Le Boat - 6 Persons in a leaky boat on the lovely Charente

Le Boat on La Charente

Our troop of four intrepid lost kiwis was expanded further  with the addition of Jane and daughter Emily, friends of G&C who were in the area, more kiwis  in a state of confused travel and what better way to calm things down than take a river cruise.

Opening up for our entry

Bill helping Jane & Emily with Lock

The Le Boat reception lady had the "good English" and made us very welcome helping G & I to correctly fill in the hire details etc and showed us to the boat where she told us a  man would be sent to explain the boats workings etc. He was fluent in French but not much else which made for an interesting 30 minute briefing with a lot of raised eyebrows, quizzical glances, and interpretations of what he may or may not have been trying to tell us!!!! To be honest more was relayed between G & I simply with our eyebrows than was gleaned from our guide. Luckily with both of us having some boat experience and me with motor homes, we got most of it sorted pretty well except for the docking bit. This only became an issue after G handed me the helm for the downstream leg. Gently sliding into the wharf with about 2 knots up your jacksy (so to speak) does not make for a pretty tie up. Drifting sideways into locks and channels is hardly "course de riguer", never the less we got there.
Sitting at the bar on the riverside at one stop we asked the English Publican if there was any thing wrong with the river  picture, he glanced over all the tied up boats and with out pause said "nothing except for that boat over there round the wrong way", then left us crying into our drinks.

Spot the odd one out!

The locks were an ongoing part of the river cruise with them appearing 4 or 5 times daily, to keep us on our toes. They were a manual variety, easy to master but some effort required.

Weirs everywhere

Filling the lock

G man took the helm (however wouldn't don the captains hat) for the first leg up the river. This worked very well with him barking orders at all and sundry and went swimmingly well so to speak.
Having 6 on board made for shared exertions and gentle cruising, albeit a watchful eye always being required to sail the right channels with comprehensive river notes to prevent groundings and shooting off the weirs. Though did think  at speed some may have been manageable, however Cpt. Pugwash kept a steady hand on the helm and entertained no such thoughts.
The 7 day cruise was 3 days up from Jarnac, a night at Angouleme, "safely" seeing two of our crew off, on their way back to NZ, then the somewhat diminished crew, taking 3 days back down the river. The night in Angouleme was to be a celebration of Jane's birthday, but the eating got overlooked after some Tapa's in a Spanish bar at the start (like one does when you visit France!), so there were a few suffering the next morning. The crew reduction did mean some extra work for all and with Commander Tyles at the helm for the return leg made for some inspired docking manoeuvres. The least said the better, however no boats or docks were seriously damaged in the making of that return leg.

Trying to find the Bar in this village.

A stroll through Trois-Palis

We walked and biked many small communities and villages some with out cafes, others with and was generally a low key  relaxing journey to allow G&C a wind down after their previous 5 weeks of driving and guiding round France. Also Jane &  Emily and ourselves a new experience cruising a river that I would liken to the lower reaches of the Wanganui. We visited the pretty village of Trois-Palis with a Chocolatier Factory, where we were shown a great demonstration via video and then a staff member on all that is involved in making their products. We were unaware of the labour and time taken to produce products that are so easy to consume. So of course we were all happy to support them before moving on.
The Charente was a slug of water interspersed with weirs and locks and in its day a main avenue for trade & commerce. The stretch we did is mostly leisure these days but still some commerce happening from Cognac down to La Rochelle.
Many rivers in Europe are still the life blood of big industry with large factories

The finer points of Chocolate making 

Cycling off to Saint Meme for a baguette

crowding the banks, originally using vast amounts of water for power, and processing materials. The legacy being polluted waterways, and not so scenic vistas but undoubtedly where the industrial revolution took hold and remains in many cases.
 Split Enz six months in a leaky boat did come to mind with all the rain we had, but we didn't let it deter us and fun was mostly had.The weather was untypically damp with the launch being not the newest in the fleet leaking at various points on to bedding etc. This was a nuisance needless to say and the hire company did dispatch a repair crew to further tape window flashings. Another heavy spell of rain later in the trip showed more leaks which we managed to live with.

Feeding the family off the back of the boat

The Charente was heavily exploited for transport ,and industry, tanning and paper being big on the river, also the milling of grain. The rivers are also the recipient of treated effluent from all the towns and villages ridding their waste into rivers.
The river was not by any stretch clean as we know it, however bathing was being done by kids at one stop and fishermen were abundant the full length in all weathers as is their want.

