French village immersion

We've been back in France again for the past nine days, immersing ourselves in the Crumbly Cottage, Mark II and our village here. It really is an extraordinarily lovely area, with the wooded hills of the Marne valley beckoning us everywhere we look. My favourite place is undoubtedly down at the canal side where I take Zoe for walks every day. The Canal de la Marne à la Saône, now known as the Canal entre (between) Champagne et Bourgogne (Burgundy) is not a major route and rarely used by commercial barges, but I keep hoping I'll see a boat or barge on the move. So far, I've been out of luck, but the season's still young and the utter peace of the towpath is such a joy. All I can hear is birdsong, especially the skylarks that trill and whistle high above me.

We've been spending most of our time trying to pull the little house and garden back from the decrepitude it had fallen into, but in the meantime, there've been so many other things to note about our village in the Marne valley. 

The first is obviously the people. Everyone here is genuinely friendly and I, for my part, have the best ambassador in the world: Zoe. Of course, it will take time to get to know people well given that we're only here for short spells, but so far, it seems almost everyone knows who we are and where we're from. One lady greeted me from her garden as I was walking past with Zoe one morning, and then rushed to her front door to come out and talk to me. We had a nice chat in so far as I'm able to chat to anyone. I do a lot of nodding and smiling and asking questions, the answers to which I don't follow so well because of the rapid fire delivery, but it's all welcoming and kind. Others have also chatted as I've passed and everyone, without exception, has been sweet to Zoe. Who needs introductions when you have an adorable spaniel? 

My French is undeniably limited, but I pick up enough of what they say to prompt follow ups, which is all I need to do. They rattle on and all I have to do is show interest. Voilà, conversational French in a nutshell. 

What else? Well, the flowers and blossom here in the Haute-Marne are glorious. Never have I seen such towering horse chestnut trees in flower. Then there's the wisteria and rhododendrons with their cascades of vivid colours. Not only that, but the greens of the trees that cloak the hillsides are stunning. They're rich, varied and positively opulent, ending as they do in valleys of velvet smooth grassland that feeds the fat, sleek, creamy cattle.

In the village itself, boxes of geraniums have suddenly appeared on windowsills and the scent of freshly mown grass lingers on the air. The villagers are busy with their gardens and the humming sound of active lawnmowers is an almost constant drone, along with that of tractors tilling the fields and the bellow of hungry cows waiting to be fed or milked. Wonderful country sounds that underscore the tranquillity.

Other details I've noticed are odd features like the uniformity of the postboxes and house numbers in the commune. In our Dutch village,  there is little attention paid to conformity and most people choose their own letterbox and number, but here, they seem to be all the same. The number on our house is on a small tile with a neat border, which is replicated on pretty much every other house number in the village. Likewise, the letterboxes are almost all standard, made from yellowish steel with a door front and back. The only noticeable differences are in the way they're mounted, which can be quite creative. I've seen some mounted on standard shelf brackets; others on steel plates supported by interesting curved shapes that are clearly hand made. Then some are set into walls while others are attached to them. Regardless of the position, though, the boxes are all the same.

Then, there are the cats. Almost as if designed to send Zoe wild, there are cats everywhere. Some belong to households, some don't, but every time we go out, we see cats dashing across our path. Zoe's relationship with our feline friends is, as they say on Facebook, complicated. She adores them indoors and will sit gazing lovingly at a cat for hours, but outside, they must be chased. As a result, she's on high alert here and begins every walk with a challenging strut as if to say, "Right, you feral felines. I'm here and ready, so watch out!" I have to be extremely careful to keep the gate shut, because if she saw a cat, she'd be after it in a flash. And our little house is right next to a busy railway line. That doesn't bear thinking of, does it?

We've now come to the end of our stay here and we'll be heading back to Zeeland tomorrow morning, which is fine as I love it there too and we have our own wonderful neighbours as well as the boats. But I'll miss the quiet canal, the birds and the utter peace of the village in the mornings. Below are a few photos of the scenery and also of what we've mostly been doing.

The endless trek with my new wheelbarrow
to dispose of the results of the our hedge
 clearing project

Eureka! I found the septic tank
buried by years of undergrowth.

Clearing gutters choked with ivy. Being the small one on the team, I was
the obvious candidate for climbing out onto the roof.

Sentinals of canal. The magnificent horse chestnuts

I've always liked rusty remains in land being reclaimed

Approaching a lock. One of Zoe's favourite walks is to go from one 
lock to the next and back

Beautiful sweeping field

Good mooning!

