The journey begins . . . here.
Sunday 17th June 2018
Pont de Garnat to just outside Decize
Another perfect boating day. Well for me. No rain. Not hot. Cloudy. We ambled along the canal in the direction of Decize and saw a good few great stops inclduing Vanneaux. My other half noticed a branch moving really quickly across the canal. Too fast for the current and the wrong direction. It was a water rat was swimming with a branch between it’s teeth. This particular canal is perfect for bird lovers, we saw an eagle, loads of little brown birds, a family of storks and a few cranes. There are also dragon flies, butterflies and less wanted unfortunately are spiders, bees, mosquitoes, midges and flies.
Someone seems to be cutting down trees into logs and leaving piles of logs all along this strip of waterway. Might be the unfortunate trees that succumb to the mistletoe that seems to invade them. Also handy is seeing PK (point kilometre) stones so you know where you are on the canal. They may be partly hidden by growth but they at least mark a spot.
Then the phone rang and it was the agent who originally sold the boat to us in the Netherlands. My husband had told him we wanted to sell. And the agent said he had a British couple who were interested. Next thing numbers were exchanged and the potential buyer was on the phone. Thing is we hadn’t signed with anyone as we just did not know what to do. The two agents we had spoken to in France wanted an exclusive mandate before they would even think about our boat. Turns out some boatyards won’t allow other agents into their space. And then other agents want you in their preferred boatyards, which weren’t anywhere near where we were going. My visa doesn’t allow unlimted time in France so we couldn’t consider an epic journey to fit in with a particular agent. And there didn’t appear to be a lot of agents in the area, which meant the few around had a monopoly. We feared we might be forced to accept their terms. The big thing was to get WiFi and do our homework on-line. Find out which agents were out there. What commission they took. And what asking prices were for boats like ours.
Sundays in France not a lot happens. I suspect a few of the youngsters at the locks were students doing the work for extra money. My better half worked out we had been through exactly 500 locks from the day we started boating on Shangri La in 2013 to our last boating day in 2017. And they remain as unpredictable as ever. If an inexperienced or grumpy lock-keeper winds the paddles open too fast, the boat bounces all over. And the bollards are never where I want them to be.
We tied up about a kilometre outside Decize and took a walk into Decize and found a family of swans just outside the last lock. I was about to take a photo when a local woman warned me these swans are prone to attacking people. Gave up on that idea very quickly. The marina at Decize is nice, clean and fenced off. Great looking restaurant and pub. We thought we would have a drink and avail ourselves of the fantastic WiFi we’d heard about. My better half was on-line in no time on his Android phone. My iphone didn’t want to know. The staff gave me voucher after voucher with different codes. They all tried to get me going. Checked I didn’t have airplane mode enabled or typed in an 0 instead of an O. Nada. So I gave up and enjoyed a glass of wine.
The journey continues . . . . . . here.