Claire enjoying the picture

Another lovely village

During the French briefing I attempted to ask about where to dump our waste tank. He raised his hands and shrugged , obviously not our worry, till we used the toilets and it was obvious where it went. Amazing. And no we didn't try the fish at the cafes and didn't go for a swim, even if weather had permitted. It did make for many alcohol induced conversations of where and how our ablutions may fare in their long lonely journey to the sea.
All in all an  enjoyable trip was had, with family, new friends, quaint villages, gentle scenery, good food and many wines.
From here it is now off to Bordeaux to meet Allan & Nicky for some more days of relaxed exploring, no clear itinerary as yet, just a desire to see more of this huge continent, without the stress of needing to be any where anytime!!

The Charente region and villages (Roman ruins, self cleaning toilets and a Doppelganger)

Out the front of our Gite - the two story one next door stayed vacant thankfully

As we had arrived a day early, we had time to investigate the town of Cognac to get info from the Information Centre. Once again we were greeted with another passing thunderstorm. We stocked up on food for the next few days with the knowledge of France's closure of shops/supermarkets on Sundays  The weather has certainly been changeable. Some cool and then a couple of hot days suitable for soaking in the pool.

Synchronised swimming trialists

We met at the Gite (Villa)in the afternoon, which looked promising with adequate accommodation, a good size pool, and no neighbours to share. We now await the passing fronts to pass, the weather to warm up a bit to allow some bike riding and swimming. Perhaps even a cafe or two.
It was a good catch up with G&C after not seeing any family since Amanda & family in Sursee  at Xmas and G&C personally for 14 months or so. The wine & cheese flowed freely while we discussed our next 3 weeks together in the Charente/Cognac area, which will also include a 7 day self drive boat trip on the Charente River.

Still trying to find a good coffee

Echallat is a small village which sadly is not currently supporting any shops, cafes or boulangeries, but will make our 7 km ride to the next village cafe and roman ruins worthwhile.
The weather has remained defiantly cloudy but has not stopped daily excursions to nearby points of interest with dramas involving self cleaning toilets, stone throwing birds, and lack of  toilets  at the ever interesting Dolmens ........

Oradour-Sur-Glane was on G's list of must visit. It was a very sobering wander through the destroyed town where 642 villagers were machine gunned and burnt (including more than 400 women & children put in the church) in efforts by the Nazis

Oradour-Sur-Glane Village Ruins

to brutalise the french into submission. The town is left as it was found after the bodies were extracted, most not identified (the Nazis being thorough to burn all evidence). A war crime of horrendous proportions, with little justice ever being served, 3 generations lost  in some cases in as many hours. The Oradour Martyr

Burnt out main street of Oradour

Museum there describing the rise and rise of the Nazi War machine saying these atrocities not being the work of a madness or madman but an instigated system indoctrinating a nation for all to believe and follow in, justifying their actions against what we all know as evil and wrong......It could never happen again... but does. Mans ability to visit horror upon mankind knows no boundaries.......God save us........ No not even that.........

Fields of wild poppies

On a cheerier note the area has roman ruins and ancient Dolmens to pique ones interest, hopefully sharing this interest with G&C, tho it seems three dolmens in one day was pushing the barrow a little far, if you will excuse the pun.

The country side here in the south-west is picturesque, fields of wild poppies everywhere, with village rolling into village, church spires always to be seen guiding you, and small village squares anchoring the communities together, though not the bustle of earlier years.

Riding through the local countryside

Villages full of canals

Looking out over the beautiful
village of Aubettere

Got the "Missing you" Blues

Amazingly though, the village schools seem to be thriving, no busing kids to the larger towns, not till post primary anyway at least.

Sample time in the Cognac House Baron Otard

We spent a morning doing a tour of one of the 200 odd Cognac houses of the region, Baron Otard, interestingly of some Scottish heritage and ultimately out of Viking stock, in the old castle of Cognac. The interesting tour featured the history of the castle of King Francois I birthplace and later to become a Royal palace through his marriage, where he often returned. Parts of the palace are Eleventh C. and now is a giant store to manufacture and importantly age the Cognac over many years in an ultimate blending of spirits to form a bottle of the liquor. Retailing out the door at near 4000 euro for the crystal decanted retail budget pack. Thankfully they do an SOP more in our price bracket at 28 Euro however on this occasion have stuck to our 1.50 bottle of Merlot.

King Francois I
Do we know his doppelganger?