The view is lovely whichever way we look

Keeping the wheel turning

With the recent lovely weather, it's been perfect for doing boat work, which I really enjoy at any time but especially on sunny days. In my last post, I mentioned the hatch I've made for the Hennie H's grease pot. I've finished it now and am pretty pleased with how it looks now it's in situ although it highlights the other jobs that need doing!

Grease pot hatch done and dusted.

In the last couple of days, however, I've been busy trying to solve Vereeniging's steering issues which have been becoming steadily worse over time.

It's not that she doesn't steer well; she does, and the steering is very positive with little delayed action. The problem is that it's incredibly stiff and heavy to turn the wheel. I've studied the whole mechanism right through to the rudder and have been unable to identify what's causing the stiffness. Of course, it's a very old system and I have no idea what it might be called in technical terms, but it's completely mechanical. The photos below show how the steering wheel connects to the shaft that goes through to the stern where, at its end, a huge sort of horizontal cog wheel turns the rudder. Top marks for anyone who can tell me what type of steering it is.

Steering wheel with shaft that extends through the aft cabin
(the roef in Dutch) to the stern.

The two heavy duty cog wheels that do the main work of 
turning the rudder

At first, I thought the stiffness might have been because the cog wheels had become too packed with old grease, so I spent some time digging it out and cleaning the wheels. There's still more to do, so I'll keep returning to them, but it soon became clear that this isn't what's causing the resistance.

So then I went to the point where the shaft passes into the aft cabin (the roef). I'd noticed the old wooden support was cracked and the packing that was supposed to seal it from intruding moisture was completely dried out. This morning, I removed the support and discovered the steering shaft had a lot of surface rust on it. I've removed all the old hemp string packing, taken off the support and sprayed the shaft with penetrating oil prior to removing the rust. It looks a mess in the photo below, because that's what it is. Even so, I am doubtful that this is the real cause of the heavy steering. 

What a mess! 

Nevertheless, tomorrow I'll be making a new support as this one is finished. The bolts keeping it in place were totally rusted through and simply broke off. Plus, I have to scrape and remove the rust from the roef where the support was fixed to it, so that will keep me busy!

The next phase is to go to the stern and see if there's a problem there. It's a process of elimination, but whatever happens, the cleaning and de-rusting can only help to extend its life. So much of the steering system is open to the elements all year round it's inevitable it will suffer, and where Vereeniging is now she has zero shelter so the deterioration has accelerated. 

All I really need is for the good weather to hold as now it's perfect for doing this kind of project. I'm looking forward to going to France, but I'm a bit torn as I'd love to keep working on the boats while it's still so fine. Anyway, I shall just do as much as I can in the next couple of days

Enjoy your week allemaal and wish me success in keeping my old wheel turning.

April goes she will

Apologies for the feeble play on Paul Simon's well-loved lyrics, but it seems only yesterday I was singing the song at the beginning of the month, and now it's almost gone. So what have I been doing since my last post? Well, not as much as I would have liked, but that's because two weeks were taken up with the course I mentioned in my previous blog. It was very intensive and time-consuming so I didn't have all that much time for anything else while I was busy with it.

Added to that, my daughter went on holiday almost two weeks ago so I've been looking after her cat, which has involved three visits a day....I know, I needn't go so often but I've been feeling sorry for the little chap. He's not used to being alone so I've been delivering extra ear and tail scratches in the hopes he'll be a bit less lonely, and he's been very appreciative in a furry, purry sort of way.

That said, we've had some lovely walks in glorious, sunny weather, as well as a visit to the beach where we met up with my other daughter, Mo, her man, and her spaniel, Mack.

One nature reserve walk near us

And another

The lilac has now taken over the baton from
the forsythia

And this delightful group sits outside one of
the village houses. 

Then there was another walk along a farm track nearby

Plus the visit to the beach at Breskens

The beach is lovely and very popular in the summer

And then, there's this: Zoe doing what she does best
And looking adorable.

We've also managed some time on the boats and distributed the duties. I did some work on Vereeniging's panels, while Koos sorted out a problem with the cooling on the Henie H. Oh and I nearly forgot. Last week, I attended my first meeting as the Secretary for our Historic Harbour Committee, which was quite a challenge for me. I had to write the minutes in Dutch after the meeting, so I was glad I recorded it. As yet, I have to learn whether my duties as scribe are good enough, but fingers crossed!

