Frying in France

As I mentioned in my last post, we are now down in France at the Crumbly Cottage, Mark 2, and Murphy has been at it again to ensure we timed it to coincide with the hottest week of the year so far. We arrived last Saturday lunchtime after spending the night at Charleville Mézières a fine town roughly forty kilometres from the Belgian border. The reason we stopped was two-fold: the first being to avoid driving in the heat of Saturday afternoon, which was predicted to reach 30C (have small dog; avoid long, hot drives), and the second being to allow Koos to take a break. He has brought his 150cc scooter down to France as a handy runaround, but 480 km is a long way to drive on such a small bike, so splitting the journey seemed sensible.

I'm pleased to report he managed perfectly, but I was even more pleased we hadn't tried to do the whole distance on Saturday. It was very hot and even with the airco going full blast, poor Zoe was panting by the time we arrived.  Since then, we've had temperatures over 30C every day and today it's been up to 38C, so outside activities have been limited. 

I walk Zoe early every morning between 7 and 8 a.m., then it's been a quick 'dash and slash' now and then until around 8 p.m. when I can finally take her for another walk.

We've made a habit of heading down to the canal side where it's shady and deliciously cool at the start of the day. In the evening, the air is like soup, hot and thick, but at least the sun has lost its power by then. We pass an old ford over the river on our way and Zoe loves going for a paddle and a drink there. Unlike most spaniels, she's not a swimmer. She dipped out on that gene (sorry) but wet paws in this heat are clearly a welcome refresher.

Sadly, we haven't seen any boats on the canal and are unlikely to this summer unless we get a lot of rain and soon. Koos, however, encountered four boats moored up in Joinville to the north of us. When chatting to the owners, he learned that they'd all been instructed by the VNF (Voies Navigables de France) to head north as the canal was being closed to traffic due to lack of water. Sad news for us too as we'd hoped to come down here with the Hennie H later on in the summer. With Plan A scuppered, we'll have to come up with Plan B but that's still to be formed.

Anyway, we have achieved a few other things. I've painted the kitchen ceiling (very hot and sticky up there!) and cut the grass (while being fried in action). Meanwhile, Koos has put up an antenna to improve our GSM signal (which doesn't help), as well as fitted a new tap in the kitchen and replaced the loo seat (two minor triumphs to compensate the failed GSM booster), both much needed jobs that involve crawling into small spaces, so very hot and sticky too. It doesn't sound a lot, but we're both moving a bit slowly during these steamy days. Even the slugs on the path outside could give us a run for their money (we don't have any 😁).

So that's our local news and limited views for now, allemaal. We're hoping for some cooler days to come before the next heatwave, but in the meantime, here are a few pics of our gorgeous environs.

The Marne river looking very low

Lovely, welcome, shady trees

More of those wonderful trees

The canal. As you can see, it's totally
undisturbed

The village cross

The mairie for the village

Old ford and mill

Paddling in the shallows

Glorious geraniums

Proud home owner!

From the bottom to the top

Last week, I gave you all chapter and verse about our two weeks on the slipway, but that wasn't the end of the jobs. Back home at our mooring, it was time to get started on the upper parts of Vereeniging that had also seen some serious weathering.

There are a lot of colours to deal with on my old girl: two shades of green, red for the edges, cream for the hatch covers and black for the rubbing rail and the rim along the top of the hull. Then there's the anthracite anti-slip grey paint for the decks. Which is a lot!

Luckily, I have a daughter who loves the barge very much too, so we've both spent time sanding and painting the trim around the top of the engine room and aft cabin (known here as the roef). Then, when I've had to go off to work, she's been over at the crack of dawn (literally) to carry on, bless her. As a result, much more has been completed than I could ever have hoped and I'm once again incredibly grateful for her assistance. It helps that Vereeniging is moored in a wonderfully peaceful and picturesque place, of course. And early mornings are exceptionally lovely, but even still, she's been a rock.

However, the first job was to paint the roef a fresh coat of olive green, and I love how the old iron gleams with every dent and ripple in its 127-year-old structure telling of her hard-working history.

Then came the fiddly stuff for which Jo was such a huge help. The red trim was in a sorry state with flaking paint and rust coming through. The pair of us scraped and sanded and then put rust converter on the bad patches, followed by primer. Only when that was all dry could it be painted red again.

Since Jo completed the job, she was justly proud of her efforts and took these photos to show the finished trim. But there's still more to do.  The windows need scraping and painting, as do the hatches, and then come the decks. We have yet to fix the steering properly and finish some other jobs too, but then the old lady should be fit to fare, as well as proud to parade through cities like Ghent. And we still have that trip to France on the cards...

