The Journey -
A Winter Home for Rosy

The privations of living a long way away from anywhere (such as lack of food and booze) eventually overcame the advantages (peace, quiet, serene stillness and cheap moorings) so we moved along a few kilometres to the mooring at Joinville - which just happens to be adjacent to a good bread shop, a good greengrocer's and a Lidl supermarket which has moussec (a sparkly wine) at silly prices.

Then onto St Dizier.  We moored for free at the long 'commercial' quay.  The bollards were rather far apart, and neither water nor electricity were available, but it was (surprisingly) quiet and FREE.

The run down from St Dizier to Vitry le Françoise is very strange.  The canal is, pretty much, dead straight for more than 20 kilometres, yet it is very pretty and full of interest.  The first stretch is extremely noisy, as the canal is parallel to, and only about 200 metres away from, the main runway of the St Dizier Air Force base.  Three or four pairs of fast jets took off whilst we pootled past, and they got a good barking from Fanny the Wooflet to help them on their way.

The canal used to be bordered on either side by a species of conifer tree.  Nearly all those on the off-side have now gone.  On the towing path side, most are still there, though there are significant gaps, and (I guess) 40 to 60 per cent are dead, dying or extremely sick looking.

On arriving at Vitry, we were hailed by Florian (who we met at Paray le Moniale and Montchanin) who was on his brother's peniche, and who insisted that we moored alongside.

I'm the sort of person who takes "Hellos" and "Goodbyes" in their stride, not seeing the necessity to squeak and squawk.  My coolness is in contrast to Fanny the Wooflet's excitement at meeting old friends.  I guess that she doesn't know that they might be there, so is surprised when they are ...  Anyway, having tied us up alongside, and having been licked to death by Fanny the Wooflet, Florian leapt into his car and went back to Montchanin, leaving us moored alongside an empty peniche, with another one moored immediately stern to stern to us, with its engine running and its prop wash swirling us around.  The owner explained that he'd just had a new prop-shaft fitted and he was running it in overnight.  I slept in Rosy's fore cabin!  Vitry is famed for its launderette - open 6 am to 9 or 10 pm, and spotlessly clean - and its Port de Plaisance - totally deserted when we were there.

We had planned to spend a couple of days at Vitry, but clambering over peniches to get ashore was ATD (All Too Difficult) so we fled the next day, even though it was drizzling.

En route to Chalon en Champagne, we had the experience of descending an automatic lock and then, when the bottom gates opened to let us out, being unable to leave as a loaded peniche hadn't realized that we were there, and was trying to get in!!  Luckily he WAS loaded - if he was running light, his bows would have obstructed his view of us.

At Chalon we moored in the same spot where we were two years ago when Joe and Karen came to visit, and stocked up with supplies before setting off for the final day's cruising to winter quarters at Conde sur Marne  - which is where we are now.

Fiddlers Green

I seem to have cracked the riddle of Fiddlers Green.  Fiddlers Green is mentioned in an old sailory folk song, in the context that it is the place where old sailors go when they finally expire.  I've been trying to get a feel of the place for the past few years (but without much luck) but had envisaged it as a warm, tropical island, with scantily clad maidens and coconuts being supplanted by beer-nuts and pina-colada-nuts.  I was right about the sailory heaven, but wrong about the tropical island.  My source (The Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea) suggests that sailors yearned more for somewhere like ... well, Wapping.  In wooden ship days, sailors found Wapping nigh-on perfect - lots of cheap bars and dance halls and an over-abundance of comely and accommodating wenches.

I have to admit that I'd find it pretty difficult to get enthusiastic about life in general, if I thought that the culmination of it all is an eternity in Wapping.  Still, I guess it would encourage one to live a bit a longer, in order to shorten eternity by a few years.

Engines - Kelvins and Perkins

I've spent much of the summer changing engines, from an old Kelvin to a new Perkins.  Imagine my surprise to learn that there is a literary precedent for this!!  Hammond Innes has written an 'adventure' story, about anthropological skullduggery.  Set mainly in the Greek islands, "Levees Man" is concerned with the discovery of a Lascaux type cave with ancient wall paintings in it.  The story is set in the late 1960's, and features a boat called 'Coromandel' ... an ex-fishing boat built on the Clyde in 1906.  When the present owner bought her, she had "... an old Kelvin in her.  One of the very early ones ... everything gummed up and rusty as hell...".  Just before the story starts, the Kelvin is removed to be replaced with a Perkins.  Spooky eh!  Life following fiction!!

Toodle pip!!

Bill