HOW FRESH WOULD YOU LIKE IT? VERY FRESH!

Sunday morning has got to be Chablis Marché. A short Scoots ride from Auxerre.

Margaret in the sunshine, unusual as it has been rain for a while.

Good market with all the usual stuff spread along the main street. Has the added benefits of being in a visually lovely small rural French town and more importantly it's Chablis. So there are many small places offering 'dégustation' and that can only be for Chablis. Even in a cafe if you ask for wine you are given Chablis. I didn't like to ask if they had any other wine.

As with all French markets some of the produce is riper than you sometimes want. Remembering the old joke that if it was any riper it would walk off. We found a stall selling many food substances that still had the capability to walk off, if they were allowed.

Waiting to be chosen.

We did not ask or wait to find out wether the dispatching was done for you or you did it in the privacy of your own home/garden.

IN OR OUT?

Was it a great day for democracy? The British people spoke. We will see. 

The vanishing UK.

We don't want to be political on the blog so no real comment, but this is fundemental to life in Europe. Good news, the tabloid press will have no Euro-scepticism to bang on about. Surely they will be down to a side of A4. All is not lost.

RAIN

Geoff got so fed up with the rain that he bought this T-shirt. He's worn it every day!

In the rain

But it did stop, the sun came out and it was 35 deg C yesterday. However today is overcast and rain forecast again......

ART AND APRICOTS

Woke up this morning to the closest market we have ever been to. A very pleasant art market put on by 'Collecif d'Artistes Bourguignons' on the quayside adjacent to Soraya. Lots of interesting pieces, some very desirable pottery.

The art market.

It's the apricot season and whilst in the supermarket I couldn't resist a full wooden tray. Only 5kg, I thought we could make some jam. Not sure if Margaret was quite as enthusiastic as I was. A few hours later Margaret had produced 15 jars of jam and still had quite few fresh apricots for immediate consumption. I did help a bit, well I stirred and made the labels.

Margaret and her apricot jam. Enthusiastic now the jam is made.

PÉNICHE - EXTREME GARDENING

Waiting for the floods to subside we have time to wander. Recently in Lyon checking out future moorings we came across a péniche owned by someone who we thought should probably sell the barge and buy a smallholding. No way could you see out of the wheelhouse or over the 'forest' on the rest of the barge. I'm sure they never navigate.

Wheelhouse and stern.

By comparison we have a small herb garden and are currently growing lettuce in a couple of pots. Hardly worth mentioning.

Main coach deck.

Difficult to tell what is barge and what is the hillside beyond.

SCOOTS - ROCK STAR?

Scoots is about to be famous, maybe. A knock on Soraya's door and a girl with microphone and photographer asked if they could use Scoots for part of a music video they were making. Why not?

Scoots delighted at the attention!

Not quite sure the name or nature of the music but an interesting little episode.

If you are interested Scoots no longer has Cow Parsley pipework. The real stuff has been reinstated.

STILL CLOSED

We are still in Auxerre and the stress is showing!

Geoff's face when he heard the river was still closed!! What.....I don't believe it!!

Debris alongside Soraya 

There is so much debris coming down the river that we have to clear it nearly every day, many logs and sometimes full tree trunks. VNF (Voies Navigables de France) are trying to shift the water downstream so have opened up the weirs. This increases the flow so the river is running at about 5km/hr, not good for a boat of our size. We want to go downstream, so stopping could be a problem! I think we'll just hire a car and go south for a bit until it slows down again.

FLOW, FLOW AND YES MORE FLOW, AND A BIT OF CHEESE

We are still in Auxerre, thank goodness it's a great town and we have met lots of people. The river now looks OK but is still running too fast for safe navigation. Just prior to the current closure of the river a Dutch Barge similar but very different to Soraya made a move to go downstream. She cast off from the mooring going backwards in the flow. So far so good. There is then a double bridge before the lock. The first is a modern bridge with 2 concrete columns then the second is an old stone multiple arched bridge. I thought she was making heavy weather of turning prior to the bridge. Eventually just prior to the modern bridge she turned and caught the concrete column with a massive crunch on the starboard side. Not good. The barge sped forward with the flow towards the stone arched bridge. I watched, heart stopping. The barge had been thrown to port and immediately towards the stone arch bridge, the back twisting aggressively to port. There was a huge crunch. I thought **** that was not good. Actually that was the good bit. The stern of the barge then swung further to port and placed the wheelhouse in direct line of the bridge arch. The noise was then horrendous as ~70% of the wheelhouse was scraped off the barge. Most of it landed into the water and continued its own way to Paris! 

