The Journey -
Rosy has Gone...

Gone?!!?!  Gone where?

Well, Belgium, actually.

But before we get onto that, the l-o-n-g silence needs explaining.

I had been making plans to spend three or four weeks in UK, visiting friends and stocking up on the essentials of life - namely Birds Custard Powder and Marmite for me, and Bisto for the folks next door.

Unfortunately ... the cost of hiring a car seemed to rise exponentially in proportion to the number of weeks of the hire, so two weeks became my limit, with a 3500 km limit - which rather excluded friends in the North and West of UK.  So Fanny and I drove the three or four hundred km, arriving at Calais around about 1830 hrs, to discover that despite expert advice and guidance, Fanny's paperwork wouldn't get her into UK!!

At that time of night, all the kennels near Calais were on answerphone, so we drove back to Conde sur Marne, and slept.  The following morning I took Fanny to some recommended kennels and left her there - the first time we have been separated for more than four or five hours since we met!  :-(

Hence back to Calais, using so many kms that friends in the South and East were beginning to look a bit too far away to visit!!.

Off at Dover and turn left for Brighton to visit my son Tom, and Molly.  Molly it is who keeps the website in order.  Have you visited it lately?  www.billybubbles.demon.co.uk gets you here.  Molly has now put up a map of the French waterways, so that you can follow Rosy's voyage.  Note how quickly the web-site springs into view!!  Please visit Molly at www.pagination.co.uk if you need help with a website.

I fear that time constraints kept me in the Cambridge area of the country, except for a swift visit to London to see sister Jenny.  I also spent a lovely afternoon with Richard and Teresa Powell.  We passed the time in the garage, which is Richard's library, music and recording studio.  If you like military music you'll have heard Richard on the radio program 'Mainly Military' on British Forces Broadcasting 2.

Back to France all too soon, having neglected many close friends.  My apologies ... next time, I PROMISE to visit.

I had theorised that Fanny would either hate me forever for dumping her in a kennel, or would realise that living with me wasn't quite as bad, after all.  In the event, when we got back to Rosy, she slept pretty solidly for two and a half days, waking only to guzzle enormous quantities of food.  She had also barked her throat out in the kennels, so the few barks that she now produces are very gravelly.

And then, a couple of days later, Timujen and Rosy started their engines and chugged out of Conde sur Marne, heading for Poland.  Northish, through Reims to Berry au Bac, then downstream for a few kms to Bourges et Comine, with a right turn onto the Canal de l'Oise a l'Aisne to Abbeycourt.  Another right turn, and we were on the Canal de St Quentin.  On the town quay of St Quentin we spent a lovely evening on a theatre péniche.  Jean-Marc and Cristal run a 91-seat theatre on a converted péniche.  Then, just before diving through the long summit tunnel, I took some photos of the bridge that is shown in Hugh McKnight's book 'Cruising French Waterways'.  The photo in his book shows the bridge during WW1, with the steep cutting crowded with battle-weary Tommies.  During the two hour passage through the great Riquval tunnel, one is towed by a clanking tunnel tug.

On to a quiet, off-line mooring at Le Bassin Rond, where we learned that our place on the dry dock (actually, we will be pulled sidey-ways up a ramp) has been nicked by a leaking péniche, so we have a few days to kick our heels.  We carried on to Valenciennes, and over the border to Belgium, to collect some legal red (i.e. tax free!!) diesel at Antoing.  We are now on a quiet mooring in Belgium, waiting for a call to nip back down to Peronne for a drag out and a bottom blacking.

Meanwhile ... old computer Number 1 is now dispersed around UK except its hard drive which is in new computer Number 1, which currently is reluctant to burst into life.

Old computer Number 2 still switches itself off and on after about 15 minutes.  New computer Number 2 is fine, except it works (?) on WinXP Home Ed, and prefers doing its own thing rather than responding to human intervention.  Hence, until yesterday it would send e-mails, but not collect any.  It claimed that I had instructed it NOT to collect e-mails!!!!

Engineering works and some scatty incidents have happened - so stand-by for a soon-to-follow sequel ...

Toodle pip!!

Bill