Trillium's Trundlings...

Here we are, moored in Ouzouer-sur-Trezée, after a beautiful day…meteorologically speaking…and no internet connection? Odd…was sure I connected here the last time I passed through..but nuffin doin’ now, Boss….no WiFi access either, although there are many vying for my attention, not one of them is up for letting me use it. So I have had to accept that I can write this stuff, but not communicate it….so there will be a delay, troops, before you can feast your eyes on my deathless prose….(!)
 
We are promised several days of good weather, and if they are all like today I shall be a happy bunny. Clear blue sky and a gentle breeze…perfect cruising weather…pootling along the Canal de Briare in a northerly direction. Let us start at the beginning….
 
Dragged the complaining organism out of the pit at the very stroke of 10am…did breakfast…then cleared the emails and other computery oddsn. There followed a frenzy of packing…everything from clothes to foodstuffs and ice packs. Set off for the boat….got to the moorings, no parking slots, bugger. Then some kind chap backed out and drove away, leaving me with a slot right by Trilly!! Has to be a good omen, right?? So I unpacked the car and took several trips to convey all the impedimenta to the jetty. Took the hood down, leaving the cockpit far easier to access…and started stowing all the bits and pieces. It’s incredible how much you can cram into a small gas fridge…fired that up and checked the burner was good…switched on the freezer.. two 1kg ice packs in each of them, filled the ice trays (had to leave the ice maker at home…) and that took care of the cooling side of things. The batteries had been on charge for a day or so, they were on top line… Stowed the suitcase and found places for everything else.
 
Got out the hose and filled the water tank..checked the fuel tanks and had more than half tanks. That’ll do….Had a think; seemed to have covered everything, so I drove the car to the lockup and stowed it safely away for the duration of the cruise. Walked back to Trilly via the Capitainerie…saw The Man and arranged to have the lock set for my departure. Back to the boat…
 
She started first turn of the key…great!! We had to wait whilst another boat came down through the lock; I could go in after it was clear. Now, my moorings were in between two giant tin gin palaces…so I couldn’t see anything much. So I left her idling as I waited for the descending vessel to pass by….after a longish wait, nothing seemed to have happened…So I cast off the moorings and reversed out of my slot. Once clear, I could see the lock was set for me and the green light was on..so I went forwards and headed for the lock.
 
And she misfired.
 
Ran like an asthmatic with hiccups.
 
HOW CAN THIS BE??????!!!!!!
 
Still, into the lock we went and heaved on the green lever and the gates shut behind me and the sluices opened and the lock filled and the upper gates opened….time to go…and we left, hiccupping and farting and coughing and spluttering…aargghhhhh!
 
Along the canal we made our not so merry way… by this time I was pretty sure we were running on three cylinders of the available four. OK; we had been idling for some time with a cold engine…mayhap a plug had oiled up? The plugs are new… but the engine is far from her first flush of youth and, despite having new piston rings in 1978, she has done a vast mileage since then… on the original bores…. Wish I had had the presence of mind to pack the compression tester!!! What can I DO?? It is unlikely that any fuel pollution can remain, and – even if it did – surely that would affect all the cylinders and not just one??? And it certainly felt like one cylinder misfiring…in fact, not working at all.
 
Give it some STICK…so I went to full throttle; poor old girl was not happy, three cylinders doing their best, but the laggardly fourth was working agin us. AH…it FIRED…once or twice….then stopped….and then again…and over a couple of minutes the duff cylinder cast off the rheumatics and got it’s back into the day…and the engine ROARED…and off we went!!! So I closed the throttle, and opened it again, and played about with everything in between….and bit by bit the misfiring ceased and all was smooth power.
 
Has to be ignition, non? But I wasn’t going to stop and fiddle today…not now she was running sweetly… so I went up through the next two locks to the main line, without any recurrence of the problem. Seemed she just needed to warm up…the canal water is pretty cold at the moment and she was running at a lower temperature than usual. Sufficient unto the day, as they say…and I settled down to enjoy the late afternoon sunshine as I made my way through the last two of  the days locks.
 
There were anglers on the bank…one guy with a sensibly sized motor caravan was, I swear, in exactly the same place as he had been when last I passed this way over a month ago….think he has taken root…. The Duty Heron was still at it’s post…as I went past it took off… turned into a V-Bomber…headed towards some impossibly high trees…then, with scarcely any forward velocity; it’s massive wings bit into the air and hauled it almost vertically over the treetops… These birds know a thing or two about flight, for sure; and all self taught, too… Once I had gone by, it landed again and went back to being a fence post. Beautiful.
 
Came into Ouzouer and moored; got the mains power connected (it’s STILL free, here) and investigated the inside of the freezer. ICE!!! Not as good as the ice machine, but still enough for one decent drink…which I duly built. Nothing fancy, just bourbon and coke, but a good thirst quencher all the same. Luxuriated in the cockpit, in the evening sunshine, with my book and my drink…this is the life…..
 
Soon it was time to eat; today we were mainly eating smoked salmon followed by rognons de veau and tagliatelle. Delish! Saw the sun dip below the horizon with a coffee and armagnac….then it was getting chilly, so I went below and tried to get online….no joy, as I said, so I banged out this account of the days travails. Tomorrow I shall drain the filter/separator…not expecting anything…and inspect the ignition system for any apparent faults. I shall subdue this beast in the end!!!!! I shall be heading for Chatillon Coligny in the morning…the home of Becquerel of radiation measurement fame…and a very good restaurant, too; hope there is some interweb access….
 