Another recent incident involved a large hotel barge that left Auxerre going upstream. A few locks up it came out of the lock and the pull of the barrage (weir) was too much. The barge was drawn ever closer despite the efforts of a very experienced captain. The barge finally came to rest right across the river resting its full length against the barrage with a full compliment of 12 passengers and 6 crew. A tractor was called they could not budge it. Later a 'large' tractor arrived but they could not move the barge due to obstacles in the water. These proved to be large rocks. These had to be lassoed and moved prior to releasing the hotel barge from the forces of L'Yonne. The barge moored up and was stuck for 2 weeks. It appears that the difficulties of this barge with a very experienced captain effectively precipitated the closure of the river and canal.

Cheese stall in Auxerre market.

Too much about floods. 'Hello lad, where's the cheese Gromit?' The food and wine is good in Auxerre. This cheese stall sells amazing Comté Fruité and Charource and did I tell you about the Chitry?

Back to the floods the Nivernais canal has now partially opened. Unfortunately this is not the way we want to go. In consultation today we have been told that the direction we want to go, Paris, may open this week when repairs to damage caused by the floods are completed.

Our good friend on another hotel barge has also been caught by the floods. Last weekend going under a low bridge they miscalculated the height available and jammed the barge under the bridge! Yes paying guests were aboard.

All good fun. And is it raining.... Did I hear thunder?  Yes it is and I did!!! Well it must be beer o'clock. I think we may be staying in Auxerre for a bit longer!

NAVETTES - PROS AND CONS

Auxerre has a very good Navette (Shuttle) service around the town. It's a small minibus with a capacity of about 20 people. It takes a circular route every 15 minutes right around the town with a total round trip of about half an hour. The big advantage is that it's free, it's friendly and it passes within 10 yards of the boat. 

An Auxerre Navette

The disadvantage is that timing is not important! Every 15 minutes is often longer.....and the journey is very slow, stopping for every pedestrian and car and chatting, of course. It doesn't have many official stops but people just stop it anywhere along the route. You would actually be much quicker walking although it is uphill to town. You must never be in a hurry. And.......I forgot to mention, it stops for lunch for two hours which isn't made obvious but I suppose we should have known. But, all in all, it's a great service especially if you've got lots of shopping to carry and plenty of time.

THE TIME HAD COME

Went out to a local Bougogne restaurant in Auxerre, La P'tite Beursaude looking at the menu there it was..... L'escargot, une douzaine. We have been saying for far too long that we must try snails. This is especially the case as we are in Bourgogne which is the heart of snail gastronomy. I placed my order with a nod from Margaret that she would help me out.

 La P'tite Beursaude.

I was pleased that they had been marinaded in Chablis and we were having Chablis to accompany them. Then they arrived.

12 Snails ready for dispatch.

Once I'd got my mouth and brain around the first one they were really quite good. Garlic, parsley and butter really with a slightly chewy bit in the centre. Margaret did help out, don't feel she was over impressed preferring to stick to her asparagus.  Would I order them again. I think I would. I don't know why I was so reluctant for so long. Margaret says 'I know why!'

SCOOTS AND THE BOURGOGNE WINE ROADS

Yes we are still in Auxerre but the river level has dropped to almost normal and the flow is slowly becoming less of a raging torrent. As we are still in the Bourgogne wine area and the sun is shining it was time for a trip. We decided to do a nice circular trip covering Saint-Bris-le-Vineux, Chitry and Irancy, all good wines. We had a fantastic time with beautiful scenery, surrounded by vineyards under the June sun.

