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3 days, sunny, cold wind am, very warm last day
196 km – 123 ml – 7 locks – 18 hrs
4 May: Our morning cruise through Paris is excellent, although we are unable to name many of the magnificent buildings.
Not long after this picture is taken, our brilliant AIS system stops working. No longer can we see all the other moving boats on our screen together with their heading and speed. It is surprising how quickly you come to rely on this info in a crowded reach and its sudden absence comes as a blow. Switching it completely off then on again after a suitable pause does the trick. A good old-fashoined cold-boot! Not long afterwards, it fails again, fortunately with the same outcome.
We need no help to recognise the Eiffel Tower, the sheer scale of which is emphasised by the sky-scrapers nearby.
As we continue down-stream, we are again met with both beauty and incongruous ugliness in the shape of industrial sites.
Our interesting day-trip ends at Conflans-St-Honorine, an attractive waterside town with a marina (some floating pontoons) a little exposed to river traffic. As if to make this point clear soon after we tie up, a laden barge comes barging upstream at high speed, not more than 25 metres away from us, and nearly washes Allons-Y onto the pontoon. Still, it helps to demonstrate that we are well tied and fendered up.
As for the marina, the expected facilities are, once again, non-existent. The service points are completely derelict and, although the pontoons themselves are reasonable, a lot of detritus has collected against them, including an enormous and smelly decaying fish. Colin spends an hour heaving weed, tree-branches and dead fish out into the stream and pulling other rubbish up onto the pontoon, and we resign ourselves to another night without electricity or a water tap.
The good news is that, while searching for tomorrow’s boulangerie (which he finds – good man), Richard also locates a bar-restaurant, where a quiet drink develops into a really nice supper.
5 May:
There is a small comotion in the night (not that Richard notices) which reveals itself in the morning to have been a hotel boat mooring up. Considering that it is 360ft long (some are 400ft!), they did well not to make more noise.
After croissants and coffee, we continue today’s short run down the Seine in moderate river traffic at first, and with more interesting sights and sites to be seen.
For our final night en route, we have chosen Port Ilon which is in a quiet lake like a Norfolk broad, complete with steady wind. We top-up the diesel tanks successfully, albeit at a pretty outrageous 2.37 euros per litre, hoping it will be enough to get Howard and crew back to the UK. We are also pleased to note that all the publicised services are present!
This is another marina with many characterful boats, and none the worse for that. Also reminiscent of a Norfolk broad, we go to sleep to the sound of the wind-driven wavelets lapping on the side of the hull.
6 May: The final day of our journey dawns dry and sunny – in fact we haven’t seen any rain for a couple of weeks now. The river is quiet, with just three or four barges coming upstream, and is still as pretty as ever.
Today is turning into a bit of a jaunt as we follow the line of this chalk ridge for mile after mile, adding to the scenic interest.
Our two locks today are, however, not suited to small pleasure boats, with recesses along the lock-sides big enough to swallow even large fenders. This issue has been well documented and, as we don’t have a suitable plank to fender against, we adopt the approach of holding the boat in with a rope in one hand while keeping it from touching the lock-side with a boat-hook in the other hand. Fortunately we were descending quite slowly and this worked very nicely – well done, crew!
Talking of unfriendly, the final lock-keeper acknowledges our VHF call with a grunt then answers the polite enquiry: “Parlez vous Anglais s’il vous plait” with “Non!”. When asked for directions, also in polite French (there are three locks spanning the river) he answers: “Droit!”. Perhaps he is a descendent of De Gaulle, or doesn’t like the English, or just doesn’t like being woken up in the middle of a very quiet afternoon. We smile to ourselves but don’t say thank you. Shame on us.
We arrive at Yves’ picturesque dock at 1630 as forecast and plan to moor behind his pretty little boat. Oops, we find that it is too shallow here and have to edge up behind his boat to get most of Allons-Y in to the side.
And here is Yves in person – and promptly announces that he has just tested positive for Covid! He seems well and is very cheerful but we are already seeing our expectations dashed of getting to know him or of being driven to the shops and the train-station on Monday morning. Doh…
Final tally
1180 km – 738 ml – 184 locks – 168 hrs