Trillium’s Trundlings Episode 21…
 
Made it to Chatillon Coligny!!! Some trip….I shall begin at the beginning, customary as it may be…
 
Had a very pleasant night’s kip; got pretty chilly, but I was preserved by the little fan heater that had been kindly contributed by Rex…he of ice machine infamy…750watts is just about perfect for Trilly’s miniscule cabin. The sun rose as usual… and I got up; breakfast and a mad cabin tidy..one has to stay fairly tidy on a small boat (as I type this I look around me and instantly realise I lie) otherwise you can’t move or find anything…(!) There were Things to Do this morning…after the misfiring of yesterday. Firstly I drained the filter/separator and inspected  the result…just pure petrol, devoid of water or snotpus or even pus-snot… so the fartings were not due to fuel. Ignition, then? Unscrewed the spark plugs..no.1 was very sooty, the others less so…but still with the mark of soot upon them. I cleaned them with the Official Champion Spark Plug Cleaning Brass Wire Brush….a few strokes and things looked better.. put them back into the engine. As I was sitting contemplating life, the Universe and things that splutter, a hire cruiser went by… QUICK!!! Follow that boat… sadly, it took me too long to get unplugged and cast off and the engine running and away after it…it was in the lock and the gates were shutting before I could get there. BLAST!! So back to the mooring we toddled. Another hire boat had pitched up, so I had a chat with them and arranged to go up in convoy..they were dumping their rubbish and doing some brief shopping…they were French so it was the daily bread.
 
In 20 minutes or so we were away! Boat was running nicely with her clean plugs…and we went up several locks…then the misfiring started AGAIN. Woe, woe and thrice woe…. Anyway, nursed the old girl along, not able to open her up as the locks come thick and fast and you are always going into or out of them. As we ascended the hill, the brain was doing it’s usual subconscious calculation and appraisal. It occurred to me that sooty plugs=rich mixture….and the carburetter had been set up for running on crap petrol…95 octane ,10% ethanol, not to mention a good dash of snotpus. So it may well have been set too rich to compensate? Sounded likely…so when lunchtime hove into view, when the lock keepers all bog off for an hour...even though the locks are automatic and unattended, they still shut...(!) I hove to and set about the slow running adjustment. I had been along the summit level and was able to give her some stick for a few kilometres, and the mifiring had cleared as before. Having wound the carburetter adjusting screw in a turn or more, she sounded a lot better…so I decided to see how she got on after that.
 
By now I had come up behind a péniche. These are the standard French 38 metre long canal barge…and there are several of them in commercial use on the Canal de Briare and the Canal Lateral a la Loire, and this was one of them. The behemoth drags itself along at about 4kph…that, to those of us steeped in Imperial Measurements, translates as Bloody SLOW… and me with a boat that is reluctant to run slowly without sooting up the plugs.
 
Or rather..she WAS that reluctant….happily, having followed this cursed barge for the whole afternoon, I can report that the engine ran faultlessly and the idling mixture adjustment does seem to have worked…as usual , time will tell, but it augurs well.
 
It was a nice day and going slowly in the sunshine wasn’t too onerous…just tedious and delaying. We had one Close Encounter of the Mammalian Kind…. Moley encountered Ratty! A water rat was disporting itself in the middle of the canal…the grass on the banks had been recently cut, the cuttings were floating in the canal, and something had taken it’s fancy. I tried to have a chat, but even the line about there being absolutely nothing, half so much fun, as simply messing about in boats wasn’t enough to dissuade the creature from it’s obscure tasks, and it jack-knifed and swam away….
 
We mooched on at minimum velocity…even with the throttle closed completely the péniche was slower that Trilly, so I had to keep stopping…..no chance of overtaking, far too many locks and commercial stuff has right of way. So I just relaxed and went with the flow….with the result that it wasn’t until 1930 that I got moored in a deserted Chatillon Coligny. Went to examine the notices on the tourist noticeboard…looking for the menu and opening hours of Le Coligny, the best local restaurant…zilch. No notices at all…empty board….blast!! So it has been dining on board, with a small prawn salad and a bit of a chicken curry, and a nice tall drink. Got the hood up tonight.. the clouds are more numerous and I felt not to be trusted! Tomorrow I shall leave as arranged with the lockstaff, to arrive at the first lock of the day by 1000… Montargis, here we come….

The day started pretty early…for me, that is…I was up and about by 0800 doing the usual morning things…then breakfast….and getting Trilly ready to go. I had arranged with the lock keepers to be at the first lock of the day at 1000…a few sums showed I had to leave at 0940 latest…
 
But first…after yesterday’s mixture adjustment…I wanted to inspect at least one of the sparking plugs. Number 1 was favourite, as it had been blacker than three feet up a panther’s rectum the day before…So I got out the Plug Wrench..first tool I ever bought, to take the plugs out of the MG TC back in 1965..and out came the plug; it was pristine!!! No soot, just the right colour for a plug, a sort of light brownish grey. You can tell a lot from the colour of a spark plug, best way is to do what’s called a “Plug Cut” where you run at maximum RPM and then simultaneously declutch and switch off the engine..then coast to a halt. Be careful, these days, as steering locks don’t understand about such things…and it’s probably better to do it in a gear lower than top or the Blue Meanies will be after ‘ee! It is a great way to see what mixture the engine is running when it’s really trying. In any case, all I wanted to see was how the plug looked after yesterdays extended running at warp factor zero behind the péniche…and I looked, and saw that it was good, and great rejoicing was heard throughout the land….I might have actually cracked it…..
 
So then it was time to leave…out with the choke, first turn of the key and away she went…fed the choke back to off again…cast off the moorings and got aboard…into AHEAD…applied power….and….
 
SHE STOPPED.
 
WHAT NOW????
 
Tried to start again; nothing doing. Then she did start..but as soon as I tried to get her to move….it all went quiet….
 
Brainwracked…and I remembered that she had been running horribly rich…so now she isn’t…maybe she needs more choke for longer? Remember this is an engine from a 1968 Ford Anglia Van. So I pulled the knob out to half choke, she started up and ran and pulled sweetly..and we were AWAY!!!! After a minute or two I pushed the choke back in and that was the end of that problem….
 
Leaving Chatillon Coligny was so absolutely beautiful it defies description…but I shall try… The sun shone from a clear blue sky; the canal is lined by big trees and they cast a dappled light over the perfectly calm, mirror like, water …the leaves are beginning to turn, and the colours were entrancing. I was immersed in the sheer joy of my surroundings…life does sometimes get everything right at once, then? To prove the thesis, a kingfisher sped past in search of it’s breakfast….a shimmer of flashing colour and away. The Duty Heron did its usual impression of a fence post and totally ignored me…a family of ducks greeted my passage with the sound French ducks make…”Coin! Coin!” (needs to be said with a French accent)…so they got the remains of the breakfast croissant. Drifting along the canal with the sun behind me, warm on the back of the neck even at this early hour, I was reminded why I do this inland waterways stuff in the first place…nobody else was there to witness the glory of the morning, and I had it all to myself…..and got to the first lock exactly on time, too. “Impeccable!” said M. l’Eclusier….
 
