Briare to Sancerre with Ric & Diana.

Finally after a broken down train, Ric and Diana, our neighbours from Riddell Rd finally arrive in Briare from Paris.

Lovely weather, good bike ride around the town, a trip to the supermarket to prove how cheap the wine is, and then out for dinner.

Briare’s 1890’s church built in the Roman-Byzantine style, with a front frieze decorated with enamals ( which Briare is famous for) and the floor totally covered with symbolic designs in tiny mosaic tiles which look like a richly patterned carpet. (Photos don’t do it justice)

Off to show the new crew how its all done. Locks and an aquaduct.

THE NEW LOCKER KEEPER. Monsieur Ricardo Hughes.

And a 4 litre barrel of Amstel.

And full party time on the boat, with a strange man in a striped french top and a Beret!.

Next morning, Thursday, at Belleville-sur-Loire, the sun is blotted out by the steam from the cooling towers of the local nuclear power plant.!!!

On the way towards Sancerre we were collared by a lovely lock keeper who showed us his wine shop by the lock, and of course we had to buy some.

Finally arrived just down river from Sancerre, at Menetreol-sous-Sancerre for the night. Very old 13-15c village with old small houses and still with the old village water pumps around..

Quick walk up into the vines just behind the village.

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And a quick beer on the way back to the boat.

Our last visitors of the summer, Ric and Diana have now left to continue their European trip. Our next visitor will be Emma in November as she comes out to visit us in UK on her way to ski in Japan for the NZ summer.

Ric bought out from NZ Max’s birthday present of an IPAD, which is great except he has now discovered ‘Angry Birds’ and ‘Temple Run’. ( thanks to Bart’s introduction to the  Ipad gaming world !!)  And we will learn how to be more IT savey with all our electronic equipment eventually.!!

Max and I are now going to continue down the Canal lateral a la Loire towards Nevers and Digoin, and then along the Canal du Central towards Chalon-sur-Saone, and on to St-Jean-de-Losne, our winter mooring spot.

We are going back to the UK for a week on the 7th September as we have an Aunts 80th party in Norwich. Afterwards Lucy will work for a week in London while max descends on Yasmin in Chichester to look at job opportunities. Then we have the GOODWOOD REVIVAL WEEKEND after which we will head back to the boat to continue getting her ready for winter.

SANCERRE>

After Ric and Diana left ( please come back) Max and I cycled up the long hill to Sancerre, buggered at the top, but had incredible views. Perched 310m of altitude high, 150m above the Loire River offering views out more than 40kms. In 1152, grandson of William The Conqueror built a fortress on the top of the hill, and it lasted until  the War of Religion in 1573 when after a 8 month siege saw the walls and castle demolished. The old town has retained its medieval character with really narrow streets and charming old old houses, some still from the 15c.

Wine production they say started in 576, and now has 7500acres in 46 villages, in the valleys of the area, growing only Sauvignon-Blanc and Pinor Noir grapes. The region is also very famous for its goat cheese.

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Briare

 

Well we still have no Bow Thruster so heading for Briare where there is a hopefully somebody who can help us.

 

Left Cepoy, and with lots of locks and nervously motoring we head towards Briare.

And passed our first Locoboat. ( Bumper-boat) then a night at Chatillon- Colligney where we find a good old French fete with a band, dancing ( yes we had a quick smootch) and then amazing fireworks celebrating some religious day.

Stopped for lunch at Rogny below a staircase of 7 locks that climb up 30metres. Unsure whether we should do it as there is a very strong wind. Met a lovely Scottish couple, Stewart and Susan who had also just broken down with a flat battery.( we met then again at the next two mooring places. They said it can be pretty windy at the top. Anyway we took a chance. Not too many new scratches.(Thankgod).( but whats a bit of a scratch that some paint can’t cover up, says Lucy )

Picture of the OLD ecluses at Rogny..

Moored at Ouzouer-sur-Trezee and came across 2 other Kiwi couples who are also heading in our direction. We have waved to them before in passing so thought we should now catch up officially so we went across to their boat with a bottle.Next morning headed off and 2 locks later arrived at Briare.

It is a beautilful place and very easy to spend time in and photos don’t do it justice on a sunny day.-.

The Aquaduct was designed by Leonce-Abel Mazoyer and Charles Signault but was built by Gustave Eiffel  between 1890 and 1896. It is built of masonary pillars but a steel channel. It spans the wide Loire River by 662.69 metres and allows the canal to link the Seine and the Saone rivers thereby connecting the Atlantic to the Med. These people were amazing with their planning and inginuity for making the canal network through France so connectable  for their commercial trade.