Meanwhile, I'm leaving Vereeniging in Jo's caring hands when we head off to France by car next week. There may be lots to do, but the summer is not over yet and we're definitely hoping for some faring fun later on. 

Have a great week allemaal! Next time I'm 'here', I'll probably be posting from Koos's railway cottage!

 

The saga of the slipway

 This is effectively the sequel to my last post at the end of May, so I hope you'll understand its late arrival when I say that our occupancy of the slipway was extended by more than an extra week. The delayed start was only partly to blame; there were also public holidays resulting in two long weekends for the staff at the yard. The first was what we call Hemelvaartsdag here in the Flatlands. Literally that's 'Heaven travel day', but it is, in fact, Ascension Day, which is one of several religious feast days observed here in the Netherlands. Since it's always on a Thursday, it makes sense to many employers to let their staff take the Friday off too. That was the four-day holiday at the end of May, but then the weekend of the 7th and 8th of June was Whitsun (Pinksteren here), which meant that the 9th was also a holiday. In the end, I was grateful for the extra time to work on Vereeniging, and we managed to do much more than I'd originally anticipated. The other side of that coin was being pretty tired (a slight understatement) after a more than two-week slog; hence the tardiness in writing this blog.

I mentioned last time that we'd scraped the old tar off the upper hull and had started putting the primer on to the section below the water line. As it transpired, we painted primer on the entire hull up to the rubbing rail (berghout in Dutch), which made sense given that we'd stripped her back to the old iron. 

Doing the bottom is always a challenge, but Jodie, my daughter, had the brilliant idea of bringing two small platform trolleys she'd bought at Ikea when she moved house. We used them to sit on and scoot our way down the slipway under the boat, rolling paint on as we went. What a difference they made! Even so, it was heavy work, and we were both glad when we'd finished both the primer and the blacking of the bottom. We then put extra coats of black coating on the water line, which is always where boats get the most wear.

The next job was to finish the upper hull. What I hadn't initially noticed was that the intense high-pressure spraying to remove the tar had blown out more holes beneath the rubbing rail than I'd first seen. Unfortunately, the wood from which the berghout is made (hout means wood in Dutch) meant it was too dangerous to weld them; it is also the reason for the rust because wood holds water prompting the old iron behind it to decay. After consultation with the yard's welder, we agreed to fill the holes with two-component epoxy – not the most satisfactory solution, but given the time constraints and costs, it was the only thing to do in the circumstances. 

There were several places where the wood had also rotted, and we filled these with epoxy as well, although one of them was so big I had to use a mixture of sawdust and glue to pack it out first. Poor Vereeniging could do with some major renovations to the rubbing rail and the hull behind it, so that's something that will need planning. In the meantime, I used a length of angle iron to cover up the worst series of holes, and I realised that could also be used to strengthen and repair many of the other problem areas, but I can do that in the harbour from a small boat – I hope!

Once all the holes were filled, we finished the painting. Jodie and I focused on the rubbing rail and the red stripe above it called the boeisel in Dutch. (I don't know what it's called in English, but it's what forms the rim around the barge that stops you falling overboard from the deck 😊). Koos focused his attention on getting into all the nooks and crannies where the first coats of black didn't reach. The following photos are a record of what she looked like when we'd finished. Isn't it sad that we'll never see all our work like this again? Most of what we've done is now below the water.

That said, I can't thank my 'team' enough for all the work they put into those two weeks. Vereeniging is my barge and was my principal home from 2001 until 2020. But that aside, I'm ever conscious of her place in the history of the Dutch waterways, and I'm as passionate about conserving that now as I was when I bought her. As a result, I feel humbled that Koos and Jo are so willing to help me with her. When we came to the end of our spell on the yard, I was, as always, a little melancholy. It's such an intense period and I appreciated having the chance to give so much attention to Vereeniging, so while it's a relief that it's over for another two years, I would also have loved to have still more time.

Anyway, we are back home at our mooring now, and I'm happy knowing my old girl has had one of the most thorough maintenance sessions we've ever been able to give her. So to finish this blog, it seems fitting to share the video Jodie made of our descent from the slipway and our short trip back to our harbour. For those who might be deceived, the descent into the water is the actual speed, but the trip along the canal has been sped up to shorten the video. Our actual pace is a very leisurely 7 to 8 kph, not the rapid progress we seemed to be doing on the film.

I hope you enjoyed faring with us, however briefly! Have a great week allemaal and I'll be back when I've reset to normal life again.

Tar tears

This week we are on the slipway (helling in Dutch) with Vereeniging. It’s been months in the planning, but I finally got confirmation of my booking last Friday, which was a great relief. The weekend was spent preparing to go: battery charged, fuel tank filled, stern grease replenished. With everything in order, we left the harbour on Monday morning for the short trip south to Zelzate where we were hauled out just after lunch. Things moved slowly to begin with as it's a busy yard, but on Wednesday, the hull was cleaned with a super high pressure hose. That's when the fun began, though.