We drifted on through the morning…not a cough or splutter (other than from me!) and the old girl was loving her excursion. We passed several locks..then got to the lock at Montbuoy. This is a bit deep..5.1 metres…so a bit of mental arithmetic converted that to Imperial as 17 feet, which is rather more than most. As we were going down in this lock, I was steadying Trilly  with one hand on the vertical steel ladder set in the lockside…the lock is made of stone, and several of them have fallen off over the centuries and others have pieces missing. I noticed that weeds had grown on several of them, too…and, as the water fell, the remaining water dripped off the ends of the weeds onto the stones beneath them. As this was happening a foot or so away from my face, I could see than each drip was landing in a small crater in the lower stone…so I looked further..and every drip from every weed was landing in a corresponding crater! Erosion in action…how long has it taken for undisturbed weed to dribble little drops of water in the same exact place and wear the stone away? Well, it fascinated ME, anyway….
 
At lunchtime the canal shuts..between 12 and 1..so I chose to stop for a while so that I could tackle a four lock flight in one hit, once normal service had been resumed. I had an excellent lunch…a Tresse Forestier, which is a sort of plaited pastry with a filling composed of chicken and mushrooms. It was almost frozen solid, as it came from the freezer upper regions…but fifteen minutes sitting on the exhaust manifold of the engine brought it nicely to eating temperature…that and a couple of well chilled beers and it was time to set off once more. Bimbled off to the locks..passed a large steam launch, puffing and chuffing it’s way south; not quite as big as one of Salter’s Steamers from the Thames, but this one was still steaming and hadn’t deteriorated to diesel.
 
The day continued to be perfect; all the machinery was working properly, the weather was up to the British Standard specification and all was right with the world….I must have relaxed my guard a bit, as the canal was suddenly full of floating grass..short bits are fine, but the long stuff gets twined around the prop and often leads to the Early Bath, as I have to go over the side Errol Flynn style, knife between teeth, to cut it away from the propeller. And the worst happened…the engine began to work harder, the boat slowed down and the Curse of the Long Stemmed Grass had got us!!! Just one thing to try….going astern…this can, sometimes, get rid of the stuff.
 
So I tried it…and the Spirit of the Day prevailed, and the grass was banished, and Trilly reached the Port de Plaisance at Montargis with no further incident. This day had just enough leavening of happenings to spice it up a bit, and none of the desperate engineering needs of recent times. Tomorrow I shall have a Day Off and wander around the metropolis……now it’s cocktail hour!!!!

A fantastic account (as always) I was reading thinking mixture, mixture, MIXTURE! Having spent loads of time trying to lean Anne off a bit and going too far in both directions on occasion. I must admit that your account reminded me of a holiday on the French canals, loved it and will return one day

Didn't think I'd be able to reply, but the hospital waiting room now has guest wifi as we sit awaiting Mrs Pendings annual C check-up

Hope all's well with Madame...I've got a urologist thingy on the 22nd and back to the Marsden in November; nearly ten years after the prostate cance diagnosis, and I'm still here....
Now in Montargis on a nice sunny morning, had a battle to get online...the stupid 3 dongle keeps telling me I owe immense sums...like £220 at the moment... so I phoned them and spoke to a nice chap called Deepak who assures me that France is a "Feel at Home" destination and I can ignore these prompts! Had a similar thing the last time I was here and made the same phone call...and received the same assurance...which was borne out by the subsequent bill (or lack of it). This time, however, it keeps telling me how much I "owe" so I thought another call was in order!! Good to see that Renault are back in the game...especially since the double points finish last time out. Keep up the good work! I am having a day laying fallow, the old girl seems to be behaving herself at the moment; OOH look...it's £240 now, so the dongle tells me...(!)... Trilly had a really good day yesterday, and so did I. Off to the shops, now....

Yep, all good thanks  they're arranging to discharge her from the clinic over the next few months.

Hate it when they do that, gets a bit scary seeing huge bills creep up. I had a massive one in Ireland once that I assumed would be Ok.

It'll be nice to get back to normality, the last couple of years has been eerrrrmmm interesting

Trillium’s Idle Idyll….
 
A day off, this has been. Mostly fine, sunny and warm…but with a sting in the tail from a thunderstorm. Lay in the pit listening to Radio 4..then remembered we were an our ahead of the UK and it was 0950 and not 0850…so up, betimes, and abluted. Breakfast followed, as it will…and so on line.
 
The interweb had proved elusive yesterday; first go it worked fine, then there were many times of failure…I could get online with the 3 dongle, but as soon as I tried to do anything it dropped out? Weird. Even weirder were some of the messages and excuses it gave…in the end, around 0020, I gave up. I had even deleted the 3 dongle and reloaded the whole thing again…to no avail….in fact I had used up every bit of low cunning and deceit I could bring to mind…and it still wouldn’t work.
 
This morning I resolved to Try Again. Fired it up, and all went smoothly…up came the 3 dongle announcement…and it showed I could connect…but when I did so it came up with a notice saying that it was going to charge me £6 a megabyte..iirc.. or some such foul calumny. Now, France is what 3 calls a “Feel at Home” country..;this means that using the internet is exactly the same as using the dongle in the UK, and the charge is the same and comes out of my monthly Gigabyte allowance, for which I pay £18…I think. I had this same sort of thing the last time I was on Trilly and, inn the end, I phoned 3 and a nice chap told me to ignore the warnings as they didn’t apply and all would be well. Having had that month’s bill, he was quite right… so, assuming this to be more of the same garbage, I pressed on….
 