We found Charmes Nautique, in the commercial Port, who were very helpful and with Lucy’s bad french and their fairly good english, we organised for a technician to visit the boat to see what is wrong. Well it appears that it is out of his depth and needs to be repaired by a specialist.

So we searched the internet for the manufacturer, and managed to locate them in ‘Holland”  !!!! and phoned. Again people are very nice but it will have to be sent to them for repair..

17th Aug  Next morning we had to jump on a train and go and collect our car from behind us in Montargis and we arrived back at the boat about 3pm. The technician, Alain, a lovely man, again spent about an hour with his head down in our bow under the visitors bed,( sorry, forward cabin) and has now removed the motor. He then  kindly took the motoe , all 20kgs of it, back to his shop and packaged it up and then took me and raced for the Main Post Office and managed to get it on the courier for Holland.

Hurrah!!!   Repair on its way. STRESS GONE …..All we do now is wait in this lovely little beautiful town and drink wine and enjoy the ambience.

Picking up Yasmin tomorrow from Orly Airport. (sat 18th)

Yazmin stayed with us for 5 nights and in that time we had weather up to 40 degrees in the shade….shit is was hot!!!!!. Spent very lazy times,eating, drinking, reading and resting, finding trees and shade anywhere, even sitting under bridges to escape the heat of the sun. Even the breeze was hot.,

We did a little bit of motoring and stayed out of Briare a couple of nights and then it was time to get Yasmin back to Orly.

In the mean time we had found out that French postal/couriour service is not what we are used to,, and when they say a package will arrive Monday, ( when sent friday) it is in fact finally arrives in Holland on the Thursday..

So while driving Yaz to Paris we find out that we need a new bow thruster motor,  WHAT SHOULD WE DO??  We are MAD!!  We decide as we are in Paris anyway, why not drive on for another 6 hrs and go and pick up and pay for the bowthruster in Holland ourselves, and then we can return on Friday to our man Alain, We carry on with only what we are wearing and stay the night at a Best Western, near Arnhem, in Holland, who kindly supplied toothbrushes.  Next morning with the help of TOM TOM, we found DUCO and lovingly picked up our new bow thruster.

Only a 650km drive back,( actually took 7 hrs) on motorways with the little Yaris at 120 kms /hr most of the way, and finally arrived in Briare at 6pm and Alain is still at work and willing to replace it for us that night.

SO WE NOW ARE READY TO GO… GOSH, THE BOW THRUSTER SOUNDS SO GOOD. (The little things that please us).

So lazy time now for the weekend awaiting the arrival of Ric and Dianna from NZ. The weather another 36 degrees today.

Fontainebleau onwards—says Jeeves !!!

Sat 11th Well here we are, on our own and taking it slowly,.

Hardly any boats around, ..we keep expecting it all to be busier.

Locks open at 0900, and all close between 1200 and 1300 hrs for lunch and finish at 1900hrs. Nobody is in a hurry, and lunches are to be enjoyed.

All locks now on the Canal du Loing are manually operated  by mainly young women students so Max is off the boat helping them manually wind the locks…he needs the exercise anyway.

And very occasionally I am allowed to drive the boat…with a very nervous bad passenger.

 

Monday 13th.

So complacency sets in and yesterday our bow-thruster decided to pack a sad. Not that on this lovely small canal, with no commercial barges and banks that you can stop at anytime..,its much of a problem, but later on, on the rivers Max would really like to have it.

A English man from a yacht moored by us gave us some numbers of yards to call within a 50km radius but no luck.. either busy for at least a week or they didn’t do call outs. So its off on our bikes to Montargis, 6 kms away to talk to the Captainairie there. No luck, only a phone set on answer mode.

What is so amazing about France is the Tourist offices in the small towns. They are so helpful and try their best to understand our bad French and with their variable English we manage quite well. We spent 2 hours with her phoning everybody from the Police to numbers off the internet. Finally she got hold of a guy called Simon Evans ( who we already knew about) but is 60 kms away. He is an Brit guy who runs a boat yard at Migennes, (on the River Yonne), who we had contacted a few weeks ago about wintering our boat… (its a small world).

Max prepares himself with rubber gloves, shoes and terry’s t-shirt,,, and descends into the water and found he could stand up in the canal, !!,  proving life jackets won’t save you here. !!!

He found that the propeller wasn’t jammed, so we know its the motor. (shit, more $$$$$)

 

Anyway Simon will come out to us hopefully on Weds and sort us out. I have to say people here are helpful but its not cheap owning a boat. !!!

So we are going to take the next few days motoring slowly down to Braire and wait for Simon.