The Journey -
Stopped with Rosy

We spent a couple of days moored at Chaumont.  On 31st October I took Fanny for a walk, intending to get to the next lock and back.  Coming into the lock was a peniche (well, spitz actually) called Floan - the only working boat in Europe that I know.  It's run by George and Helen Smith who were prominent in the UK commercial narrow boating scene - including, I think, camping boats out of Braunston.  Anyway, they gave Fanny and me a ride up through the next three locks, and we arranged to meet the next day ...

...  which was November 1st, All Souls Day, and a national holiday in France, when folk travel to visit the graves of dear departed loved ones and the canals are closed.  It was a gloriously fresh Autumn day, as I cycled up a few locks (with faithful Fanny loping alongside) and Helen cycled down a few locks.  We met on an ancient bridge over the stripling River Marne (that runs beside the canal) and gossiped away for a couple of hours.  I learned that I have time to spare, as the friends that I plan to overwinter with are in the UK for a month.

On November 2nd, Tuppence arrived on her boat Ma Douce.  Not having met a Tuppence before, we had aperitifs together and supped together, along with her temporary crew.  She and the temporary crew were civil to each other, but I gathered that a couple of weeks of sharing the same 25 or 30 feet of living space was taking its toll of their patience and irritability factors.

We were running low on diesel, but Madame le Port Capitaine explained that the local delivery firms had a minimum drop of 500 litres.  As I can only take 400 in the tanks, plus three containers of 20 litres each, I had to hike up to the nearest filling station with the three containers.  Now that it is getting chilly, we use diesel both in the engine and in the cabin heater, so scarcity of fuel is pretty worrying.

Had a lovely cruise from Chaumont, and then saw the boat Tri-Ann at a pleasant mooring.  I spent last winter with them, so I'm now moored with them for a couple of weeks.

Being desperate for diesel, I found a local Yellow Pages and phoned fuel deliveries.  How much did I want? 400 litres? Certainly Sir.  Be with you the day after tomorrow.  Where are we from? Chaumont!!!!

Methinks Madame le Port Capitaine at Chaumont speaks with forked tongue.

Why should a bloody radiator suddenly perk up and decide to be the centre of attention? I can understand a radiator leaking at its input, output or valve, or the seam around the edge.  But mine decided to leak through its front heating surface.  There is a small hole in the steel!!!  This meant:

• turning the main fire off
• draining the heating system down
• cleaning and enlarging (slightly) the hole
• filling the hole with the magic 'Epoxy Steel'
• letting it set overnight
• waking up to an extremely chilly boat
• re-filling the system
• re-lighting the fire
• keeping my fingers crossed (successfully!!)

The village had a Fête de Cochon (a Pig-Fest), with a fair, children's singing and dancing competitions (I skipped that), a "Grunting like a pig" competition for GROWN UPS (!!!!!) (I skipped that), a Piglet race that I saw, and which was merely a gentle amble up a 50m track.  I enjoyed buying 4 kg of honey in the Market of Regional Delicacies, and I enjoyed the evening feast of pork - two pigs were barbecued (to perfection) and eaten during the course of the day.

Then we had another holiday on November 11th - they take Armistice Day seriously over here!!

Then I saw a sight that I've been waiting for for ages.

In the next, small village, there is a distiller.  He wears an English style flat (Andy Capp type) cap.  He may have been a Naval Gunner, as he has a top finger joint missing.  He has what looks like a rusty old dustbin, the lid being replaced by a copper retort.  This sits on another, much shorter metal cylinder, in which a wood fire burns.  The chimney from this is a rickety series of tin cans with their tops and bottoms removed.  The retort top was sealed to the dustbin with copious quantities of Polyfilla.

The retort copper tube was angled slightly downwards, and terminated, via yet more Polyfilla, in a tube that was bent around into a cylindrical shape inside another dustbin - this one filled with water to cool the pipe work.  The pipe emerged through a heavily Polyfilled hole at the side of the dustbin - near the bottom - and the clear, distilled spirit dripped into a rather grimy polythene bucket.

I talked to him, and asked foolish questions such as:

Q.  How much spirit do you make per hour?

A.  It depends on the quality of the spirit that you wish to make.

Anyway, the stuff is called 'prune', and I've had it before and it is pretty lethal.  However, having stopped to talk to him, it would have been churlish to refuse the offer of a sample.  This happened at 3pm, and the sample effectively brought my day to a close.

Toodle pip!!

Bill