Vouécourt (Jabs next week)

Discriminatory sign by our mooring at Vouécourt?

Since we’ve been travelling around France this is only the second place we’ve come across a sign banning travellers.  It’s a bit ironic when taken literally as liveaboard boaters are, to all intents and purposes, travellers.  French anti-discrimination laws forbid signs like this but clearly some have slipped through the net.

Sunday was a washout; it was raining when we got up and it was still raining when night fell.  We’d planned a long walk over the hills around Vouécourt although we wimped out a bit because of the weather by cutting out about half of it, but we still enjoyed ourselves.  The first two kilometres were up a steep road, and no cars went past all the way up, by the same token we didn’t see a soul the whole time we were out, but bear in mind it was raining. The woods on the steep slopes have only been there 100 years or so as vineyards used to cover the slopes as mentioned in the last blog.  It was interesting seeing vestiges of the vineyards as we walked out of the village, such as street names like rue des Vignes and rue de Pressoir.  We’ve seen these names in use on other ex-Champagne villages along the Marne valley before but had never really understood why, until last week.

Even though the village is very quiet, when we do see someone, they are always friendly and seem genuinely pleased to see a new face.  Villages like this one that are on the tourist trail would normally be busy with walkers and cyclists and the gîtes and campsites full of holidaying families at this time of year.  The campsite here looks particularly attractive on the banks of the river Marne which, on warm sunny days, must be a brilliant place for children to swim and generally have fun in the water.

Campsite eerily quiet these days

It hasn’t rained since Sunday but it’s still relatively chilly with tee-shirt weather not due to return for another few days yet.  Since we’ve been here I’ve only managed to find two early photographs of Vouécourt, both of which show the hills covered with vines in the year 1900.

Looking north up the canal (keen eyes will pick out Chalkhill Blue)

Looking across the village from the west

The village cemetery is nearly a mile from the village which seems an awfully long way out of town even for French standards.  Walking out to it on Monday I found that it was shared between three villages and was equidistant from each.  This also sort of explains why it has such a large chapel which to me looks like many churches found in east Kent. 

St-Hilaire chapel in the shared cemetery

A stone cross stood beside the road halfway between the village and the cemetery but try as I might I could find nothing out about it, it had no inscriptions either.  It didn’t look particularly religious so maybe it marked the village boundary.  There are a couple of smaller crosses elsewhere in the village, but they are definitely of a religious nature.

The unexplained stone cross

On Tuesday afternoon we did the complete circular walk that we’d cut in half on Sunday when it was raining.  Since we’ve been at Vouécourt we’ve been noticing small granite blocks like tiny gravestones in the woods and along the edges.  It suddenly dawned on us during our walk that they were boundary markers from when the trees were planted after the vine clearance defining the plots allocated to each household.  Karen did make the remark that it was just as well they weren’t numbered, or we’d be clambering over the whole hillside collecting them all!

Map showing the plots

At the top of the hill, we came out into an old quarry which had dozens of traditional woodpiles.  Some were very fresh, and some had clearly been there for years.  As we walked through the area, we came across a couple who were loading their trailer with logs from what we assumed to be their pile.  They had a puppy with them who wouldn’t leave Buddy alone.  We stood and chatted about the dogs while they played with each other (the dogs that is) as I didn’t have the courage, or rather the French, to start discussing the history of the forest and the woodpiles.   When we went to carry on with our walk the puppy still wouldn’t leave Buddy alone and certainly wasn’t coming when called.  It was quite entertaining as they tried to catch their dog without coming into close contact with us, but they finally managed it.

Some of the woodpiles

After we left, Karen did confide in me that she’s often wondered what the protocols are around the woodpiles we see in the middle of nowhere and how people know whose pile is whose. For example, there are two piles alongside our mooring which aren’t obviously attached to a house.  

On the way back down from the top we passed an old lane which looked rather inviting so we earmarked it for another day.  When I was younger, I used to love finding what are called green lanes in England and exploring them imagining scenes from medieval times.  To be honest I still do that 😊

As we returned to the village, we saw a signpost pointing the way to the canal towpath and both remarked that we haven’t seen a kingfisher for several weeks even though it seems to be the canal’s emblem.

Our pre-curfew walk here in Vouécourt is similar to the one we were doing in Froncles last week.  It’s a circular walk taking in both sides of the cut, crossing on bridges at either end.

Passing the mooring on our pre-curfew walk

Wednesday was a big day for us as we had our appointments at the prefecture in Châlons-en-Champagne to receive (hopefully) our temporary residency permits [cartes de séjour].  We had to leave at six in the morning so as that was the end of curfew, we didn’t need a form for travelling during curfew hours, but we had to fill out one for travelling more than 10 kilometres.  Visiting the prefecture for administrative reasons being an allowable reason.  

We were in the batch of 15 people given an appointment time of 8.30am and were second in the queue.  I noticed that we were the only white people in the queue and also I was the only one wearing glasses.  Karen pointed out that we were the oldest people there too, which probably explained why there weren’t other spectacle wearers there.  Once inside our stress levels went through the roof; we couldn’t believe that in a government building there were no social distancing measures in place.  The chairs where we had to wait in turn were all crammed together without any gaps and none were taped off so we immediately put bags on the chairs next to us.  You would have thought we would have been second to be attended to, but we weren’t seen until the 9.30 group had started arriving and this was because they couldn’t find my paperwork.

Karen had her fingerprints taken and was presented with her interim residence permit which is valid for three months relacing the ceritficate she had confirming she had applied for residency under the Withdrawal Agreement. This interim permit will be replaced by a five-year permanently renewable one in a month or two.  I was told that I would have to reapply and at least we are still in the allowable time to apply for residency under the Withdrawal Agreement as we were living here before the start of 2021.  You may wonder why we’re going through all this hassle: it’s because we would be limited to just 90 days in the EU in any 180 without residency or a long term visa.  We could apply for a 12 month visa every year but that’s a long-winded process entailing two trips to London each time with a lot of additional expense and no guarantee that one would be granted.

Karen’s proof of residency

It wasn’t all bad news on Wednesday.  When we got back to the boat, we heard we’ve each been granted a carte vitale, these are the health insurance cards of the French national health system.  Also, we’ve both managed to book our covid jabs for next week and the follow up ones six weeks or so later.  I know I had my first the night before we last came back to France but that was an Astrazeneca one and I’ve opted to start again with Pfizer as it’s practically impossible to get the Astrazeneca one in France now it’s been removed.  I may or may not cancel the second appointment depending on what the received wisdom is about mixing jabs is at the time.

Something happened that made us smile as we left the prefecture in rather despondent moods.  We noticed a freshly painted drain cover.  It wasn’t particularly elaborate, but it was a smiley face after all. 

If you’re new to the Châlons artwork on drain covers then have a look by clicking here.

As we drove back to the boat, we noticed a mechanical digger working at the lock in the village.  It was bucketing out all the weed that had built up over the last few days.  As in the UK, the éclusiers do their own bit by raking out weed and other debris but every so often we’ve noticed that they use a digger to do the job here.  Maybe it’s because they let it build up for a few days when they know there aren’t any boats coming through; we haven’t seen a boat on the move for nearly a fortnight.  

Because we have to give a couple of days’ notice before moving we mused about our next move and decided we would have a little cruise on Friday.  I rang VNF later in the afternoon to let them know our intentions which also means the next update will be from somewhere new.