a la tête”. She nodded. I then touched my chest and throat, gave a weak cough, and followed that with “Et j’ai mal a la gorge”. She definitely got the idea. She asked if I had a fever, and I had to confess that, no, it hadn’t reached that point. She gave me/us some cough syrup, headache pills and cold tabs, and we went on our way wishing that we had got such supplies days ago.

I love the purple door on this house
and the old stone cottage behind it.

 

We wandered around for a while, admiring houses, particularly those half-timbered ones, and chatting to cats. Despite the general perception, there are more cats as pets in France than dogs, and you find the friendly little creatures everywhere, and they always ready for a chat. Oh, and there really is no language barrier – a chuck under the chin, a tickle behind the ear is all that’s needed for good communication.




The dining area on our lovely Cirrus
(looks better by candlelight)

 

Discovering quite a big alimentation, we purchased a few goodies – quiche, chicken, more wonderful tomatoes, olives – for our last meal of the trip, knowing that there was no way we were up to dining out. What a bummer. And, how marvellous, we came across the most fantastic patisserie where we managed to pick up the very best medicine of all: cream cakes. Oh, I love this country with its wonderful cakes which are never super-sized but are always super-delicious.




And the perfectly workable kitchen (oops, galley).

 

After dinner on the front deck, we had a few more drinks and then a fairly early night.




And our comfortable bed (but we'll buy some
better pillows in future)

Crazy, maybe because of the medications, maybe because fate was having a good old laugh, whatever the reason, it was the best, and most restful night’s sleep of the whole trip.”

Catch you tomorrow, when we travel by train back to the City of Light.

  

France: Canal Boating Day 1

5 May

After breakfast we had a final walk around, popping in to a chemist to pick up some hay fever medication – yep, all those lovely falling white flowers with their lovely falling pollen were having an effect - and a new umbrella before a walk-through of the Tuileries. We left our large suitcase in storage at the hotel, taking only a couple of carry-on size bags, and then checked out of the hotel, grabbed a taxi and zoomed off to the Gare de Lyon to catch our train to take us south, to Burgundy, for the next stage of our holiday. 

We easily found our seat on the train, only to discover some Frenchman sitting comfortably ensconced in one of them, happily reading his paper and sipping a coffee. We checked our ticket numbers and told him that he was sitting in one of our seats. He just smiled, apologised, and moved down the carriage to his allocated spot – he had obviously simply decided that our seats were better ones and had hoped that they were unoccupied. We stored our luggage overhead and settled down into the super-comfortable seats. Right then and there we fell in love with rail travel in France.  

Why would you stress out on the autoroutes when you can sit back, read a paper or book, have a meal, a drink, access to clean toilets, and watch the stunning countryside roll past? Lunching on baguettes and a bottle of wine in our seats, we gave up on reading our books and just relished the views of chateaux, forests of a green we had never seen before, and charming, picture book villages. 

Oh, and one thing I have to share with you: on the train there was a special little area, about half a carriage in length, I would estimate, which was set aside as a play area for kiddies. The walls below window height were all thickly padded, and there were toys on the floor. It was just lovely to see this, and to see children happily spending the journey in there, having fun as kids should. 

Something else which also really impressed us on the train was the stress on respecting the comfort of your fellow travellers, and this means: if you want to talk on your mobile, leave the main carriage and stand in the between-carriage spaces to hold your conversation, or if you must stay in your seat you have to keep your conversation really low. Oh, and no blaring music either. Wow, impressive! 

We had to change trains at Nevers – a famous city, and the one where Julius Caesar apparently had his war chest stolen. What?? Wow, stories and history at every turn aren’t there. The railway station is not the most salubrious of places, but by this stage we were so excited that it could have been a tin shed and we wouldn’t have cared. 

The trip from Nevers to the town of Decize, where we were to start our canal trip, was a short one, and so we were soon there. We were met at the station by Florent, from Crown Blue, now under the umbrella of LeBoat, and driven to the spotless, well-maintained marina. Completing the paperwork with Elys, a member of admin staff at Crown Blue, was completed quickly and easily, and we were then shown our boat, the Cirrus.  It was love at first sight for us.  While my man spent time learning the ins and outs of the vessel, all the necessary technical “stuff” and how to operate her, I happily unpacked our bags and then checked out the excellent fit-out, opening kitchen cupboards, discovering the clever layout in which not an inch of space was wasted.



Our boat



This was our first trip to France, and our first boating holiday, and we had left all the arrangements to the fantastic staff at the French Travel Connection in Sydney. Susan, who was the consultant we dealt with, had herself done a few of these boating trips in France and so she was able to advise us from first-hand experience. She recommended this particular cruise as being scenic, having lots of little villages to pop into along the way, and with a perfectly manageable amount of locks for a crew of just two people. Susan also gave us details of shops and restaurants along the route, and various other little tips that you only get from someone who has actually been there. For future trips we made all the arrangements ourselves, booking everything direct, but for the first time traveller – cruiser particularly – I think it’s fantastic to have such experienced and helpful staff to rely upon.

Now, back to the boat. David, the engineer who was providing the pre-cruise instructions then got my husband to start up the vessel, go for a little cruise, practise a bit of manoeuvring, and then pull up back at the jetty and  moor the vessel by the necessary method before handing over the keys and all the paperwork and wishing us a bon voyage.

We had been advised that there was a large supermarket almost opposite the marina, and so we took advantage of its proximity and did a fairly big shop, stocking up on cheese, wonderful Paris ham, breads, terrines, butters, etc, and of course quite a bit of wine. We actually thought we’d done a really big shop, but of course it turned out that we really had not bought nearly enough. 


Isn't this gorgeous.



Many people spend their first night on the vessel at the marina, setting out on their cruise first thing the next morning, but we were too impatient to do this, so as soon as I had put away the shopping and got the kettle on to boil, we set off. To exit the port area and turn north towards our final destination, Chatillon-sur-Loire, we had to pass through our first lock. This was an automatic lock, and it opened automatically as we approached, which was great. Into the boat our lock went, the gates closed behind us, the water level dropped, the gates in front of us opened, and we sailed out, out onto the canal, its green banks lined with stunning trees that dropped their blooms all over the water. A heron rose from the rushes along the side of the canal, flew over the Cirrus and headed straight forward in front of the boat, as if to say “Follow me; I know the way”.

It was already quite late in the afternoon, and the sky was darkening rapidly, and so we pulled up to the bank and secured the vessel by way of mooring spikes pushed into the earth. We went for a walk along the tow path, feeling happy enough to burst that we had now actually began this wonderful trip.

Our mooring site.

Sitting on the front deck, we dined on delicious ham and pate, cheeses and tomatoes that tasted the way tomatoes used to taste years ago before we started gassing them and turning them into flavourless red globes. We sipped wine and chatted softly – any volume would have jarred with these beautiful surroundings.  As the evening wore on the sky got blacker, and blacker, and blacker. I had never known such darkness; it was complete. Add to that the silence, amazing silence. It was almost as if we had been picked up and placed in a black box somewhere, isolated from all life on earth.

Getting darker

Did I say silence? All was shattered by the loudest thunder I had ever heard; it sounded as if very heavens were being ripped apart. And just so the ripper knew exactly where to tear, blinding lightening lit everything up with light so bright it almost hurt your eyes. Oh, and of course it rained – no, that’s wrong, it pelted down. So, here we are, night one on the canal boat, and we are smack bang in the middle of a storm of Hollywood blockbuster proportions. It was amazing!



What a place to spend the night - wow.



Catch you later.