Got the emails up…and then a notice appeared: ”Warning” it said “ Roaming cost so far £60” On we pressed…using the interweb as I usually do. The warnings escalated; by the time they had got to £200+ I thought I should make sure. Again. So I found a number to phone 3 and put this latest thing to rest. A nice lad called Deepak finally accepted I was who I said I was…then, once more, told me that yes…France is a “Feel at Home” country and none of these supposed charges would exist in reality. Fine! A trifle unsettling, though…I wonder what they will come up with when next I go online…(!) I have, of course, kept contemporaneous notes….
 
Once I had dealt with the digital aether, it was time for a walk, so I grabbed the shopping bag and left the boat. First place to go was the restaurant on the corner by the Port..”l’Orangerie”…a very nice spot, as I remembered. I peered at the menu outside…mouth watering at the prospect… then went in to book a table for the evening.
“Desolé, Monsieur…” I was told by the rather too comprehensively made up lady. This is what the French say instead of “Get lost..” or something more Anglo Saxon. It appeared that the restaurant was “Complet” for the evening, so my mouth could stop watering! Since the place was jammed to the rafters at lunchtime, she was probably telling the truth, and I’m doing her a disservice… put it down to chagrin on my part.
 
So I trundled onwards towards the middle of town…bags of other restaurants in this burgh, but none so convenient for the boat. And there was a threat of rain; a couple of hundred yards in the rain is one thing, but a mile or so is something else again… I carried on, window shopping as I went. There is a model shop, selling everything from drones to Heckler and Koch automatic weapons…AirSoft guns that look exactly like the real thing but fire plastic pellets. More restaurants… Chinese…Thai…Vietnamese… Hamburger….even French ones!! So if I do go out, there is plenty of choice…. Walked down the main shopping thoroughfare and round the corner to where the Armoury is…this sells guns, real ones. There was a notice saying that they sold legal pump action shotguns..if you produced your hunting license.. also they displayed some very potent looking rifles, far away from the .22 target guns, these seemed to be for felling Cape Buffalo…or anything else one aimed at! Just window shopping, honest….mooched on….and found the market square, where there was a Leader Price cheapo supermarket. And me with a shopping bag… So in I went, got a trolley and bought a few essentials..meat, paté, croissants, merguez, so forth. There’s a story about merguez…a north African sausage made from questionable ingredients. The first time I was over here with Trilly, busking in Paris, I chanced upon these things in an Algerian delicatessen. Looked interesting… so I bought a pack. When I came to cook them I was appalled at how much fat was coming out of the things…it was spitting and popping and dripping into the grill pan.. so I had a peer at the pack. “Viande de boeuf” it said…beef, fine…”viande de porc”… pork, self explanatory…”Viande d’agneau”…lamb…”Viande d’Ane” … WOT??? Ane? Surely not…. Looked again…Ane…sure enough. Going back to fourth form French…”Ane” is a donkey? Donkey meat?? Had to look it up in my dictionary, but my memory was correct..so these things have donkey meat in them!!! Considering what they looked like, they were instantly christened “Donkey pr*ck sausages” by my chum Colin, who was visiting at the time and helping me drink the European wine lake. Must have worked, as one doesn’t here of that any longer…
 
But, as usual, I digress…shopping in trolley, just needed some Coke Zero. And I couldn’t resist the cheapo offer of 4 x 2 litre bottles in a plastic wrapped pack with a handle. Got to the checkout, paid… then the enormity of it hit me…4 x 2 litres is 8 litres, wot is 8 Kg wot is about 17.6 lbs. One gets used to shopping with a car… wish I’d brought the wheeled trolley from the boat…but nothing else for it, mandraulics! At least the liquid in one hand balanced the groceries in the other…and it was only a mile and a half or so back to the boat…. Off I toddled. After a bit the plastic handle of the Coke had cut into that hand quite far enough…so I changed hands….The sun was  blistering down by this time and I began to appreciate what carrying water from a stream in the tropics must entail. Onwards I plodded….in the end, it didn’t seem as far as I had feared, and the boat was duly regained without actually losing any digits! So I treated myself to one of the ice creams I had purchased…and a beer…and settled down with today’s novel, that I finished about half an hour before I started writing this!
 
My reading was interrupted by The Authorities wanting to charge me for mooring here…they even had change of the €50 note I proffered…so we’re all legal again! Now it’s 1900 and I have to decide whether to go a’restauranting and risk the downpour or stay on board and content myself with donkey offcuts…..     

Technology, can't live with it, can't throw it in the canal

Think I'd head out

I earned a living from that shite for years...my first entanglement with computerystuff was with Fortran back when you wrote the programme and a bunch of girls punched 80 column Hollerith cards from it and then they went to The Machine..;and you got back two lines from a lineprinter and had to work out where you'd gone wrong...or where the girls had hit the wrong button! A chum of mine in the Virginia Bay Police always said " Women? Can't live with them........Can't live with them..." People used to try to correct him, but he knew exactly what he was saying after Wife Mk.4.....
Just back from the Restaurant de la Poste, couldn't resist the Rognons de Veau....yum.....stayed dry out, too!

Believe it or not, Fortran is still going 

Americans have a certain way with that phrase, a mate of mine uses "Women, can't live with em...can't shoot em" 

Sounds like a good choice 

Cogitations along the Cut….
 
Yesterday evening, even after the Great Drenching of the thunderstorm part of “Three-fine-days-and-a-thunderstorm” I found the idea of Rognons de Veau  irresistible…so I checked with the French weather service, and they reckoned it wasn’t going to rain in the next hour…thus I trudged off to the Restaurant de la Poste. Nothing special, typical restaurant attached to a chain hotel, but it made a change from my own cuisine and I hadn’t done the calve’s kidneys thing for quite a while. To add to the disgust of the vegans amongst us, I started with paté de foie gras… hugely swollen liver from ducks force fed vast amounts of grain. Delicious, it is, too… Now, I’m never too sure about the force feeding thing…hardly seems something one could countenance…but I remember Wacky. Wacky was the ferryman at Hampton Ferry (half of which enterprise is my brother’s)…Wacky (or maybe Whacky? Who knows…and he being gone before, poor sod, we can’t ask him) was known as such for his youthful habit of wacking people; he wasn’t the sort of chap for philosophical discussion, back then, although he mellowed later on. He lived on a narrowboat on the Hampton Ferry moorings…and (this is where the foie gras connection comes in)….he fed the ducks. There are lots of ducks…so he used to buy great sacks of grain, as used in the aforementioned force feeding process. In this they use funnels thrust into the ducks gullet and pour in the grain….now, this didn’t happen at Hampton, of course….but the ducks would queue up, with their heads tilted back and beaks agape, whilst Wacky poured the grain into them as fast as he could. I’m quite sure that, had he had a funnel, the ducks would have been fighting over which one got it first….  They didn’t seem to be bothered as to what would happen to their livers.
 
