March 2014 (original title, eh?)

So back in Briare the weather was hot, so a Boules-based picnic was suggested by our friends there, as several had cars, so we went up-canal to Rogny-les-sept-ecluses (the seven locks) although it only has 6 now, but the old staircase cluster of 7 can be seen, built by Henry IV, well, not by him as such:

Briare was still looking good:

Then in a moment of madness we'd booked a ski chalet for a family holiday & get together;  it was lovely:

We had a log fire, but it was such a warm house, and not cold in the village, so we'd roast a bit when I lit it!  I'll not show you skiing, but a snap of us in a Yurt after a long and quite demanding (we fell down!)snowshoe walk up in the snowline;  the humidity plus alcohol makes the image here a bit hazy !

While we were away, the daffodils had really gone crazy on Archangel:

Then we had the last trip back to UK before we were due to set of travelling, this time by ferry:

Caption reads "Oh yes, I could manage one of these!"

February 2014

I've just ten pix for you, so bear with....  Firstly, who could forget Chinese New Year, well, it made a good theme for when we had some friends come to dinner.  The 'tablecloth' was Nik's design, with do-it-yourself speech bubbles for us and guests to complete:

Now a couple of nice pix of our mooring, end of day ones:

 

Oh and I'll sneak in a view looking the other way:

Then we took ourselves off for a week down to see some best friends in Barcelona, and en route we cheekily invited ourselves to break the journey (i.e. spend a night, it's a long way!) aboard their boat in Toulouse.  They were very hospitable and cooked us dinner, and breakfast too, and we just talked and talked !  I'm sure they won't mind a picture of them:

Gosh, doesn't my tummy stick out, and my hair!  The rest of the drive was really lovely, basically head for Andorra and turn left just at the entrance, here we are lunching just after the turn:

So the day after we arrived in Barcelona, our best friends re-jigged their schedule and we had some nice outings, first a picnic in the hills:

Then visiting a very pretty village:

So when we're left to our own devices, away from the boat, what do we do?  Well:

I won't bore you with our visit to the fabulous and fantastical cathedral in Barcelona, Gaudi's Segrada Famiglia, but here is a little thing he put together that our friends showed us:

We took a slightly shorter route back to Briare (550 miles in one day!)
I bet you can't wait for March ?!

January 2014

I debated a long time about this, and decided to show a few pix that covered the first 3 months of this year, before we did any real boating.  This is partly to show we don't hibernate, and in fact are pretty busy;  if you only want to learn about where to moor, etc., then start in April !  Or better still, use the dba website!
New Year's Day meal, in the restaurant opposite us the Petit Saint Trop, was expensive but took all day!

 

 

 

 

Just be pleased I missed out two of the courses!  We dined with friends, which is a great feature of life afloat, always meeting with friends for drinks and/or food, as you will see!  Nice walks:

Mistletoe freely available (the French don't know about its powers!):

Our Pom-pom ducks (I know, I'll look them up!) are still there (we thought we'd lost one):

And some other bird:

Oops!

The winter weather was mild and really lovely:

Then there was this fridge/freezer that needed to go in, and out, of a friends boat.  Oh well, good to know:

Some lovely friends came all the way down to stay just two nights with us:

That's the Loire, and as we now had a merchant navy captain on board, we did a day trip across the Pont Canal, across said, very wide river above:

Then there was the un-missable (incontournable in French!) Burns Night - them's real tartans on the table, and that's my attempt at haggish, hagiography if you like, with Tatties and Swede (no neeps), and other dear friends billeted at Briare the winter:

Plus a wee dram of course.
That's all for January.  I've something similar for Feb & March, but don't hold your breath.

13th - 31st October 3013, Briare, our winter mooring

So busy was the trip, like a crossword puzzle, 6 up and 11 down (locks that is), that we didn't take any pix of the trip, but eventually we were moored (well, 6pm on the 13th, after leaving at 09:00) as you can see:

On the right?  See, okay, here's a closer view:

Lovely central location (oh dear, Estate Agent speak), right in the town, restaurants on the right, etc.  Lots of other boats the other side of the bridge, and in another boat yardy sort of place, and behind me:

Nice and warm again, using our fancy new chairs (somehow squeezed into our car last time).  Someone decided to go explore in the canoe:

Then some other friends of ours decided to come and check us out in their inflatable!

Now Briare is chiefly famous for its long viaduct (canal above the ground, or in this case, over the hugely wide Loire river) which was built by Monsieur Eiffel (wasn't he a busy man?!) and is ridiculously elegant:

That's all made in cast iron, don't know how they moved it!

Here's someone to give you a better sense of scale:

We did some exploring downstream, that's on the right of where you're looking now, beautiful area, we walk and cycle(d) there a lot:

This here Loire is a proper river (a fleuve in French, meaning a river that flows all the way to the sea, rather than a tributary) and is in December is flowing at around 6mph for all of its width here.  That's a challenge!
Here is the view from the other side of our view, the bridge, showing the last lock we came through (it's actually the last working lock, as the next one is a historic and leads, via another, down onto the Loire itself.  It is used for special trips, and before Eiffel put up his viaduct that's how they reached the canal on the other bank, quite a long way to go and tough.  So here's the view, and the nice building on the right is the Capitainerie office, our showers, loos, social area, swap shop and secondhand stuff:

They do like their flowers, one in the form of a boat:

We have a number of aquatic/quacky supplicants, notably these pretty little fellows:

There's also a Llama and Alpacca centre a little walk away:

Then at the end of November they removed all their flowers, and started doing some topiary all over the place, this right opposite us:

I must remember to show you their winter flower arrangements, which figure a large number of decorative cabbages!  They look so nice I'm surprised some poor soul hasn't saved himself the considerable expense of actually buying one!  One last view from the viaduct:

12th to 13th October Rogny-les-Sept-Ecluses

This was an even smaller place than Chatillon-Collingny, and what facilities it had were in a state of suspended animation (closed).  We walked quite a bit in case there was something to see, and the rain pretty much held off.  We had to pay for the mooring, power and electric, whether you wanted it or not, 12 Euro/night, but I think they undercharged us a little so don't bank on that price!  Nik is nearly obscuring us:

Rogny's claim to fame is the locks of its name, a sequence of 7 staircase locks, so called because you climb from one into another, without a break, and you can only go all the way in one direction.  This is limiting, but the system was build by Henry IV in 1604 so you have to give them credit for that!  No, look at this:

Oh, and they look pretty impressive, the remains of them that is, nobody uses them now, as the one way traffic makes them inefficient (they now have 6 more normal locks instead).  Here's how it looked from the top:

The last one is behind me:

Here is the view looking from the village itself:

And just when you thought I couldn't find another reason to show you this fine set of derelict locks, here is the view while we were steaming past them to leavce Rogny, on the way to the first of the 6 new locks:

So there you have it, we're on our last leg, a long leg, to our winter mooring in Briare, which is next, bet you can't wait!