One Week In

It’s just been one week since we left Southern California and we think we’re finally settled in.

Almost two years worth of dirt and moss have been cleaned off Oldtimer, many spiders have been evicted from the inside, we celebrated my birthday with Sunday lunch at our favorite restaurant in Briare and, in contrast to 2018 and 2019, it’s been raining.

The flight from Los Angeles was blissfully uneventful. Angst over the possible corona virus restriction was unnecessary since we’re fully vaccinated. A look at our vaccine cards when we checked in for the flight was all that was required to escape both testing and quarantine requirements. There was no waiting at the check in counter and a very short wait to clear security. Sadly, the lounge was closed so we had to wait for our departure at the gate. The flight left a few minutes early and landed in Paris a little more than an hour early. CDG, usually packed, was eerily quiet. After we picked up our luggage, a phone call to the car lease agency brought the shuttle van to the terminal, we picked up the car and managed to find our way out of the airport without getting lost. The hour and a half drive to Briare went off without a hitch (well, aside from the traffic which was its usual Paris self) and the key worked in the door to the boat. We filled the water tank, visited the restaurant (not our favorite which is closed on Tuesday) just steps from the boat for dinner and collapsed in our bed.

Wednesday was shopping day in the morning and in the afternoon we began the monumental cleanup, removing. By Friday things were pretty much under control and we could relax a bit, tackling the long list of chores to be completed this summer.

A newly clean Oldtimer.

Yesterday, much to our surprise, the engine started without too much trouble and didn’t even smoke too much. The balky generator refused to start, however, so that will need some more work.

It’s been raining off and on since we arrived and was really pouring last night, putting a damper (sorry) on the festivities for the Fete National. They did manage to get the fireworks off, terrifying all the dogs in the Port, but we could only see the ones that went high in the air because the main venue was behind the trees at the back of the boat. We weren’t going out in the wet at 11 o’clock.

Speaking of rain, there are no worries about the state of the canals due to water this year. The Loire River is still in its banks but moving right along, quite a contrast with 2019 when sand banks were visible nearly out into the middle. The Trézée River that empties into the Loire through the Port, is flowing nicely, unlike the swamp that it was when we left in Sept. 2019. The reservoirs that feed the canals are all full so any cruising we do this year will be unhindered.

The Trézée enters the Port.

Last year is was barely moving.

The Loire from the Pont Canal in 2019

The Loire this year. More water!

We still haven’t decided where or how much boat traveling we’ll be doing this year but since we have a car for the whole three months, any time not cruising or working on the boat we’ll be able to do some touring.

People are gradually showing up to their boats in the Port so the social life is slowly returning. We’re glad to be back!

And We're Off! (We Hope)

 Back in late April Cathy Jo found some great airfares to France. There was word that the EU, desperate for the summer tourist season, was going to allow foreign visitors for the first time in over a year so we went ahead and pulled the trigger. The tickets, departing LA July 5 and returning Sept. 27, were fully changeable and refundable so we were protected. Still, it was a big step.
My treatments completed and followups showing me healthy, we were anxious to get back to Oldtimer.
June 9 came the announcement that France would indeed open to vaccinated foreigners, albeit with a negative COVID test right before departure. We were going to France!
Then even better news. On the 17th France dropped the testing requirement. All we would need would be our vaccine card and we’d be on the way to Briare!
As luck would have it, friends happened to be passing through Briare in mid June and sent us pictures of the barge. We were pleasantly surprised that it looked in pretty good shape considering it’s been almost two years since anybody was there to take care of it. We’ll have some major spider webs to clear and a little bit more of the mossy stuff to clean but the varnished door doesn’t seem to have totally lost it’s shine and all the paint we put on in 2019 seems to be intact. Still, everything looks better on the internet so we have our fingers crossed.

 It probably won’t be a very active cruising year. We have much deferred maintenance to catch up on and since we only have three months and we’ve already planned to keep the boat in Briare for another winter we won’t be able to get too far away. We’ve been informed by the French waterways authorities that there’s plenty of water in the canals this year so that should not effect travel.

We did find a program that allows non-EU resident to lease a car for a short term so we’ll have a car available all summer. That should allow us to do a little traveling away from the waterways.

So look for the first blog postings from France sometime in early July.
We hope you all have a safe and fun summer!

Stuck

By now the visas and plane tickets should have been in hand along with the health insurance for the EU and the cruising license for Oldtimer. The house should have been ready for it’s summer tenants and we should have been getting the giant suitcases out of the basement for their load of boat bits and the few pieces of clothing we haven’t left on the barge.

But…

When we returned from France last fall I went to the doctor for my usual yearly checkup. “What’s that lump on the side of your neck,” he said. “What lump,” I said. After ultrasounds, biopsies and scans I received a diagnosis of Stage 2 cancer in my throat that had spread to a couple of lymph nodes in my neck.

Seven weeks of chemotherapy and radiation began in late January and finished the first week in March. We spent the weekdays in Hollywood (Really. Near Sunset and Vermont). Since the radiation was a daily  5 minute treatment, our health insurance company, Kaiser, supplied us with an apartment for the duration. They have a whole apartment building within walking distance of the treatment center.