One other job I've nearly finished is to make a new cover for our rear inspection hatch on the Hennie H. It's also where we access the grease pot. I made this one from a plank I had left over from renovating the sunroom last year. The grooves aren't ideal, but I shall paint it thoroughly. It always feels good to avoid buying material and to be able to use odd pieces we have in store. I must say I'm very pleased with the result and it fits perfectly, so hopefully we won't get any more rainwater in the bottom of the boat once the old, leaky one's been replaced. When I've finished painting this new one, I'll take a photo of it in situ. This white is just primer; it will be grey in the end.

Of course, there've been the other usual chores like cutting the grass, trimming the hedges and sweeping up the shower of leaf 'pods' the lime tree has been shedding since it sprang into life. Our local Lidl was doing a special price on hedge trimmers with batteries last Saturday, so we were there as they opened to make sure we could nab one. I've never done that before (arrived so early, that is), but I was glad we made the effort as by the afternoon, they'd all gone. I must say it's a brilliant machine and I'm really happy with it. What a difference it makes to have sharp cutters too. 

So that's the last two weeks summed up. Not terribly exciting, I know, but next week we're off to France again for a visit to the Crumbly Cottage, mark 2, so hopefully there'll be more to report from there where I can put my French correspondent's hat on.

Enjoy the rest of the week, allemaal. I hope life's being kind to you wherever you are. 

The spring in our midst

Here we are, already nine days into April and I've been remiss once more in blogging, but I'm sure you will all understand when I say the weather has been so beautiful we've been outside as much as humanly possible. As I mentioned in my previous post, we went down to the Haute-Marne again at the end of March, mainly to keep an appointment with the electricity company. We were blessed with gorgeous weather for all but one of the twelve days we were there. Some of you who 'see' me on Facebook will already be familiar with a few of the photos below and you'll notice that there's only one with overcast skies. That was the day my daughter and I climbed to the top of the Marne Valley and looked down into the village of Vignory below. Believe me when I say the view was breathtaking and my phone photo does it no justice at all. 

The other photos were taken in both our village and also in Joinville, where we unfortunately spent most of the time after my last post at the garage. This interruption to our planned jobs was due to a persistent problem with one of the sensors in the car that was causing it to misfire and misbehave horribly. Luckily, we found the wonderful Garage Guyot in Joinville who went above and beyond anything we could have expected to help us. They were quite magnificent and after two days, they'd replaced the troublesome sensor, treated the car to a set of new spark plugs and replaced two of the 'bobines' over said spark plugs. The car is now running well, thankfully. In between times, though, we did manage to stroll through Joinville's pretty historic quarters up on the hill and I snapped some of its delightful houses and side streets. 

I've written about its background before, but for those who may not have seen the first post I wrote about Joinville, here's a link that tells you all about it. It's in Dutch, but Google does an excellent English translation of the text.

Joinville's market square

One of Joinville's gorgeous side streets

My favourite house in the town. Not ours!

Another pretty side street

View over Vignory

Leaving our village

A view from the garden
(much in need of attention)

Bee seeking nectar in a dandelion

Looking down into the village

Fruit trees in a paddock nearby

And then it was time to come home after all the drama with the car and enjoy the peaceful tranquillity of our Zeeland view. I know I've also posted photos of it before, but the forsythia is just going on and on and is more beautiful than I've ever seen it.

A tub of primulas. I'm amazed they survived
during our absence. It's been so dry!

My ivy hedge is exploding!
Time to get the trimmer out

I'm now very busy with another course. It's a short one, but there are 200 students and there's a lot of marking and feedback to give. Fortunately, the three main assignments they have to complete are also short, so I'm trying to do about 60 a day to keep up. The sun is still shining, though, so tomorrow I'm going to make time to clean Vereeniging again, as the dust has been flying while we've been away and she's looking somewhat shabby as a result.

Enjoy the rest of the week allemaal and I'll be back again soon!

Blossoms blooming

Spring! Yes, it’s arrived. Or should I say the early signs of spring. The forsythia, which is always my first real signal that the earth is waking up in our part of the hemisphere, is absolutely glorious this year. I’m seeing it everywhere, both in the Netherlands and in our newly acquired corner of France.

And then here’s the hawthorn blossom and the early cherry, which is quite magnificent this year. I don’t know about anyone else here, but I love spring more than any other season. It is so vibrant and explosive with new life.