On our way to the yard.

Waiting for the lift-out

We had to tie up next to those poles to make 
sure we were on the trolleys

Koos chatting to the yard boss

Now we are being hauled out. There's a
powerful winch on the yard that drags the trolleys
up the rails you see ahead of Vereeniging.

Tied to the poles and on the way up

The trolleys underneath

On Wednesday, she was put on blocks ready for
the work to begin.

Random photo of the yard

A track leading out of the yard which makes
a nice stroll

Once she was up on blocks, one of the yard staff cleaned off her bottom but when he'd finished, he commented that there was still a lot of old tar on her hull. I knew this and have always baulked at stripping it off because it's a big job. Sand blasting would be the best choice but very expensive. However, Alex, the yard's main maintenance man, pointed out the risks of leaving the tar in place. I knew he was right and the evidence was clear. The old tar coating that skippers used to paint on the hull has a tendency to move. When it's hot, it softens, melts and shifts; when it's cold it contracts and cracks. I could see the ripples and breaks in the paint for myself, as this past year has been particularly hard on my barge.

So, I decided to have a go at scraping it all off. With the help of my wonderful daughter, Jo, we've just spent two days manually removing the thick layers of tar that remained on the hull. It's been a really tough job resulting in both of us having seriously smarting skin from the 'tar burn'. We both wore protective face masks and glasses as well as hats, but even so, the fine dust from the tar crept through the cracks and, worse still, into the corners of our eyes. Ouch! Tar tears are pretty painful tears, but it is at last done.

Me and my scraper

port side done; starboard still to go.

Our beloved pooches were so patient, sitting in the car. They're
happy as long as they can be together

But with the scraping done, on the port side, the painting could
begin, thanks to Koos. This is a primer coat.

Koos heading down to the water's edge to take
a photo. What else?

Tomorrow, we'll finish applying the primer and hopefully begin on the top coats. There are some anodes to replace and a couple of holes above the water line to be welded, so we'll probably be there until the middle of next week.

For now, though, I have the satisfaction of knowing we've done a thorough job and I can collapse into bed with my sore face and tar tears. I'm sure it will all feel better tomorrow when we can really get painting in earnest.

Have a good weekend allemaal. If it's a holiday for you, enjoy it! If not, I hope the coming week is a good one.
 

The merry month of May

It's already halfway through the month and we've still had no rain to speak of. Yes, it's May and despite the lush growth in the hedgerows, as well as my burgeoning tree (who would have thought it looked like a skeleten three years ago?), the grass is brown and there's virtually nothing to mow. 

My very healthy lime tree

And the not so healthy grass

The farmers must be getting quietly desperate although they still manage to look cheerful enough as they thunder along our dyke in their tractors. Mind you, I think I'd be looking pleased up there in those cabs as well. I've long had a yen to drive a tractor, but so far, that wish hasn't come to fruition.

Of course, while we were away, the petunias in my little garden fried, so I've now replaced them with begonias, which are tougher. Hopefully, I'll have some joy from them before we go away for the summer. I've also been back to Vereeniging, working on the steering issue, but there's not much progress to report there yet. I'm having to make temporary blocks from pine until I can find the self-greasing hardwood recommended by my friend, Tom. Otherwise, I've read that maple wood (esdoorn in Dutch) is used for bearings, so I'll try and get some and oil it well. It'll get there eventually, but it might take some time. Meanwhile, we'll get the old girl ready for her spell on the slipway on the 26th, which will hopefully be a short one as there's no inspection planned.

Tomorrow, we'll fill up all her oily bits and get her running. We only have a short way to go to reach the yard but it's along the busy Gent-Terneuzen canal where we've had problems in the past, so it's always as well to double check everything first and to know she's fit to fare next week. It will be so good to be out on the water again.

Otherwise, the only news to speak of is the family get together we had yesterday to mark a special birthday. The concept was so clever. My daughter organised a cocktail afternoon at the 'Memoir Bar' and my other daughter created a menu of special drinks based on the titles of my books. It was a lovely afternoon full of laughter, sun and relaxation and we all enjoyed ourselves no end.

The menu for the 'Memoir cocktail bar'

That's it for this week, then, allemaal. Although we need rain, please send up a plea that we don't have any for the last week of the month. I could do with dry weather for painting Vereeniging's bottom!

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 the village residents 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 as long as I show interest with intermittent nods, smiles and 'mais oui's' (or 'non's'), the interaction is perfect. 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