After the paté, the Rognons de Veau. Now, veal is another thing at which people blench…and many Anglos turn their noses up at offal in any case. Thing is, veal comes from calves…obviously…and as long as people are going to be drinking milk or eating cheese, there will be large numbers of calves; it’s the nature of things… It’s also the nature of things that about half of these calves will be male, and thus not fit in to the milk production  system. Dairy cattle don’t make top quality beef cattle, either…and something has to be done with the unwanted male calves, turning them loose to gambol about in the fields and turn into bulls isn’t a solution, just another problem. So, as long as you have milk, you will have veal…and as long as you have veal, you get a set of kidneys per calf and it would be a sin to throw them away! In fact, my supper was a social service…and very tasty, too.
 
It even stayed dry for the trek back to the boat….what to do with the morrow, was the question…Frogmet said it would stay dry and be reasonable. After which it seems we have rain and showers and so forth; thus starting back towards Briare seemed a Good Thing. Chatillon Coligny was the best option, good moorings, power, water supply for the boat and internet connectivity…which is lacking in Rogny-les-Sept-Ecluses or Ouzouer-sur-Trezée. A peer at the chart showed the best time to leave would be about 1030, to get to the first lock at 1100…and so to bed.
 
This morning I trudged through the puddles to the lock office, and had a chat with les eclusiers…including the “flying lock keeper” who, with his little van, would be accompanying me for the first three locks. £75 a year in license fee….and I get MY OWN lock keeper. River Thames was never like this….and one can discuss with him timings and so forth, pretty much a bespoke operation. We agreed on my plan, so I was away at 1030 and heading back up the hill again. Both sides of the canal were infested with assorted “hearties”…some running purposefully, some shuffling along in shiny lycra; some on the sort of bike the French call VTT…for Velo Tout Terrain, what we call a mountain bike. Some of the crowd on the towpath were simply out for a walk…although they often espoused “trekking poles”, to give their walk more authority. Still, it was a chilly sort of morning as Trilly drifted gently along from Montargis to the first lock at Pont de la Tuilerie. There was my lock keeper, the lock was ready and in I went. After it had filled, we had a chat…I was concerned that the usual hour long lock keepers lunch break would come as I was in the middle of the four lock chain…these four are automatic and linked together electronically..but he said there was no problem, the locks would be ready and I could continue through them… but don’t get to the lock at Montbuoy before 1330! Since that timing fitted exactly with my flightplan, no problem…
 
All went as planned….and during the hour and ten minutes from the top of the chain to Montbuoy I read a book as we meandered under the leaden sky and past the soggy greenery; all a bit different from the magnificence of the outbound trip. When we arrived at Montbuoy, I spotted the phone box by the church…and it brought back memories. I remembered phoning my Mum from that box….I did much cruising in these parts whilst she was in her eighties, and I’d try to phone her each day so that she would know I was all right…and vice versa…phone boxes are rarities these days, but this box has survived. I had the sudden daft thought that perhaps, if I went into the box and phoned the old number, she’d be there….this elaborated into the idea of there being a Magic Phone Box somewhere, which would allow you to phone anyone, whether or not they had slipped off the twig. I thought of those I would love to chat with….people like my late great uncle Richard Taylor, “Uncle Dick”, who had worked for Hearst in California and had had an affair with Marion Davis…what tales HE could tell; sadly, whilst he was around, I was too young to ask! He used to sit in the sun in the garden in Kingsteignton wearing his panama hat and linen suit, reading the papers…he must have been in his mid eighties, and full of life. Wouldn’t have worked, even in a magic phone box, as they didn’t have a phone…..
 
And so we wended our way back to Chatillon Coligny, and moored up in the same place as before. It had stayed dry…although I had kept the hood up, just in case…and one other thing:
 
Trilly hadn’t missed a beat!! Just returned to how she had always been… utterly reliable and smooth and able to idle all day if needs be, wafting along on a whiff of throttle at a steady 8kph. Stopping the engine in locks, where appropriate; starting up again on the button…idling where I either couldn’t or hadn’t moored in a lock, so that I could use the power to maintain station against the turbulent waters. All day with not so much as a hiccup. That deserved a celebration; it being a trifle cold for long tall freezing drinks, I had a cup of cocoa instead…. Think I’ll stay here tomorrow; no rush…”Je suis pas pressée” as the locals have it.

Rainy Reminiscences….
 
From which title, you have probably gathered that the day is less than clement. I expected this; which is why we are still moored at Chatillon; and not stuck creeping along behind some laden péniche in the drizzle. So far, we have had drizzle…and proper rain…and even a small suspicion of sunshine; but not enough to tempt one into the Great Outdoors. Over the years, I have spent quite a long time sitting in this cabin in the rain…everywhere from Lechlade to the upper reaches of the Loire. One can start to develop what the Yukon types used to call “cabin fever”…but at least, in temperate climes, one can get outdoors if one wishes!
 