At the moment, we are in France, but all the photos above were taken around our Zeeland home. France is just as lovely, though. It’s still cold, but the sun is shining and everything is looking clean, fresh and ready for the rest of the year. This morning, Zoe and I took a lovely long walk along the canal nearby. Her little nose was going like the clappers with all the new sniffs. The rabbits are pretty active around here, which drives Zoe into a frenzy of excitement. Sadly, I also saw lots of squished frogs on the road too, which suggested that someone had run over a whole group of migrating grenouilles as they trooped over the road.

Here are just a few photos from our gorgeous village and the canal. I’m so looking forward to seeing a boat passing by, but I know it’s a bit early yet.

 

We’ll be here in France for another week doing some much needed jobs that include clearing dense undergrowth from the garden, finding out how to deal with a possible bee invasion and securing the tiles on the roof that blew off in a gale. The tiles are back on now, thanks to my wonderful, helpful daughter. Now we have to put some galvanised sidings over the edges to reduce the risk of the wind catching them again. All fun and games on an old flagman’s house in France, but the village and region are so beautiful, it’s all worth it!

Till next time, allemaal. Keep well and enjoy the spring!

 

A small corner of France to call our own

I've been hesitant about writing this post but it's finally happened. Remember those developments I mentioned a few weeks ago? Well at the beginning of February, Koos and I travelled to Joinville in the Haute Marne for him to take possession of a little house in a small village on the Marne. 

Looking down the village street from the level crossing

Koos has long had a dream to have a house on a level crossing, near a canal with a lock. The purchase of the Crumbly Cottage version 2.0 is the fulfilment of this dream and he's as pleased as punch about it. I know, I know...we still have the boats, but we are the first to realise the time has come to scale down, not up, so there will be some changes on that front in the coming months too. In the meantime, the little house on the level crossing will be as demanding as we choose to make it. It really is small with just a kitchen/dining room, a small lounge and a bedroom. There is a minimal bathroom with a shower and a separate loo. And that's it. Potentially, the grenier could be another bedroom, and the lounge could become the kitchen, but there's no rush. Apart from decorating and fixing a leaky chimney, it's perfectly usable as it is and quite enough for us. But the best part is the scenery. The photos below are of just one walk that I took with Zoe.

The Marne Valley is stunning and we are blessed with these beautiful views. Not only that, the trains pass regularly but not so often as to be annoying (to me), although we have noticed there are more than we were led to believe and the goods trains woke us up the first night. By the third night, however, we only heard the morning train around 7:30.  If there were others during the wee hours, we didn't hear them.

Even better (to me) is the proximity of the canal. It used to be called the Canal de la Marne à La Saône, but these days, it is the Canal Entre Champagne et Bourgogne  (the canal between Champagne and Burgundy). The towpath is just a short walk from the CC 2.0, and a short way along the towpath is a lock. Val heaven. I envisage taking Zoe for many a walk along the waterside, and it is also the easiest way to get to the shops at the popular village of Froncles.

Added to that, it is not so far from Joinville, one of my favourite towns in the region, and only a little further to Chaumont, the principal city of the Haute Marne department. We cannot quite believe our good fortune because we've spent several years looking for the perfect 'gite' to call our own at an affordable price. Initially, we wanted to find something in the Sambre Valley, in the Aisne department, but our compatriots also discovered the Aisne during Covid, and prices rose far beyond what was affordable for us. It was my daughter who discovered Haute Marne for us. She bought her own house just fifteen minutes from our level crossing and we are thrilled to be so close to her in this beautiful area.

As for our village, we have already made some good contacts. I met a delightful woman when I was out with Zoe. I'll call her Chantal, and she has a springer spaniel called Ruby. What entertained me no end is that she told me Ruby is deaf but she spent almost her entire walk with her lovely pooch talking to her. One evening, I passed her house and watched as she shooed her chickens and geese into their coops. It was a joy to behold. Chantal rushed around her garden flapping her arms like wings and laughing as she ushered her charges into their huts for the night. I've decided I'm going to cultivate this friendship and have already suggested that next time we're there, we should walk our dogs together. 

We've also met two of the immediate neighbours, both of whom were charming and friendly, so we have great hopes for becoming part of the local community.

So that's it, allemaal. Our big news and new developments. There will inevitably be other changes coming, but for now, we are enjoying the excitement of having a new environment and project to look forward to. As for the canal, there's a lovely mooring for short stays in the village, and maybe an even longer stay at Froncles. Who knows? Perhaps the Hennie Ha needs to travel a bit further still before she hangs up her boat hooks. For my part, I really hope so.