Catching up on end of June and July

I sometimes despair, when I look at the blogs of others, they look so professional, day by day accounts of all the key details, a real tour de force of wonderful photo's and useful data.  Whereas mine is chaotic, not current, lacks data or anything useful, and is just my idiosynchratic type of jottings. 

You know what, I can't change now.  Maybe if Marius puts me onto a more user-friendly and fancier blog, one with headings and indexes and all that, well, maybe, I'll make more of an effort.  But for now, I'm just amazed when I finish an entry without it crashing or my losing it totally with how slow the process is!!  For example, after a warning triangle just to the bottom left it always says, Error on page.  So why carry on?

So, what happened to us before and after we lost Burdock.  There are a lot of pictures here, but that's what I do.  They should be in chronological order, starting with 28th June, the 'carrieres' or quarries (underground tunnels in chalk to you and me) in Arras.  These are amazing, where 200,000 allied troops were housed for over a week just prior to 'popping up' and generally being popped by the Germans.  They lived in relative luxury, loos, beds, mess, then one day, they queue up to go up a staircase, for goodness sake, it says on one of them "No Exit", it's a Brit joke, the No is against the staircase number, but the meaning is clear.  Wow.  The picture is of the rail wagons they pushed around by hand to join the various quarries together and make the 15 km of man-made (well strictly speaking New Zealander tunnelers!) tunnels.

Then while we were at St Laurent Blangy with our friends Chris and Paul looking out for our boat and caring for Bollinger (he hates to travel!), we returned to UK for many appointments between Friday 28th June returning Friday 5th July, and visited Francis in Birmingham that first Saturday.  I insisted on demonstrating how to remove a form of perpetual borage that we had at Melita:

My head doesn't look as bald here does it? It's a trick of the light.  We spent the night and did a really long walk around Brum and had a super lunch, but this just shows the walk.

Who's that old man, oh God it's me.

This blasted blog site is playing up something rotten!  I have to add each pic twice, then go back and delete the failed bits it leaves there.  Give me strength!  Anyway, then on 6th July we went back and visited the Canadian War Memorial, where there's a significant and moving tribute, as well as an incredible landmark.  The craters and shell holes are still very impressive nearly 100 years later!! The pic doesn't do them justice.

 

 On 7th Jyly we also drove out to a ruin of an Abbey in a lovely village on a ridge, and here's a picture:

Quite a ruin I'm sure you'll agree.  Standing oddly in the midst of a pretty, small village.  I liked it.
Then there was a thing I was sure was a space museum, as this was clearly a largish model of the space shuttle, and then we chased it and found: 
Then a windmill in Achicourt, in the middle of a public playground, which turned out to be fully restored and working, as the volunteer enthusiasts explained in great detail and length - we now know enough about it to write a book!  I even have a bag of their finest breadmaking flour.

The 8th July we had to take our bikes back to Europcar in Arras so decided to take our bikes and spend the morning seeing the city, tho' it was very hot indeed.  It has lots of arcades

That was Monday, and we'd planned to leave on Tuesday, and delayed because it was so hot, well, it was all very mysterious why we stayed in that lovely spot so long, clearly fate was helping us, and while we were enjoying a meal on board with out friends it became clear Burdock had become very restless and increasingly unhappy, well, I'll not detail but about 1am on Wednesday morning we had no choice but to relieve him of his incurable twisted stomach.  That day we were pretty down, visited where we'd walked with him the day before, then Thursday which meant deciding where to be for Bastille Day, 14th July, so we stayed and on the morning of 14th our friends took us to a local car boot come street sale come garage clearance, where we bought 3 things for our crowded boat!!