Interestingly King Francois's bust, held here being his birthplace, passes striking similarity to a good friend of ours, who often is heard with his french accent, I will leave those that recognise this bust and (indeed himself) to their own conclusion, there could well be a royal connection here as it is a much touted tale that this King had bedded over 2000 woman......and had countless off spring no doubt.....
A visit to La Rochelle (on Sheryl's must do and Claire's with having good friends living there) also a highlight. We spent a night there in a

Port of La Rochelle

lovely central hotel in the historic part of town and hiring bikes for the 24hrs enabled us to have a good look around. The old port towers are now days famous for tower diving as sponsored by Red Bull, not whilst we were there thankfully but still busy enough. We wandered around the old port area at night and it was gently humming. It was nice enough that we may consider returning should we venture back this way.

Safely made it over the bridge in the background
to the Island Ill De Re for a cold beer

 A good bike ride was had over a large notable bridge which Claire & Sheryl could be heard grumbling about as it slowly came to view, but once on its dedicated cycle track presented no problem and we were all rewarded for our intrepid crossing with cold beers. We were in much enhanced moods for the return crossing.
 We have visited many small villages and some larger towns over our two weeks in this region, usually supporting a cafe for lunch or coffees and beers and some historical backdrops to keep one interested. Now with the coming week on a canal boat, may the weather warm and the sun shine. Please!!!

Bill catching up with G

Another river village

Chateau La Roche Courbon

MOT's, Insurances, Flights and return to France

Bill & Owen in a "Drag" - Owen won

We returned to our wonderful hosts at Nobs Crook in Winchester to renew vehicle, travel  insurances, MOT ( equivalent to an annual WOF), a full service on the van, road taxes ( equivalent to vehicle registration), minor maintenance & clean the vehicle in preparation of another 5 months travel in Europe before returning to sell the van and head home for Xmas in NZ.

It was an expensive week (this time last year Bill had a rant about the Insurance companies wanting and arm and a leg to cover our vehicle for 12 months, and now we have renewed it only for 6 months and they still wanted an arm but only half a leg)
While sorting all these issues over the week, we also managed to sort our return flights home via Perth (to check out Rocky and her life in Perth) then home. And Rocky is also flying in over Xmas. It will be a jolly old time for sure.
During the week Bill managed a few jobs for our hosts (Kath was going mental with squeaky cupboards) and their lovely neighbour Chris who had a few issues to sort with her campervan. As well as a few social evenings with their friends and just enjoying the evenings in the back garden with Hobbs, Ella, Ruby and Pip (their 3 dogs & cat - but don't tell them they are animals as  they don't think they are!) Also added to the Reeve's menagerie are 4 hens (with lovely upmarket hen house) and 6 baby chicks, so cute and fluffy. I went with Kath to get 3 of the chicks from a Poultry Farm and had quite an education on cocks, hens & baby chicks

I also enjoyed doing some gardening after having quite a break from doing any, and cooking the evening meals most nights (great to have access to a full kitchen again). You should have seen the Game Pie Kath suggested I make from Owens earlier hunts (rabbit, pheasant, guinea fowl, and venison (the only bought ingredient). It was very tasty and huge.
So after a busy week we headed off on Sunday to spend the night just out of Dover before crossing over to France on the Monday.

La Vonne in France

Cunningly we arrived in France (crossings are uneventful, cool and not so scenic) with little diesel in our tank as it 25% cheaper in Europe. But un-be known to us there was a fuel distribution strike on, 20% of stations out of fuel already and queues at many places. We got lost leaving Calais and drove into suburbia,  fluking a

Bill with more Dolmens in France

reasonably quiet station allowing full fills and virtually no queue, then we found out about the shortage!!! Whew.....Down the coast, weather warmer, still not brilliant but only 20miles from England so what do you expect. The history along here is visibly WW2. Gun emplacements and bunkers run from the Spanish border all the way up to Norway apparently, the "Atlantic Wall" to deter invasion from Britain and assist an Invasion of Britain. We all know how the story ended but the devil is in the detail which generally comes as a eye opener for us.

Bill made me move a rock or two

One area, Cape GrisNer, was spectacularly pocked to this day as over 6000 bombs from 600 planes had been dropped in one day to silence the guns that were firing into England. The plaques on site don't actually say how successful this was, there are still intact bunkers etc, so .......
We bided are time as we had a few days to get to Echallat to meet up with Gman & Claire so dawdled directly down so as not to waste fuel. Arrived at our  Gite during a raging electrical storm (S wouldn't leave the van) only to find they weren't expecting any one till the next day.... and where in the world were G&C.......to add to our woes our phone was not cooperating at all. However with the sun once again shining (did I mention once we got away from the coast the weather picked up many degrees andit now toooo hot) we made contact, to be informed we were a day ahead of ourselves, embarrassing to "She who is seldom wrong", but not an issue with the myriad of camping spots in France. So within the hour we were ensconced in the small village Aire of Hirsac for the night eagerly awaiting our rescheduled scheduled rendezvous with G&C. Life is never dull. Ironically awakened in the morning by the smart phone reminder that we were scheduled to meet G&C at Echallat during the day.........