Luckily, the specialists on my “team” said since the cancer had not spread, the prognosis was good and, after the side effects of the treatment wore off I should be as good as new (well, maybe not new, since I am demographically a “senior”!).

Followups to the treatment were going to make it impossible for us to spend the usual 6 months on Oldtimer but we hoped to get over to France for a couple of months, maybe July to September.

Then the virus…

Now we’re wondering if we’ll get over there this year at all. 

The French government if being very strict about the “stay at home” stuff. You need to print out and fill in a form indicating your justification every time you leave the house and you’re not supposed to travel more that one km from home. All parks and gathering places are closed. The cafes and bars are closed for goodness sakes. No one knows when the restrictions, both in France and the US will be lifted so we wait with our fingers crossed.

(Update: As of Monday France is now officially closed to foreigners for the duration of the lockdown. A new form must be presented to the authorities before beginning your trip to the country and you basically have to be a resident to travel. Second homes (or boats) don’t qualify you for entry.)

On a happier note we did welcome a new member of the family over the winter. Audrey Noah was born to our son Cory and his partner Darwin on Jan 22. All are doing well. Our friend Carmen referred to her as a “sturdy” one.

On her birthday.

We have to be satisfied with Skype screenshots for now.

We’re not traveling to Portland anytime soon.

Making lemonade out of lemons, we will be around to enjoy the bounty of our yard and the summer harvest.

The full complement of kitchen herbs in the front.

The artichokes are just about to show their heads.

The back yard just got a full suite of tomatoes, beans, cucumbers and eggplants. Zucchini to follow. We’re also going to have the largest crop yet of avocados.

I’m not going to do a “shelter in place” coronavirus blog. I neglected to post anything about our trip to Brittany in September of last year so I’ll probably put together a couple of entries for that and, if anything exciting happens you’ll read it here first. If things mellow out we’re still hoping to get over to the barge at some point. 

Stay safe and keep that distance!!! Wear that mask!

Last Year's Journey, The Map

I was going to write a post about our plans (or lack of same) for this year when I realized I never posted the map I made of last summer's trip.

Without further ado…

To Orleans, Aug. 22-23

All work and no play makes Don and Cathy Jo cranky so we planned to take some excursions in between the painting jobs and other chores. We had about 5 weeks before our flight back to the US.

While visiting the local tourist office we saw a flyer for the son et lumière at the cathedral in Orleans. We hadn’t seen a single spectacle this year so we asked the staff if there was a train to Orleans (no car yet). There is no convenient train (the connection is through Paris) but there is a bus. Since the show takes place starting at 11 pm we would need to stay the night. We booked a room at the very quaint Hotel Marguerite in the old section of the city and caught the 11:30 am bus on Thursday. It’s a 2 1/2 hour  ride but it only costs €3 each one way. We checked in to our hotel and wandered about the city, checking out places to eat dinner. Along the way we saw this guy.

Not where we had dinner.

We settled on an interesting looking restaurant, Ver di Vin and had a great meal with a very enthusiastic sommelier. Afterwards we headed over to the main square for the show. It was truly a spectacular!

Moving colors with music!

About 45 minutes later, as we were heading back to the hotel, the music was done but the colors continued.

Our return bus didn’t leave until about noon on Friday so we had plenty of time to do a little more sightseeing.

Of course there is a statue of the “Maid of Orleans,” Joan of Arc.

And we were visiting a small park in the center of town and a woman there with her child suggested a spot for a great view of the back side of the cathedral.

Back late in the afternoon, it was time to continue with the painting chores. Last year we’d done everything but the terrace. That required moving the wood decking so we could prep and paint, not a small job. By mid week it was all done so there was plenty of time to tackle other projects, and more excursion planning.

Back to Briare, August 12-16

Just 4 months ago we took the Canal du Loing and Canal de Briare north in the freezing cold. Now the weather was much better, sunny and warm with a few clouds around, but the water levels in the canal were reduced to conserve water. We were afraid that might prevent us from mooring in some of the places we intended but that turned out not to be the case. We did have some interesting chats with lock keepers, though. They made sure we knew the canals were going to close and really wanted us to keep moving along, but we knew there was no reason to rush too fast. We had a week to cover what could be done in three days if things got dire.

Over the four days we also passed 4 hotel barges that were heading out of the area. The other exit from the region, the Canal latéral à La Loire, had very restricted depth available at it’s eastern end so if the deep hotel barges didn’t get out before the closure they would be stuck on a small portion of the latéral.

Our first stop after Saint-Mammès was just some bollards in the grass near the town of Montcourt. We’d stayed twice in this general area on rural moorings and it’s very peaceful. 

Monday we traveled for about an hour to Nemour. We were out of bread and Cathy Jo thought she remembered where a boulangerie was so we threw a couple of lines out and off she went.  It turned out to be a fruitless search so about an hour later we were off again.