Back in 1980, when Trilly and I made our first continental expedition, I had drifted down the canals and rivers to Paris…and then the Marne to Epernay, the capital of Champagne ( although Reims will give you an argument about that!) and moored there around the start of July. When I first got to Epernay, I had moored by a grassy bank, idyllic it looked…sadly, it was the home of more mosquitoes than were ever dreamt of by the School of Tropical Diseases…and I was their favourite fruit. After a couple of days of pincushion duty, it had all got too much…my intention, being fairly broke, was to stay here for about a month or so; but not if consistently attacked by airborne hypodermics…I was a mass of itches by now. So I went up through the bridge and moored to a concrete bank, with some mooring rings on it…concrete…not mosquitoville, I hoped, and so it proved…an end to the constant attacks!  It was nicely sunny weather when I arrived..but this deteriorated rapidly into a persistent deluge that soaked everything and showed no signs of ever stopping…
 
Was I downhearted? Well, yes, a bit….but I still went out for the Morning Run, from Epernay to Ay to Dizy and back to Epernay, half an hour or so…then changed from sopping wet running kit into slightly damp lounging about kit. There’s a story about laundry here, too, but we’re still on the rain at  the moment…. The rain; ah yes…so much of it had fallen that the reservoir upstream, a largish lake that supplied the canal, had filled up completely. Now, I was moored on the river, not the canal…and when the lake was full, it overflowed the dam and came to visit me. The river level went up in minutes…From being moored to ring on a concrete bank, I was suddenly moored to two lengths of rope disappearing into the Flood. The river rose up the sloping bank and the current increased…I let out some more mooring line….and dropped anchor, too…after a while (when the level reached that of the downstream weir) things became more stable. I had to let the dinghy down from it’s davits and manoeuvre it between boat and bank so that I could get ashore…fortunately my bike was already padlocked to a road sign! A bit later on, an island floated by…about 50 feet long by 30 feet wide, with bushes and uprooted tree and a family of squirrels…what happened when they reached the weir was probably not pretty.
 
And there I was…not going anywhere, as the river was impassable; soggy with no chance of redemption…books to read, the radio, the trusty guitar, and the joy of changing into rancid wet running kit every morning for the daily five miles. After that I would ablute and get into the oilskins..walk up to the top of the Avenue de Champagne… and then mooch down it again, doing all the cellar tours of the many champagne houses en route. There were 6, iirc…Mercier, Perrier Jouet, de Castellane, Moet et Chandon and a couple whose names I have forgotten. In those days, the tours were FREE…and you got a glass of the house product at each one. So by the time I’d got to the café at the bottom, I had had 6 glasses of fizz…and that’s a bottle, easy. So the café croissant came as a welcome relief…I also went to the Poste Restante to get any mail, and read my letters in the café, too. Not a bad way to spend a soggy morning… and the French air force were flying reconnaissance missions to inspect the floods, which was something else to look at.
 
After what I remember as a couple of weeks or so of this, I was looking idly out of the cabin window when a strange sight appeared. It was something I had seen before… a sort of aquatic motorcycle, with two catamaran type floats and a bike frame between them, and an outboard motor on the back. I had seen this aberration whizzing about avant le deluge…so I recognised it. However, this time it had no merry rider, but was just drifting along in the current towards the weir.
Bugger.
Couldn’t ignore it, could I? So I went out into the rain…again…and got in the dinghy and rowed after it. Through the bridge we went….and I got a line on the thing…and tried to tow it upstream. After a couple of minutes during which all my exertions rowing back up weren’t enough to stop us drifting downstream, I gave up and went into the bank and tied up to a handy bush. Sat there recovering from my efforts…then remembered the outboard motor on the device I had rescued! It had the fuel tank attached…and I can start outboards….so if I start it up I can ride it back upstream and tow the dinghy!!! Aha…a plan, a plan, a veritable PLAN!
It was then that I made my error. A bit of thought would have made me realise that this thing should be boarded from the front or the back…sadly, I stood on the side of it….and the whole thing rolled over into Stable Two position, with me on the bottom of the river with the seat on my chest. Not the best of positions….but “with one mighty heave he was free” and I emerged, muddy, spluttering, and even wetter than before. I had had enough by now…so I made the thing fast to the bush on the bank, regained the comparative sanctity of my dinghy, and rowed upstream back to Trilly…..leaving a very creditable bow wave to mark the fury of my passage.
 
Once back to home turf, I got on my bike and cycled up to the place from whence the device had escaped..the Societe Nautique d’Epernay, which you can tell from it’s title is a tennis club. Once there, covered in mud and weed and resembling more than ever the Creature from A Thousand Fathoms….or Godzilla, as I was still furious… I  burst into their reception and lectured them for some minutes in Franglais on people who couldn’t tie knots well enough to stop their kit being swept away and how I had rescued it and it was tied to a bush below the bridge and I was now going back to my boat to try to get dry, change my clothes and have a drink so stiff it could stand up without a glass and then I blundered out again.
 
Overnight, the rain ceased and the sun came out…it was summer once more, and I was sitting in the cockpit with the hood down, for the first time in ages, when I was accosted by some chap on the bank. Turned out that he was the owner and builder of the thing I had rescued and had showed up to express his gratitude…which came in the form of several bottles of champagne! He was Christian Cartier, and he was a designer, and had designed the beast to start with…he also did a sideline in designing champagne labels for the multitude of little local producers. French tax being what it is, he took payment in kind…so he had a large amount of many different varieties of the local product. We chatted…as you do…and found that we had several shared interests…we had both flown control line combat model aeroplanes and owned Alfa Romeo cars….by this time we were into the second bottle. After this we started trying to pop the corks so that they fell into the masthead radar reflector…. When it came down at the end of the season there were several in there… After this first meeting, he would show up from time to time with his wife and more bottles, all very convivial. After all, it’s an ill flood that brings nobody any good, eh?

Very funny!  You should write a book :-)

Best wishes,
Dermot

Dermot wrote:Very funny!  You should write a book :-)

Best wishes,
Dermot

Already been said Dermot, perhaps a little more pressure in the right quarter could persuade Moley 

But before he does that, he needs to add a few pictures to this thread

It's a bloody good read, but the odd snap of the boat and the scenery wouldn't go amiss

I agree wholeheartedly !! Come on Moley, snappy snaps please !

Ahhhh....if only I had brought the camera....being a notorious hater of "smartphones" I have only the most basic aged communication device. Do have a tolerable digital camera...but it's not here; I have a theory that one can either experience and enjoy things, or take photographs of them, and the one detracts from the other. I shall see if I can graft some piccies on later...meanwhile....


Winds variable….Precipitation ditto….
 
