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| Our Thursday night mooring in La Villette-Paris |
- Me to boulangerie at 7 (because we’re moored in a town)
- Wake Buddy up at 9 (because he has a pre-breakfast walk)
- Karen & Buddy went for a run (I still don’t get it 😉)
- Admin (because we have to)
- Slow cycle ride (because we haven’t been on one for a while)
- Visit to the bar (because we’re moored near one)
It was such a relaxing day that probably the most exciting
thing was practising our French conversation with a commercial traveller who was
sitting next to us in the bar.
Thursday was moving day and with 26 kilometres to travel we didn’t
hang around too long before setting off.
It was another one of those days that starts with brilliant blue skies
and then the cloud cover arrives, and it all starts to feel rather muggy. By
midday though, the wind got up and seemed to clear the air and it was really
rather a pleasant day for cruising.
We have been on this canal for a week now and still can’t
get used to people constantly waving and taking pictures of us. We know it’s because not many boats use the
canal – remember we were told we were only the third to try and get up it this
year.
Our first target was Villeparisis where there is a Leclerc
near the canal. The supermarket also had
a fuel station, so it would be the third time I had tried to get fuel in almost
as many days. This time all was OK and
after three trips I had bought 100 litres and put 60 in the tank.
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| Moored for fuel and food shopping (another picture of flowers at the front for my dad) |
On one of my trips a Frenchman struck up conversation and I
tried to explain that the supermarket car park looked busy but didn’t know the
French for busy. Rather than telling me
what the word was he started going on about the French being lazy and it wasn’t
busy because they are all on holiday now (since 14th July) until the
end of August. He also said it affected
their economy and he was clearly rather het up about it all. I’m sure he was exaggerating.
After the supermarket shop and lunch, we set off again and,
as we were approaching Sevran where the cut starts to get wider, we saw our
first boat for a week, apart from the odd abandoned old freight barge. We felt quite miffed but soon realised we’re
going to have to get used to it again.
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| Passenger boat turning around at its limit in front of us |
We followed them down to the last lock which was the one
that was ridiculously long and were miffed again as when we got there the gates
were closing! Maybe they hadn’t even
noticed us as they didn’t expect to see any other boats.
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| Waiting for the lock at Sevray |
When we came up a week ago, we had to stop several times as floating
barriers were removed to allow us to pass through children’s water activity
areas.
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| Karen had to get off and find the organisers to get the barrier removed at this one |
I mentioned the other day about the area set aside for the
graffiti artists as the canal leaves the centre of Paris and this time, I
remembered to take some pictures.
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| Taggers at work in the middle shot |
As we approached the centre, we still weren’t sure where to
moor. We knew we could moor just before
the large La Villette basin but also knew it was very busy with runners,
walkers, cyclists and general hanging out all night that people do in
parks. We weren’t too sure about this as
we would be the only boat with all these people around.
We also knew that once we were back on the broad-gauge
commercial canal that there were many quays with rings. Although these would probably be fine, we
were still a bit concerned as they were in industrial areas with no life at all
in the evening thus making us feel quite vulnerable too. One thing was that we wouldn't have to pay as we had a €57 annual vignette for the Paris canals which allows us to moor where we like (within reason) on the Canal de l'Ourcq. The only other places to moor in Paris are at La Villette and Arsenal basins which are €79 a night. We had stayed at Arsenal for three days earlier and didn't really want to stay there again, especially as we didn't need water or electricity.
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| Back on the broad-gauge canal |
The wind disappeared in the early evening and in the end, we
moored up just before La Villette. We
spent a pleasant evening watching all the little motorboats cruising up and
down. There were two distinct
types of hirer. There were the groups or
romantic couples out for a tranquil cruise and then there were the groups of
younger people where the driver was trying to impress his/her mates with the speed
they could reach and how they could make large waves by weaving around. All was good natured though and the waves (hand
waves) continued all evening.
Not sure how we got this picture of our mooring with hardly any people, but it
looks as if I was making it up about everyone out for the evening.
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During Thursday we cruised 26 kilometres down one lock and are now ready for the big push through Paris and out onto La Marne on Friday.
1 comment:
About time. Flowers look lovely!
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