A YEAR

The It's been a fantastic first year on the rivers and canals of France with many adventures some more relaxed than others and many great people. I thought I'd put together a few of the best, worst, biggest etc.

Best Urban Guerrilla Knitting - Soissons

Best Pub - Chtimi, Nancy, how many beers?

Prettiest Mooring - Port de Plaisance, Revin

Best Restaurant - Maison dans le Parc, Nancy

Longest Tunnel - Riqueval on the Saint Quentin Canal measuring 5670 metres in length

Tightest Tunnel - Ham Tunnel on La Meuse, it was lower than Soraya so we had to ask VNF to lower the canal

Scariest lock - Down stream lock in Amiens

Most laid back mooring - Cappy on La Somme

Best Madelines - Commercy

Worst/scariest canal/river for navigation - La Somme, 7km current and with Soraya on tick over at 4.5km meant 11.5 km round a blind corner. Actually Soraya in reverse to slow progress then no or little steering

Deepest lock - replacement lock next to La Fontinettes on Grande Gabarit 13m (it seemed a lot more)

Most troublesome part of the boat - The Stern Gland (Tried to use 'modern' PTFE/Flax, should have known Soraya wanted traditional Graphite/Cotton!)

Most socialable mooring - Cappy on La Somme

Best Food Marché - Arras

Best Concert - Piano, Rethel

Fastest flow - La Meuse, fortunately we were going upstream

Biggest set of Locks - Staircase of 28 locks in a day, no stopping! on Ardennes Canal

Best Chandlery - Max Guerdon, Compiègne

Wettest Mooring - Middle of nowhere near Peronne 

Friendliest Mooring - Port de Plaisance Wambrechies, Lille

Most Bizarre Bar - La Tartine, Cappy. Owner/waiter speaking his own version of English, 2 large Macaws banging on all the time, a massive TV at full volume and a life size Betty Boop standing in the bar, however, excellent steak and chips.

Longest time stuck in a lock - Fampoux, Canal Scarpe Supèrieure

Most stuck - Completely blocked the canal and stuck whilst turning round - Picquigny, La Somme

Best Son et Lumière - Amiens Cathedral

Worst Pizza -Verdun 

Biggest Organ and Concert - Douai

Prettiest Square - Place Stanislas, Nancy

Best fireworks - Probably Nancy for St Nicolas festival, however, Picquigny for La Bastille Day a very close second

Best people - Too many to mention

Distance travelled ~ 1000km and 69 blog posts later.

Photo somewhere in France (Comines on La Lys actually) that probably summarises the adventure.

And did I tell you about Bergamote de Nancy......... well as they say, more of that later!

LES PÊCHEURS

Fishing in France is a bit of a national pastime. Fisher'men' and it is 99% men, are everywhere on the rivers and canals. As they obviously want to catch things the waterways are restocked, probably courtesy of the EU. Adjacent to Soraya, just before we came back to Blighty, there was a lot of heavy vehicle movements and chatter. We came out of Soraya to a mass of activity and fish being unceremoniously decanted from huge tanks on a lorry, weighed, recorded and introduced into the canal.

Roach (Le Gardon) and Bream (La Brême)

Pike (Le Brochet), very popular when served with Beurre Blanc.

recipe

The "beurre blanc" sauce is the emblematic recipe of the Nantes region. It goes very well with fish, especially Le Brochet.

Recipe from M. Gueho, restaurant l'Atlantide 1 star Michelin

Directions

1. Finely chop the shallots
2. In the frying pan, boil together the shallots, the vinegar, the muscadet and the ground black pepper.
3. Leave it on a low heat and then slowly let it reduce.
4. Add the double cream and bring it back to the boil.
5. Mix in the cold butter cut in pieces.
6. Whisk the butter energetically into the sauce. Keep it warm over a low heat.
7. The "beurre blanc" sauce is served with the shallots, and goes very well with pike or hake.
8. ( In the culinary tradition of Nantes, the "beurre blanc" requires no cream, but the trick to make it more stable is to add cream).

Margaret chatting to Franck Le Capitaine du Port regarding the fish restocking and no doubt the nuances of the Beurre Blanc recipe!

LES FÊTES DE SAINT NICOLAS

St Nicolas is patron of Lorraine and Ville de Nancy celebrates this in style. It's a two day event with lots of street theatre, Lorraine opera singing Christmas songs, free soup? gigantic articulated animals, parades and of course fireworks/son et lumière etc. etc. It's all great fun with tens of thousands of people turning up, especially for the fireworks. They were awesome. A few of the events:

Tiny bus giving trips around the town, it carried about 8 people and tooted its way through the crowd. Somehow it brought a smile to everyones face.

Les Garçons race. All the local cafés, bars and restaurants waiting staff enter this ~2 kilometre race holding a tray with a bottle, a glass, a coffee cup and saucer and a newspaper. Plus of course a St Nicolas beard. Lots of shouting and rivalry.

Camels, elephants, large indeterminate birds and bizarre machines some human powered.

Local resident warming next to a brazier.

7 NIGHTS 7 RESTAURANTS = 40

It's been fun involving :

Italian

Vietnamese

Lebanese

Moroccan 

Lorraine (French)

Classic French

International 

cuisines and their wines, as the saying goes 'someone had to do it'

OK it was our, dare I say it, 40th wedding anniversary and we thought what should we do. We had just arrived in Nancy, a city full of attractions and as our anniversary was on the 7th we thought let's spread the celebration out for 7 days with a different type of food each day.

Planning the event was almost as much fun as the event researching and finding the restaurants, looking for alternatives, checking when they were open (not always as you would think), together with where to go after the meal. We certainly know Nancy quite well now.

Nancy Ville kindly arranged for 'Les Fêtes de Saint Nicolas' to be on our anniversary weekend. The fireworks, lasers, light show and son et lumière was amazing. Along with two days of events. More of that later.

A few of the hundreds of fireworks.

It was great having such a range of food from Tagines to Wantons to Michelin Star cooking.

Margaret at La Maison dans Le Parc.

Geoff inspecting the wine 'Le Cirque' in Chez Tanesy.

The wine was superb one of the best reds we have had in a long time

CHEERS

I'm Always looking for a new beer.

This one may have got lost in translation.

The advert doesn't help.

NIGHT OUT

Found a great little cocktail bar in Ville-Vieille, Nancy.

Service a bit slow in Sisco Cocktail Bar so Margaret leant a hand.

After all that work it was relaxation time and a cocktail or two.