It will be another day in Chatillon Coligny. Last night I was awoken by the rain roaring on the roof…no thunder, just the sound of water falling from some immense height in pretty immense quantities. The day has revealed itself to be a bit of everything…apart from sunshine and sleet. Dry in parts, then wet and round the cycle goes again. An Indoor Day, then… I am used to being in this sort of confined space; never more than four feet from anything…cooker, sink, toilet, bunk, fridge, freezer, library, wardrobe….you get the idea. Keeping a prisoner in such conditions would have made the League for Penal Reform throw it’s hands up in horror….but we do it for fun….(!) Hopefully Frogmet will be right, and tomorrow will see a change in the weather and we can meander back to Briare.
 
Thought it would be a good idea to have a shufti inside the gearbox, to make sure that the on-the-hoof repairs from my last attempt at a cruise were still good; so up with the cockpit floor and undo the four bolts and lift off the top….peered at the innards…. Main thing was to ensure that the two pins securing the gear shift mechanism were still solid and not showing any signs of coming loose or, even worse, falling out! The idea of one of those small steel cylindrical pins getting caught up in the whirling cogs is enough to make me blench; but all was well….they got a swift tap anyway, on general principles, but they are quite secure. Then I drained the new filter/separator… just petrol, zero snotpus, all nicely clean. Must mean that my mad pumping of the filth from the innermost reaches of the tanks had done it’s job; and the old girl has been running as well as she ever has in the 38 years that I’ve had her, back to being utterly reliable and able to chunter happily away without causing the slightest qualm. Long may it continue…once I get the SoltronGloop into the tanks when I refuel next, that should keep the snotpusgeneratingbugs subdued.
 
Day is showing definite signs of improvement…might be up for a bit of a walk this afternoon, see how it goes… Meanwhile, yesterday I did mention a laundry based anecdote; there are several, so here goes…
 
In 1981 we had started the summer cruise from Auxerre and were making our way southwards down the Canal du Nivernais, a very picturesque bit of countryside, with everything, including les Rochers du Saussois, where the rock climbers hang out – literally! It being a haunt of the free climbers who dangle from one finger jam “holds” and climb bereft of ropes, fear or common sense…frightening to look at, let alone contemplate doing…lots of more normal pretty scenery too. We had got to a village called Vermonton…up a small side canal off the main stream, quiet and peaceful. Walking into town there was an odd sort of building; I recognised it as an old wash house. The French built these so that the ladies of the village could wash the clothing in communal chatter…well, in the stream actually, but chattering to each other at the same time. These places date back centuries…and I suggested we took a look inside. Much to our amazement, it was still being used for it’s original purpose…there were the ladies of the village, beating the clothes against flat stones, anointing them with bar soap and – a sop to modernity – carrying them in plastic washing baskets!! Apart from that, the scene was exactly the same as it always had been…washing machines had clearly not arrived at Vermenton in 1981. By the way, the village name is a sort of French pun…the pronunciation is the same as “vert menton”, which means “green chin”, and there are cartoons showing the locals with prominent such appendages.
Laundry on a small boat is quite a chore…one uses buckets and rigs a washing line fore and aft from the mast…looking like a Vietnamese bum boat whilst it all dries. Now, in 1980 in the Great Flood of Epernay that I was wittering on about yesterday, drying clothing became impossible. Everything and everywhere was far too damp and wet; so I decided to prospect for a laundrette. In France, in 1980, these were like hen’s teeth…trying to find one was almost impossible. Still, I grabbed my plastic rubbish sack of soiled clothing and set off….some enquiries of the locals pointed me in the right direction…and finally the Lavomatique hove into view. This was possessed of the most aged washing machines I had ever encountered…top loading, with a windeywindywobblything sticking up from the bottom of the receptacle. Only game in town, though…so in went the clothes. I had my own powder, so that went in as well…then it was time for the money. Still Francs in those days…so I rummaged through my pockets and came up with enough change to feed the beast. In went the money….and whirring noises were heard…but the windeywindywobblything neither wound nor wobbled, didn’t even rotate. The water did get hot…..and I waited for something else to happen.
It didn’t.
Thought about using another machine, but I only had enough change left to work the tumble dryer and there was nowhere to get any more; remember the original intent was to get the clothes DRY…(!)  I looked around the deserted establishment, calling down curses on the proprietors, and found a broom. That’ll do…so I took the thing and thrust the broom handle into the machine and proceeded to use it to manually rotate the windeywindywobblything, all the while bewailing the luck that made me pick the broken washer. Although the washing action was notably absent, the rest did work and the clothes were rinsed and rinsed again and finally there was a mad rotating commotion and, amid great mechanical groans and wheezes, the thing whirled round and round and spun the clothing dry. Well, dryish……   Fortunately, the tumble dryer proved effective and the clothes…although hardly properly washed… were, at least, properly dry; for the first time in over a week….
 
The sky is definitely clearing; I shall consult Frogmet and see if they think it’ll stay dry..they have a facility which tells you the chance of rain, where you are, in the next hour…. More of this tomorrow!

Been patiently awaiting today's instalment

HMS Trillium will enter harbour….
 
A slight exagerration, maybe, as Trilly is mine and not the taxpayer’s… still, here we are, back at the moorings in Briare after a thrunge from Chatillon Coligny today. Two days of constant rainfall…ugh….still, plenty of time for reading and the interweb. The helpful captions which come up from time to time now say I owe £980….even though I don’t. I have been badgering Three for days to see if they can suppress this erroneous stuff…knowing it’s wrong doesn’t totally remove the sudden gutwrenching doubt one gets when they crop up…but it’s useless. The dull oiks whinge on about data protection and wanting to know all my details and the inside leg measurement of my pet ferret… when all I’m asking is: “Can you stop these messages?” Hardly a matter of data protection, the answer is either YES or NO and if YES, then we can get into HOW and whatever details they need. I have sent them everything they request…still no sense to be had. Whilst I was gently entering the Cognardier lock, my phone rang….no time to answer it…of course, it was Three wanting to chat. This I got from a) a recorded message exhorting me to phone them and b) an email ditto. So I did…five times…and got nowhere other than some queue of indeterminate length. I even pushed the button for “I am thinking of cancelling my contract” as I thought this might get a human faster…but no; in the end I gave up and replied to their email. I hold out no hope that anything sensible will result; and now I owe over £1000….or so it says on the caption. Happy days……good luck getting that, Three…..fat chance.
 
