L'Avenir - cruising Europe's inland waterways

 We decided on the Nivernais. Why? To be honest we couldn't face backtracking and as it's not late in the year we thought that perhaps the chronically shallow Nivernais might have more water than later in the summer. We had a taste of this lovely canal last year and this summer we hope to travel the whole length. We've had various reactions from other boaters ranging from pessimistic to cautiously optimistic but even if do have to give up we'll have a week or 2 of beautiful scenery. It has been pouring with rain every afternoon for the past week so this notice at each lock seems a bit incongruous. The first couple of lock keepers grumbled about the levels of the water and kept to the rules about making you wait for another boat to lock through with but the further away from Auxerre we have travelled the less anyone seems bothered. As this navigation follows the course of the river for much of the time and there seems to be no shortage of water falling from the sk...

Once upon a time (or perhaps that should that be long, long ago) a young couple set off on the long journey from Scotland to South Africa. Never ones to do things the easy way and being of the view that the journey rather than the destination's the important bit they decided to go overland and chose, for reasons best known to themselves, to convert a London Taxi into the 'mobile home' necessary for the 6 month trip. En route from Glasgow to Cape Town. Our trusty London taxi That adventure is outside the scope of this blog but was one of many relived during the past few days over bottles of burgundy when we were joined by Richard and Corine. We lived with Richard for some time in Cape Town and he and Rob worked together on a salvage ship in often dangerous waters around the Cape. Whale catchers on tow (from Durban to Maputo) but one's about to sink (1976) Quick! Cut the tow wire! Too late! Gone... Considering the quite hair raising risks taken it is r...

As you can see, the skies over St Florentin are grey but our resident engineer did his best to turn the air blue when he cleared out yesterday's weeds from the cooling water intake and discovered a Major Problem. One which will entail us turning around and going back to the yard at Migennes. Today my French got a good workout with the mecahnic at this boatyard and whilst he can order the required part for us they don't have the facilities to pull the boat out of the water in order to fit it. Yes you did read that correctly. We are barely on the water but need to come out again ( I was going to say barely afloat but that's tempting fate I feel). Not much of a lift is required, just a foot or so, but it still requires the use of that very expensive crane. Meanwhile resident engineer has made a temporary repair and both he and the French mechanic have assured me that it will hold and we won't sink and I won't drown. Hmm. On the plus side we have acquired a gangway. O...

 Today was our first day of proper cruising. We set off from Migennes along the Canal du Bourgogne. This canal is 242km long and has 189 locks. Today we managed the 19 km and 6 locks to St Forentin so you can see it's going to take us a while. The canal, which runs through beautiful Burgundy countryside, is no longer used by commercial traffic and doesn't seem to have all that many pleasure boats either - perhaps because of the many locks. We didn't see anyone else all day. St Florentin lock. Operated 'rather enthusiastically' by les eclusiers madame and monsieur.  We stopped for lunch at Brienon sur Amancon which I only mention because it has a lovely 'lavoir' or public washing house. Actually it has 2. We went and looked at one and thought 'that doesn't look any more special than any of the many others we've seen elsewhere. Why is it in the tourist guide?' Then we walked into the town in search of baguettes - lunch time so everything c...

It never rains but it pours and, it seems, you never have just one burst pipe. Fix one and another spurts into life. We checked out of our hotel thinking that we'd have only one night high and dry in the boatyard but that stretched into 5 as we found more problems. The main trouble with boat plumbing is access to the pipes and then trying to repair them in extremely confined spaces. So, should you ever visit us and whilst sitting in the loo wonder why on earth would they hang a family photo there, the answer is it is disguising an access hole cut in the wall. The mundane equivalent of a painting concealing a safe I suppose. Recalcitrant plumbing hasn't been our only worry. The solar panels, or more precisely their control box, which has worked perfectly for the past 3 summers seems to have gone on the blink which is causing much consternation ( euphemism for swearing). However, we are now in the water which is wonderful, although actually getting there was a nerve wracking (a...