Margaret checking out the dégustation locations.

Moving on to Irancy Scoots came to a gradual stop. This is unique he has always been totally reliable. The one previous leak we had, see Repair Day post, did not cause a breakdown. Looking under the 'bonnet' I thought we had run out of fuel. All the signs pointed that way. I did not understand this as the fuel guage showed half full. Still I convinced myself the guage was faulty. Irancy is not the biggest or liveliest place. Looking around and knocking at a house we were informed a local petrol station was about 5 kilometres away! Great. We saw a farmer, probably a vintner actually, in a barn, could he help? Yes no problem he had petrol. He decanted it into a large jug and we refilled Scoots. He would not accept any money but I insisted, well I said it would always be useful for buying himself a beer. He accepted.

Scoots being refuelled, thank you local farmer/vintner.

Tried to restart Scoots, found this was not the problem. Looking around I saw the vacuum pipe from the carburettor had a very small split. No problem cut off the end and reinstall. We did this and all good. Off we went. 1km later the same problem, the split continued. We had old pipe which had degraded. To be fair Scoots is 11 years old. Rerouted the pipe to make it shorter and cut it back again. The split continued! So we are ~20km from Auxerre with a split vacuum pipe. Did we hear thunder, yes we did. So we are in the middle of a lot of vines and not much else. Not a vacuum pipe to be seen. There must be a solution...... Time for lateral thinking. Spotted some Cow Parsley and Thistles which I knew to have a hollow tube stem structure. After a lot of searching and cutting sections we arrived at a contiuous tube. This involved ripping my handkerchief for 'string' to keep things in place. It worked. So off we went. 

Cow Parsley and Thistle vacuum tube.

It did fail a number of times as it lost the vacuum. Each time we put in new Cow Parsley and retied. We arrived back rather late from a great, if not challenging, day out!

FRIDAY NIGHT @ CHEZ MAX

If you're ever marooned in Auxerre get down to the quayside and into Chez Max. Primarily a bar serving a few tapas. It's the weekend so time for live music. A local group called 'SevveS' tuned up then let rip. They are a cover band with a few of their own but they were good, very, very, good. All the old favourites: Stones, Floyd, Zepplin.... Black Magic Women, who did that? Well I'm sure we all know. Great stuff only 100 metres from our mooring.

SevveS at Chez Max.

I should also add that Chez Max is a decent bar with seating on the quayside for when it's not raining. Good news the river has dropped a very small amount today and the flow decreased slightly. I think we may still be here for another week. Apparently Paris may not be fully back to normal for another 6+ weeks, oh-la-la. Or is that just 'Tales of the Riverbank'. We may have to reassess our proposed route?

L'YONNE, YOGA AND A REFRESHER

In these days of static existence we do spend some time assessing the height of the river and the speed. It's currently about a metre higher and running at roughly 8kph, a slow run or good walking speed. It's all very unknown, Francoise Holland has declared a 'State of Emergency' due to the natural catastrophe, in Paris the Louvre amongst other sights are closed and even parts of the Paris Metro are flooded! We are on the river that feeds the Seine in Paris, so we are getting it first. The debris the river carries is amazing. Occasionally a large log or half tree hits Soraya with a low frequency boom, boom, boom.... akin to a bass drum roll as it rattles down the side of Soraya's hull. Fun, fun in the middle of the night.

Current view from Soraya's wheelhouse. Full river and grey sky.

We are getting to know Auxerre well, in between the showers. My normal morning runs have been severely curtailed due to the rain. Well I'm not that keen to run in the rain. If no run it's a few sit-ups, weights or wheelhouse yoga. Balance darling, balance. So there has been quite a lot of yoga recently. Of course there are also the coffee shops. Our current favourite is a little specialist coffee shop next to the Quai called 'Au 87'. Good coffee and wi-fi.

Margaret in Au 87 doing a bit of iPadding.

Back to Soraya, what height will she be at? We are not above the quayside yet, it won't be long.

Well it's that time again...... and who's round is it? Good book.