Nik went out in the canoe next day, took some pix of the weed from upstream in the water, and on the boat

 

Then for reasons best known to Loci, I decided on Tuesday, that's the second Tuesday we were supposed to be leaving, to dismantle the faulty boiler, pump out the seawater taken into it on the crossing.  This became a saga that took most of the week, with a whole new burner unit being sent off to our friends (helping again!) who later brought it to us in Cambrai - the stars!  So it was that we left our haven on Thursday 18th July, being worried about running out of time to beat the lock closures.  The canal is lovely

and the locks are still leaky 
So we made it to Cambrai in just two hops.  It would have been one if Bollinger hadn't decided to go walk-about for 3 hours at our lunch spot on the canal from Arras!  So lots of pictures of Cambrai, which we really like too.  We stayed there from Friday 19th July and left Sunday 28th July. First our mooring

Then the shade on our lawn beside the mooring

View of the lovely town with the cathedral tower in the background, and one of several towers from the old wall prominent with just some tourist in the way

Tuesday 23rd was taken up largely by saving a pair of lost moorhen chicks, Nicola's mission, which involved lots of cycling to find any mother hens who seemed distressed!  I mean hours of time.  Here they are, oh and yes we did re-unite them, after Nik fed them all sorts of stuff, really into their mouths!

On Friday 26th our friends from St. Laurent Blangy came with the new boiler burner unit, and we had a lovely meal, and then a walk, so here's another remainder of the Cambrai defences with us in it:

Then we had an invite to dine with friends in Cambrai, which was lovely, so it was on a Sunday morning 28th July that we left Cambrai;  we were late leaving, locks wouldn't open, or close, or react to our signal, so we wound up stuck between two locks.  Lucky in fact.  It was a lovely spot called Les Rues des Vignes, and we spend two lovely days there.  Bollinger liked it!

We went to a wonderful restaurant on the way back from a long, quite tough cycle ride to the amazing Vaucelles Abbey.  The restaurant is called Relais d'Echaugette.  The Echaugette is just the particular name for a watchtower, used as a local symbol and landmark, and looks like this:

Later it got a bit damp, but every raincloud has a pretty lining

What pretty flowers I hear you say, yes I do!  Nik has scoured the rather modest offerings from the best of France's garden centres, mainly Gamme Vert, so Archangel looks more like a floating flower shop.  So the next day, Tuesday 30th we set off towards the dreaded and feared tunnel, the Riqueval (sounds like the Eiger doesn't it?).  Many a tale of woe, but there were more locks that wouldn't work, here's one

 

But eventually we got out and turned up at 3.30 pm for the 5pm tunnel tow.  The tug is electric, overhead cable the whole 5.7 km of it, sparks come off rather spectacularly, and we'd been preparing two 30 metre ropes for the tow, loads of paperwork on insurance documents etc. as we were told to, and ready to debate where to send the E 25 bill, and he just says, bring the boat up, heres my rope, let's go!  So we did:

The journey was nearly 3 hours of tension, verging on hypnotic trance at the flashing lights and regular rhythm of the chain going up and over the back of the tow boat.  Lucky that we were the only boat, there can be long series of them, each pulling the other about!  On the other side we passed under an odd bridge, which it seems was where a very famous First World War picture was taken, with just endless troops all over the side of the then bare ravine and hills behind.  Look it up.

There's another tunnel after this, shorter and one you motor yourself thru, easy by comparison.  Then any mooring will do, a stiff drink, and I did a bit of cycling to find, nothing, dead village.  Next day, 31st July, we aim to stay at St. Quentin.  We did stop, the marina had no room for us, so we moored here for an explore:

The town was fine, nice in ways, and I was able to post off the boiler burner I'd now replaced.  Heavy it was all the way to the post office, and very expensive to send, but the boiler worked first time!  But we didn't like St. Quentin half enough to tolerate this rubbish mooring, so we left already, and struck lucky:

And where is this wonderul place.  Well, send me a small cheque, unless you're a really good friend!  We stayed two nights, would have been longer but time presses.
That takes us to the nights of 31st July and 1st August.  Too much already, so the rest of August to date will be the next episode.  Lots to tell!  It's midnight.  This kind of organised chaos takes ages to prepare you know!