The Lakes District, History & Beyond

Colourful Rapeseed covers much of the countryside in spring

We dropped down out of Scotland into the Lakes District, another place we had visited in Bouncy Bert, our motor home of 1979 (who knew what that would lead too). We have been chastising ourselves for not reading our diary from the 79-80 trip

as a reminder before leaving NZ.

After the daffodils came the Bluebells

To be honest there are few recollections, but then there has been a bit of water under the bridge since then.

Durwent Waters
Bev, Mel, Frank & us

The Durwent Water or as we would say Lake Durwent, has a small campsite where our friends we made in Spain, had organised for our reunion. An ideal location, walks in all directions and scenic to a fault. Bev, Mel and Frank are working on a Caravan Club Site in Hawes on a 9 month contract, with the odd rotated break, ideal for us to get together this weekend and try some of that Euro wine we were able to import when we crossed back over. A delightful 3 days were spent walking eating drinking and talking. Keswick is the local village at the other end of the Lake, a walk of two hours or so, with a pint on the way (never far from a pub or similar in this country).

Another front of hail & snow coming our way

Then a wander through the village which has a preponderance of outdoor clothing shops, due to the preponderance of walkers here. The place was buzzing with people mostly dressed in what I call technical clothing, ready for an amble round the lake side with only a few getting into the places where the clothing gets a work out. It was sale time with the winter clothing going out on sale to make way for the new seasons look (the climate belies this). There were some lovely jackets and I was sorely tempted but as I have 3 jackets bought since we came over (from NZ) and we seldom need them at home I resisted the temptation. Sheryl didn't!

Lovely pub meal - look at the size of the Yorkshire puds!

We did succumb however to a good pub lunch complete with Yorkshire Puds and tankards of Ale, aye life is good!
The return trip down the other side of the water was another scenic leg complete with obligatory pub stop, a full day out and a few miles under our belt for the day, we deserved a beer on our return to the camp.

Spring weather on top of the Catbells

The next morning, our next walk was up the hills behind the camp, CatBell. This was a good hike, very scenic complete with weather fronts moving through casting wonderful transitions of light and textures across the wide open country, hills & valleys.
We twice needed to shelter from the driving sleet / hail / snow. You could see how one might get trapped as the ridge we were on became almost dangerous if the pattern had persisted. Another welcome return to our campers after a full day but sadly no cafes or pubs in the clouds, we really deserved a beer!
It was a nice catch up with B,M & F and we think we've nearly talked them into a real trip some day out to see NZ (probably not Frank sadly).

Dunstanburgh Castle

As we still had time up our sleeve, we ventured back up north to the south-west coast of Scotland, not so much on the tourist map but still scenic, with plenty of castles, Neolithic sites and scenic charm to keep us out of trouble, though still a tad cool.

Duddo Standing Stones, Northumberland

Dundrennan Abbey

 The farm stay camp sites generally provide power and though eschewed by us in NZ we were thankful being able to run the fan heater most of the evenings and first thing in the mornings.
After a few days of this indifferent weather we headed east cutting across the Isles to sunnier climes and it was a "bit" better, I use that term advisedly. The history is still thick on the ground and it all being new to us was good. Warkworth was a treat, the small town nestled in the crook of a tidal river a mile or so inland, the similarities with our own Warkworth were easy to see, but wait  a fine castle as well.

Warkworth Castle

With the membership to English Heritage we have been visiting historical sites daily indeed some days two sites and it has been soooooo interesting and if we're being honest not something we would have done if we had not bought the package. The sites often  have an Audio guide which is a small radio type player that you enter a number in and listen.

Whitby Abbey - couldn't see
very far in front of us

Whitby Abbey two days later with sunshine

Whitby fishing village

It brings the ruins to life, so helpful imparting information as well as characters from the time, the ennui of everyday life  at the time. Fascinating. It has rekindled in Sheryl  a need to read more historical novels and me...... well the time lines are neat, what was happening around the world when this was happening here and needless to say NZ not even on the map much of the time.

Holy Island looking across to Lindisfarne Castle
from the Priory 

Dunskey Castle
Portpatrick