After lunch one of those drifting clouds decided to drop it’s load right on top of us. We had just passed a group of fishermen scrambling to recover their gear when the heavens opened. Luckily for us, we were between locks and it was a quick shower.

We had planned to stop right after the first lock on the Briare. There’s a pontoon right next to a nice park we’d noticed on our two previous trips but about 3 pm we passed a picnic spot with a couple of bollards and decided to call it a day.

About a half hour later we saw something unusual on this canal, a loaded commercial barge headed down.

And what do you do when the kids are out of school and you have a boat to run? You bring them along and make a secure spot on deck so they can splash away.

When we were on the Seine we saw a similar setup but with a swing set on the deck. Unfortunately, they were just a little too far away for me to get a good picture.

Tuesday we put in about 27 kilometers to Montbouy (we’d stopped there on the way out) and Wednesday we made it to Rogny-les-Sept-Écluses by about 1 pm, giving us plenty of time to wander around the village again, although this time we didn’t climb the hill beside the old lock staircase or make the trek up the steep hill to the church.

The River Loing crosses the canal in Rogny,

coming in from the right and exiting under that walkway to the left.

The old mill

I promised I wouldn’t take yet another picture of the old lock staircase but I just couldn’t help myself. It is pretty awesome what they accomplished in the mid 1600’s. Over 6000 people worked on the construction of the canal.

Water used to come cascading down through the seven locks to lift barges over the hill.

It took us just over an hour to complete the six locks around the hill to the top and by 11 am we were in the first lock starting down.

We spent the night in Ouzouer-sur-Trézée again and on Friday at 10:30 were tied up at the Briare fuel dock, just before the last lock into the marina. Since it was Friday, Cathy Jo hustled off to the market for some fresh vegetables and I, along with the marina Capitane, David, put on the 400 liters of fuel to fill the tank. We finished just before 11 and David had already called the waterways people to operate the lock. I told him I needed to wait for Cathy Jo’s return but he said that wasn’t possible. We had missed the announcement that the three locks on the embranchement into the marina were only operating from 9 to 11 am. I managed to single-hand the boat through the lock and got tied up in the slip shortly after. 

On Sunday afternoon the canal closed and that was it for the year.

Chores and projects await!

You can see the stern of the boat among the sea of cruisers.

The Seine, August Aug. 8-11

The Seine is a big, busy river with lots of commercial traffic and locks to match, about 600 ft. long and 40 ft. wide, but since it was August when most of France is on vacation, commercial traffic was pretty light; we only had to share a lock with a bigger barge once and that barge was only about 120 ft. long. We would only spend a couple of days on the river. The best places to stop are the waiting areas for the locks, especially this time of year.

The waterways authorities have spent some money sprucing up the facilities. One good example was the Coudray lock. There is a passerelle, a pedestrian bridge that crosses the river at the lock and barrage. The sides were covered in a mirror surface so when the boat passed underneath we got a view of the top of the boat.

You can see the solar panes, the bicycles

and our outside table and chairs.

The barrage and walkway at the Vives-Eaux lock were elegantly designed.

We saw some amazing architecture as we motored up the river. Some very nice looking residences. I didn’t get a picture of the thatched roof house but some others were just as impressive.

Thursday night was spent at the waiting area for the Ablon-Vigneux lock and the plan was to stop briefly in Melun (where we had stayed in 2009) for a quick trip to the nearby grocery store and then move on. Just as we tied up at about 1:30, though, the rain started to come down hard so we decided to put off the shopping until the rain stopped and spend the night. Bad decision.

We knew it was a crummy tie-up. We’d noted that during our previous stop. The river is quite narrow as it goes through town and the commercial traffic doesn’t even pretend to slow down. Consequently you’re in a washing machine from 6 in the morning until sometime after 8 at night. At least in 2009 it was free. Sometime in the past 10 years they put in a post with water and power on it and are now charging a pretty penny for a lousy mooring. We have learned our lesson! (twice, now!)

The view out our wheelhouse window as 

a loaded commercial goes steaming down the river.

Picking up our email on Friday afternoon we got the news we had been dreading. The portion of the Canal du Loing above Nemours and the entire Canal de Briare were going to close at the end of the day August 18, about a week away, due to lack of water. We still had plenty of time to make it to our winter moorings but we were going to have a long stay in port before our flight home on Sept. 25. It was ironic that this was the year we decided to extend our stay later into September so we could get a little more cruising time. We’d be doing our cruising at the dock.

Saturday morning we set off for Samois-sur-Seine, another place we visited in 2009 (and a much nicer mooring!). The home of the gypsy jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt, back then we enjoyed the music at the bar right next to the mooring, including an appearance by Django’s maybe 10 year old grandson who was an excellent guitarist, too. Sadly, when we pulled in just before noon, we found plenty of room at the moorings but the bar had just been sold and the new owners had not yet reopened it. A great disappointment.

Sunday morning we completed our 80 kilometers on the Seine, turning into the Canal du Loing at Saint Mammés. We made a brief stop to get some fresh vegetables at the Sunday market and then entered the canal headed south for Briare.