Burdock
This is a difficult blog to write.  It is just picures and the odd placename.  If you prefer then skip it, there are few other words...

Dunkirk

Watten

Bethune

Douai

St. Laurent Blangy near Arras

Watchfield

Birmingham

Cumnor, Oxford

St Laurent Blangy

Burdock's imprint in the grass, behind where we sat reading, still there the next day:

Burdock is history, our history, so I try to write the 2 months of his story here in France 

 

Douai, setting the record straight, here goes...

Belfry is not just a belfroi, it is a huge church come castle and balcony and well, here it is:

I could make a splendid dictator, sorry, il duce from that balcony.  Oh, the castly bit:

The weather, oh didn't I say.  When we set off from A to cycle the long way to here, it began to mizzle, then it began to pour, so we turned back.  It stopped.  We waited a bit, and a little mizzle but that's all.  We set offf, it rained harder.  We were wet.  We carried on, and it carried on.  So, not so good, but not too bad.  Some nice pastries, and as in most of France so far it seems one way streets are two way for bikes, cycles rule, yeah!  Well, try telling that to the drivers!
Well, after this morning expedition we had a date with a VNF (Voies National de France) person who we hoped would open up the locks so we could go to Arras.  There's a lot of stuff around that, tried after trip to Douai, very narrow canal up to Arras with huge boats making it too narrow to pass another, rushing water from wier right by lock, not opening for us, hard to turn around, call them up, go back out to get remote control, they've run out, but anyway, next morning at 10 am a man will help.  So we moored up at an strange spot in the main canal, ready to go, and called up as I didn't trust the little note left by the lock man the day before, but he said it'd be fine.  We turned off:

I realise this doesn't look that interesting, but the sign on the right says La Scarpe, the river from Arras, and that entry is already narrow.  So up we go, and Nik hangs the rope on the only and high bollard, catches it first time like an expert.  Time passes.  10.15 now,  then a white van.  Later some white trousers.  What?  Eventually a nice man comes over to explain, well said something to which we nodded like experts.  It seems they were going to repair this lock this morning.  But it doesn't matter, they'll let us thru'.

Personally I think they were right, repair it, it leaks like a sieve.  Now this is a nice sweet little lock, compared with what we're used to, but you'd be amazed how big a boat they fit into it, well, it fills it!  So now we're going upstream to Arras, a place we once stayed, in Hotel des Arcades, or something like that, very romantic memories.  Should we be doing this?  Is it just some crazy whim?  Well the locks are like we trained on, but have forgotten about, you lift this great big, heavy pole, to operate a switch at the top like a fairground test your strength pad:

I keep a right hand Marigold glove for lifting these, they're, well, not very nice down there.  But the canal is a pleasant change from the dull, flat, open or industrially littered routes we've had for much of the time:

But there is a lot of weed, and our bow thruster doesn't like it, in fact I don't think our main prop enjoys it much;  the last few locks are run locally, by Arras (VEOLIA) and they are working hard to remove the weed with a little yellow platform with attitude, or two wire conveyors to be precise, leading to:

Which means the upper reaches of the Superior Scarpe are, superior, clean, clear, wonderful!  Then we reach our destination, well sort of, more of that another time, it looks like this:

And that's where we are now, and have been for weeks, well not we, but the boat anyway;  more of that another time...

Douai itself. We were told it was not worth a visit - not true. They had the Straights (ex Dire)...

