L'Avenir - cruising Europe's inland waterways

Sunset at St Jean de Losne At first sight things didn't look too bad. We had been excited to be back and find our boat still safely tied up and afloat and were just anxious to get aboard. The main problem I had really noticed as I hauled myself and bags onto the deck was that there wasn't a scrap of varnish left on the handrails. It's always a concern when opening up  the boat after an extended period away, the main one being is it going to be dry inside?  L'Avenir had never let us down in the almost 15 years we had owned her and this year this year was no different. Opening up the door was always an instant step back in time. Usually that was only a period of 6 months or so but this time (thanks to Covid) it had been more than 2 and a half years. Thanfully everything was exactly as we had left it. We spent that first day getting unpacked and shipshape inside; de-winterising, water on, gas on, starting up the engines etc. All went well. I went over to the supermarket fo...

  'Wednesday  22nd June 2022  St Jean de Losne, Bourgogne At last! We are here once again. 2 years and 8 months since we left. It's been a hard couple of years for all of us but I don't want to think about that at the moment. This is about being back on our boat. Back to life...' We decided to splash out and take a taxi from Dijon to St Jean which brightened the day of the lead driver on the rank outside the station; cue lots of backslapping, high fives and laughter with the other 2 drivers. As we'd asked for an estimate first I did wonder if we'd agreed to something outrageous but 70 euros seemed fair enough. Maybe we were just getting his day off to a good start.  First up, though, we headed to the Free shop in Dijon to get ourselves a phone sim. We'd used Free previously as they offered a really generous internet allowance. Very easy to set up- you just buy a sim through one of their automatic dispensers. Not quite so easy (but not impossible) to complete...

Lovely Dijon Once again I'm writing this blog months after events. We are now back home in Australia. For various reasons I couldn't summon up the necessary energy to write a blog 'in real time' but I did keep a diary which I'll use as an 'aide memoire' and some of what I'll write will just be the diary transcribed. We spent an excellent couple of weeks in Scotland visiting family before continuing to France. Covid and Brexit have both affected travel in negative ways. Everything is just 'more' although I suppose we should just be grateful we can do so at all. It's not so long ago that we weren't able to move more than 5km from our homes. 'Tuesday 21st June 2022 Dijon  Had a near panic attack at Charles de Gaulle airport.  Message 'access refuséé' flashed up on the electronic passport reader. An immigration official instantly materialised at my side. 'That's not good, ' he said sadly. A pause and then 'The Shru...

Lyon Port A Memorable Journey Upstream from Lyon I'm writing this almost a year later from lockdown in Australia. Looking back at my diaries and photos from last summer's cruising should be cheering but it's not really. With our borders closed to international (and even internal) travel there is no chance of us rejoining l'Avenir this year. This will be our first full winter in cold, damp Melbourne since 2007 but we are hopeful for next year.  I hope every one of you stays well; those of you who manage to go cruising this summer, have wonderful adventures and those of you who don't, keep dreaming. After leaving Valence it was only a couple of days to lovely Lyon, stopping on the way at Andancette and the good little port of Condrieu sur Roches. The town of Vienne looked interesting in passing but not a comfortable place to stop overnight. There are concrete wharves on both banks and as the river is quite busy here (one of the cruise ship stops) the water sloshes bac...

Next stop was Valence. The marina itself is enormous; the largest river port in France, it has 450+ berths. A shortish hike away, through the 17 hectares of sporting ovals, is a Géant Casino hyperrmarket - a bit sad to get excited about a supermarket I know but there you go. The other main attractions at the port are a launderette and a restaurant. With all that excitement on offer we decided to stay 2 nights.  The restaurant specialises in fish, is quite pricey but the servings are huge. We shared a plate of the biggest oysters I have ever seen followed by a giant plate each of cabillaud (cod). cauliflower, carrots, zucchini and potatoes. Everything here seemed to be super sized - including, I was a bit horrified to discover on my plate, whelks. Hot this time. Against my better judgment, I was persuaded to give them another try. Never again. Despite the port being large and fairly full there were only a couple of boats 'en voyage.' We were joined, on the second day, by Boschpl...

Cruas - frozen in time After 2 nights and a rather mediocre dinner at the cafe at Viviers port (memo to self: don't buy any more menu items called 'fish 'n chips'. In France anyway) we decided to move on. The first lock  (Chateauneuf 19m deep) is just around the first bend. We were called straight in and on our own. That was about as good as it got for the day though. We travelled for about three and a half hours in very blowy conditions, with intermittent downpours and quite a strong current: so slow-going. I remembered this section from our trip south when we were caught in a bad thunderstorm and it was quite frightening. The river opens out into some very wide sections: lake-like and exposed. It would have been pleasant on a normal August day but what is normal these days? A couple of boats stormed past us at high speed really knocking us around. Enough we thought. We'll stop at Cruas. This port has a tricky entrance necessitating its own special blow-up s...