Matthew was arriving at the station on Sunday evening, so we had a ‘jobs’ day. I needed to get diesel and gas for the boat but before doing that I had to retrieve the car from St-Dizier. The train journey took just under half an hour and it took somewhat over an hour to drive back. I couldn’t help comparing this to the two weeks we had spent doing the same journey on the boat.
I went to a garden centre to get the gas as I knew they
weren’t particular about the brand of the empty bottle because they’d exchanged
an alternative branded bottle for me previously. To get the gas it’s a case of queuing up with
all the people buying garden stuff, explaining to the cashier which type of gas
and size of bottle is required and paying for it. In return the cashier provides a receipt and
calls for an assistant on the intercom. This
was all fine and I went to the gas bottle storage unit on the other side of the
car park to await the assistant. Sunday’s
assistant wasn’t as helpful as previously and refused to take my old bottle as
it wasn’t an accepted brand. I explained
that it was OK earlier in the year, but he said the previous guy shouldn’t have
taken it.
By this time I was flustered and agreed to pay the €15
deposit on a new bottle which entailed queuing up and going through the whole
process again. Of course, we now have three
gas bottles on a boat that is only large enough for two – if anyone wants an
empty Intermarché 13kg propane bottle then get in touch. When I got back to the
boat Karen helpfully reminded me that this had happened to me before when I had
a similar issue at an Auchan supermarket; that time the deposit was only €2 and
I was able to get rid of the spare bottle at a boatyard so it didn’t seem such
a bad outcome then.
It was good to be back in Châlons-en-Champagne for a few
days as, being there for all of lockdown, we knew our way around. The streets were getting ready for the
tourists and four of them were decorated with butterflies which, of course, is
up our street!
Karen had ventured into town to get some essentials whilst
I was having the gas bottle fiasco. She returned
all excited as she had found some new street artwork. She had come across some anti-ramraid or anti-parking
poles that had been painted. The
signature was of a different artist to the girl who did the drain covers that
we avidly collected. Don’t worry we’re
not going to search out the decorated poles and bore you with them in the blog but
I’ll include one picture so you know what we’re talking about:
Another good thing about being somewhere we knew was that on
Monday we could give Matthew a guided tour of the sights of the town. One thing we noticed was that many places that
had been closed during confinement were still closed, but now the signs on the
windows were explaining they were closed for their annual holidays rather than
for coronavirus. We know this is quite traditional in France, but it still
makes us chuckle that places will close at the busy time when tourists arrive. We had planned on going to the Marne in the
afternoon for a swim, but the temperature had dropped by ten degrees, so we
didn’t need to cool down. We went for a
good walk along the river anyway and it was really rather pleasant not getting
hot and sticky for a change.
During the evening we had a spell of rain for quarter of an
hour or so accompanied by a strong double rainbow. Years ago we saw a picture someone had
managed to take capturing a double rainbow through a porthole. Try as we might we couldn’t repeat it but I’ll
include our best offering:
While showing Matthew around the place we did come across a
few more decorated road signs that were new to us.
Matthew left to go back to Norway at lunchtime on Tuesday
and we set off on the next phase of our travels. We are returning to the UK on Friday for a
few days to see the family and celebrate Lauren’s 30th birthday. It’ll be different this year as the family
can’t all get together at once let alone have a party to include friends as
well. We are rather hoping that a
quarantine isn’t suddenly introduced like the one that was introduced for Spain
last week. We won’t be going back if we have to self-isolate for the whole
time! No doubt new restrictions will be
in place soon and we have just heard that Norway is taking France off the safe
list from Saturday, so Matthew went back just in time.
As explained in the previous blog update, we are going to head north as all other ways are now closed. For the first month we will travel up to Cambrai and following that will probably venture onto the Somme. The Somme has been recommended by many people and we will have good resources to help us plan our travels especially as we know of at least two good blog writers, Charles Briggs and Ian McCauley, who have raved about their visits to the Somme.
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| The cruise up to Cambrai from Châlons |
The first part of the trip up to the River Aisne is on
canals we went on last year so we will get that bit out of the way quickly
which is why we started off as soon as Matthew left. We moored up for the night at Juvigny and
then walked back to get the car. We are
keeping the car with us until we return from the UK when we will leave it in a
boatyard while we continue cruising.
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| Moored at Juvigny |
While walking back to Châlons to get the car we realised that there wasn’t a road bridge near where we had left the boat so didn’t really know where we were going to drive back to. One thing about France is that the unmade roads aren’t decimated by offroaders and most can be driven along in standard road cars. We drove across fields and through woods for what felt like hours before finally giving up trying to get near the boat and parking over a couple of miles away at the nearest road bridge.
Buddy will be staying in France as we will drop him off
with the girls for his own holiday with them and Bailey. This arrangement has
been a bit fraught as they have been cruising in Belgium and all the signs are
that Belgium is one of the countries that should be avoided but they will be
back in France by the time we drop Buddy off so all should be OK.
We didn’t move on Sunday or Monday but on Tuesday we
covered five miles down one lock.
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