Mooring at Douai was tricky.  It had a "garage", which was only good for a few small boats like us, or with great big poles for great big barges.  Not appealing or practical.  I was thinking of giving up, but Nik had patience and we found a really nice place, well, apart from discarded beer cans & other detritus:

Yes, it was a long cycle into the centre of town, and yes, it had another Belfroi (belfry) that sounded rather like the one in Bethune, but it had a lot of good things about it.  Sadly it didn't seem to welcome boats, despite a huge canal right thru' the middle.  Too big to care I think, just had the waterway as decoration.  Don't need nasty real boats, with real people.  Well, tricky, but there is a general aversion by the Authorities, and by that I mean Residents (Riverains) to converted old commercials, generally referred to as gypsies, although from hippies to low cost housing better covers it.  They like our nice new, touristy boats, who go out for meals, wait a minute, I'm soapboxing, no, here's a picture to take the nasty taste away:

Isn't that yucky!  Imagine having to put your nice clean rope onto it, with nice clean hands, and then getting it off again and onto the next one above it, and another.  Well, it's not easy, but luckily these sort are rare.  I'm going to publish as I need to find the pictures of Douai to set the record straight.  I think they're on Nik's ipad, and she's playing with that!

Bethune mooring on to Douai

Here is a strange photo:

Yes, it's yours truly doing something that looks truly unreal and indescribable, well it should be !  This was the "water supply" at our most indifferent mooring location at Bethune, supposedly upgraded.  Heaven knows what it was like before!  The lovely town made up for it, but I was determined to get some water, using the myriad of adaptors I'd bought and brought.  There was a hose here, it seemed to contain all he sedimentary substances of a marsh at one end, and a complete ants nest at the other, plus the minor matter that it didn't even reach the bank, by several metres!  Add to that the fitment used, which was a wierd bayonet fitment in galvanised or zinc moulding, so I had to use a hose nozzle, rammed into the rubber seal, with all my might because water pressure was very high!  Nik had a go, and accidentally moved the valve pointing back towards where she was sitting, and I compounded the problem by trying to shut it off, but went the wrong way.  Nasty!  Don't try this, unless you are very, very thirsty.  Needless to say, we found a proper tap about a mile later!  Gosh, too much, a pic of the upgraded mooring for the record:

We did moor there, but the recently added 'steps' (that bank is steep, so it's an upgrade) was made of wire mesh unsuited to paws, and was very steep for anyone, let alone a Burdock!  We found someone later who'd been charged Euro 13/night for that!  Enough moaning, here's a quite big boat:
We had these and double ones, going past when we were moored on the main canal, which we had to quite a bit.  The sucked the boat about long before arriving, and buffet you long after they've gone. 

Mooring bollards were big, secure (tho's some had fallen nearly or totally into the canal under the loads applied!) and infrequent (meant for 35 metre barges) so we had to take special measures:

Our bollard was way back, and this one was being used by the next, large boat, who suggested this means to stop the bow, well, bowing out!  It worked, but most bollards were further apart.  I know ....
Next entry will be much cleaner.



Watten, no, very nice

This is how we get around now, well not really as we've hired 3 cars since arriving!  But in theory, the above was at the Watten Windmill site, and in the spirit of fairness here's me:

This was in Aire sur la Lys, where we had a really neat ride from boat to town, avoiding most roads, and just running the risk of entering various stretches of water.  This had the lovely building I mentioned this morning, now the Toursit Office:

Sorry, in the interest of speed, I'm not doing any mods to these pix, just as they went into the camera.  Aire was very nice, but oddly it had very little in the way of pavement bars, tho' the square really demanded it.

And there we are sitting at it, with a coke and a coffee I hope you note! It also had one of the narrowest churches I've seen:

It was actually used as a home for the elderly, slim elderly of course, so no room for us yet.  I'm going to call "Bank!" and try to publish, as this is being flakey again!

Hello again! It was Bethune by the way. Okay, it seems Blogspot or blogger is not working, it says "errors on page" and has taken me more time than I care to think to even get in. What a shambles!

Now I am writing in the page, at last, but I doubt this will work.  So here's a picture:

This is a picture of us moored up at Aire sur la Lyse, which is a lovely town with some fantastic old buildings, probably the most beautiful used on the ground floor by the Tourist Office - to whom I recommend a refresher in customer service!  Also the most expensive place to buy post cards.  Before that we spent two nights at Watten, which is small but has 3 baker/patisseriers and 2 butchers, and a lovely old windmill we climbed to.  I'll give you a picture of it.