Early start this morning…up and about and power disconnected and all ready to go by 0845. A largish Brit boat…”GREHAN” by name…was going to take the first lock at 0900 so I joined in. “Follow that boat…” The day proved overcast and dull except when it was fleetingly sunny…and we bumbled along ascending to the summit level. Had the usual hour’s break whilst the lock keepers swanned off for lunch…so we partook of luncheon too…then continued. A pretty uneventful day…except when GREHAN got it very wrong leaving a lock and not only left the lock but left one of their fenders, too….ripped off at the roots…the lock keeper handed it to me and we exchanged The Look…you know, the eyeballs-rolled-up-to-heaven one… and I duly returned the discarded thingy. The persisted in stopping…no warning, just stopping… and took photographs (as far as I could tell, of bugger all). A couple of times they tried to reverse into me…all quite exciting, if brief. Anyhoo, up we went and then down the other side…I was waiting for enough sunshine to justify eating my Last Ice Cream…after which I could turn off the freezer! This didn’t happen until after the Cognardier lock, where you leave the main line to go down into the Port de Plaisance in Briare. SUN!!! Hooray!!! Out with the Cornetto and a most enjoyable encounter ensued.
 
Into the port…back to the same moorings…made fast slowly and relaxed. Apart from a slice of paté en croute and some Branston pickle at lunchtime and the Final Ice Cream, hadn’t eaten all day…so wandered across to le Petit St; Trop’  and dined in style. Some say that they buy in their food ready cooked…some say that the menu never varies…some say that nobody goes there. Well, this evening they were turning people away as they were full…and the food was excellent…and it’s always nice when you go somewhere in a foreign land and they call you by your Christian name. If I were a Christian….still, you’ll get my drift. Finishing with a coffee and an armagnac, then back to the boat. Got pretty chilly by now…but 750 watts of fan heater did the trick, and it’s toasty warm now.
Guess that’s the end of this jaunt…all in all, quite revealing and a blessed relief after the previous effort…hardly any mechanicking… Next time I get here, I shall bring the compression tester and check the cylinder compressions…but she has been running nicely during this voyage, so not anticipating any disaster. Tomorrow morning wil be Unload Ship day and I shall drag me swag back to the chalet and throw myself into a bath…….great fun, this has been, even with the rain…..

molemot wrote:HMS Trillium will enter harbour….
 
A slight exagerration, maybe, as Trilly is mine and not the taxpayer’s… 

Or the Mortgage Co's to pay the interweb bill 

Does Trillium sport a Red Ensign when cruising through France, or would that be asking for trouble?

Indeed she does sport a Red Ensign...and the Freeman Forum pennant, a French tricoleur courtesy ensign, a pennant from the Association Nationale des Plaisanciers en Eaux Interieurs and one from the Voies Navigables de France!! So I have a keel in every camp, as it were... Nice sunny morning here in Briare, got to tidy the old girl and load out into the Volvo, no rush though....Winterising will be the next thing on the agenda, unlikely to be cruisable from here on; added to which they close the canals in a couple of weeks or so.

All bases covered then

We're hoping to continue cruising for a while yet, but distance will be somewhat limited when many of the Thames locks close for maintenance.

At the foot of The Prof's post on Marina Pricing, the following link appeared:

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

I think in Moley, we have our very own Freeman Laureate.  Great reading Moley, thanks for your "trundlings" I have sailed every mile (kilometer) with you.

Trilly’s Winter Drawers on….
 
It’s got to be that time of year…when the mists and mellow fruitfulness give way to freezing fog and leafless boughs…so I set out to get the old girl ready for another seasonal onslaught. Fill the engine full of antifreeze mixture, change the fenders and lines for the scruffy winter ones, get the mast down and inside, shut the seacocks and the petrol taps and the gas bottle… but first, a compression check;


So I rolled up at the marina with 5 litres of antifreeze mix, good for –25°C, and my compression tester. Fired her up…started nicely…and let her run, in gear, for some 15 minutes until she was warmed up. Then, out with the sparking plugs, disconnect the ignition, apply full throttle and fit the compression tester to each cylinder in turn. Gear in neutral… crank away…until the reading on the gauge reaches a maximum, and record the results. Starting from the front of the engine, we had 120…115…110…105; going downhill the same way the engine slopes… These are low compression engines, but 105 is a bit on the low side, for sure. I was tempted to try the oil-in-the-cylinder trick, but the no.4 plughole is inaccessible, so that’ll have to wait until I go back with a syringe…in spring! They are the original 1968 bores, I changed the piston rings in 1980, when I did the valves and changed the bearings as well. She could probably do with a rebore, new pistons, a valve job and new timing chain and tensioner too…. But she still pootles along at 10kph  on the canals without complaint…after the exigencies of the tales recounted previously in these chronicles. I do have to take out the calorifier and mend the leak in that…but all these things are for Another Day. Interestingly, the plugs were just the right sort of colour, no sign of the sooting up that had bedevilled us before; decent petrol and a lack of snotpus and adjusting the mixture on the carburetter has worked.
 
Shut the engine seacock, undid the top of the inlet water filter, put in the trusty funnel… then, with the antifreeze poised, started up and began to pour. In went the antifreeze; 5 litres will be more than sufficient…so as we came to the end of the plastic container, I turned the engine off and the last drops just filled the inlet water filter. By now the entire cooling system and heat exchanger in the calorifier would be proof against the worst that the coming months might bring; the major job had been completed. Top back on the inlet filter and there we were. Then I heard a cry from across the marina…it was the mad Irishman on his barge “Moondance”…he was saying “The antifreeze is coming out!” Seems he had been shouting this since the stuff first appeared in the exhaust…with my head in the engine room, I hadn’t heard him! So we exchanged badinage for a bit, and I knew that the system WAS full…
 
Not much else to do; petrol taps OFF…gas bottle OFF…battery master switches OFF…Fenders swapped over, lines ditto. Ensure that the hatch and windows are secure, draw the new curtains…fasten up the new hood…and that’ll do until next spring. Next year, Paris for sure……

molemot wrote:Next year, Paris for sure……

I'll meet you there!!!