The Tour 2010

Not everyone is a follower of cycling but there's not doubt the Tour de France is big!

For those who may wish to watch it's progress and to feel the excitement, or for those who may wish to stay well away for that matter to avoid the crowds, this year's course and the dates of the event are listed here. (Or click the title of this post)

©Peter Hyndman 2010

List of Canals in France

Wikepedia have a great resource online, listing all of the navigable canals in France with links to descriptions and maps illustrating their locations.  Click the link or the title of this post to take you to the page.

My usual caveat applies when relying on anything online, (including anything you read on this site by the way), so read everything, and draw your own conclusions as to it's accuracy!

Boat Names

The boat name arrived in the mail today, from Boat Names Direct ready for it's big trip, and now we feel as though all this is really is happening.   

I would have waited until we were there before arranging the signwriting, or done it myself, but the online service provided by the above company was too easy to overlook, and while it's a bit early to pass a long term judgement, the product looks first class as was the service.

Having a fake home port name on the transom is very uncool, and Mooloolaba, last time I looked was not a port in the north of France.  It is so uncool that it contravenes international maritime law, and we probably shouldn't do it.

But I really love the smile that French people get when they try to read it.  It's very similar to the one they get when I try to pronounce any French word with an "r" in it, so until we get locked up for our flagrant disregard for authority (unless we chicken out in the meantime) we'll proudly fly the tricoleur from her stern right above the sign that reads:

Joyeux

Mooloolaba

On a more serious note, I will attempt to unravel the world of visas, licensing and registration for Australians in Europe in coming posts.

©Peter Hyndman 2010

A Northern Escapade

It's not as though we needed a break, but when Ian and Lynda offered us a passage on Deerste for a few weeks, well it would have been plain rude of us to decline, so after catching up with family in Paris for a weekend we caught the TGV north to Douai to begin a delivery through the south of Belgium and a route which provided amazing contrasts between rural, industrial and city environments and multiple changes of pace depending on which of those places we found ourselves travelling through.

I am sure over coming months and years we may well gather enough data to provide a complete rundown of each route as we travel through, but in the meantime I'd thoroughly recommend using Tom Sommers' digital versions, which unlike our own reports, are much more likely to be up to date.

Canal de Briare

In 2009 thanks to the generosity of friends, we managed to complete our first season on the Canals of France (this post is once again aimed at inserting key words into the text that do not necessarily relate to a lack of err... community.  Google keeps reading the "chat" and misconstruing it!)

So we met Graham and Iris on "Manatee" in Briare, for a few short weeks and were treated to a whirlwind (if that's possible at seven kilometres per hour) tour for a short distance down the Canal Lateral a la Loire to Sancerre,  returning after a few days and travelling the full length of the Canal de Briare to the Seine via the Canal du Loing.

Part of the reason for our being in France for the season, was to discuss a successon plan for "Manatee" and when we departed for a few weeks with the intention of rejoining her for the rest of the season, it was with the absolute conviction that  we had found our new life.

A proper introduction

After exactly twenty five years of dreaming about it, we finally tasted the reality of life on the canals in 2007 after an invitation from our good friends Graham and Iris to spend some time with them on the Canal du Midi on their floating home, "Manatee".

Ten days was simply not enough, and apart from agreeing that we'd happily take Manatee off their hands when they got tired of this life, we left completely unsatisfied and intent on arranging our lives differently so that we could return for much longer periods of time.

We weren't to know then that a new phrase would be coined in very quick time  "Global Financial Crisis", and like many others we'd have quite a task to overcome the new obstacles to be placed in our way.   (If you are reading this stuff by the way, don't take it too seriously, the advertisements on this page are supposed to do that, but they still think I am without a spouse and of the persuasion that would have me discovering one on the internet.)

Quite coincidentally on our return that year we were contacted by Ian and Lynda whom we hadn't seen for years, which was not surprising considering that for some time they'd been spending half of their own lives on their boat in the north of France.

We'd travelled through the desert in Australia by four wheel drive, and across much of the European continent and Asia by train, and it seemed that somehow the die had been cast, a new mode of transport, a new life in fact, beckoned.

Gratuitous Sailing Shot

As much to give some key words to the advertisements on this page that don't actually hint at a lack of interpersonal communication or a desire to become acquainted with a person of dubious intent, we went sailing for a few years.  I have to say that the Adsense people are very clever, they appear to have associated the colour of our dear ship "Piglet" with the needs and desires of an audience that could be described with one word alluding to happiness!

We started small, but once the collective length of the family grew to a point where it exceeded twice the length of the boat, we knew it was time to upgrade.   Eventually the collective financial demands of the family exceeded the capacity to continue with the boat, so it was time to downgrade, and the Goat Island Skiff was born, followed by a few PDRacers and a Eureka Canoe.

But lest we give the wrong impression, while all this was happening we were quietly talking to people, reading all we could, and it seemed there was nothing we could do to get that crazy European Canals thought out of our heads.

For thirty years it kept gnawing in the back of our skulls.

The beginning

We live on the smallest continent on earth.

While we were growing up, it was also known as the largest island, but of late someone in their wisdom has decided that one can't be both a continent and an island, so despite being surrounded by ocean, Australia it seems is now merely a continent with very damp edges.

Like almost all of the population of this, the driest continent on earth we live and have always lived around the wet bits, within shouting distance of the ocean, so it stands to reason that swimming, surfing, sailing and generally everything to do with water borne activity came naturally to us.

We love the inland for all it's desolation and remoteness and indescribably vastness and even it's complete lack of humidity, but when all is said and done we are always drawn back to the water, where  one could gaze at the horizon and wonder what lay beyond, and dream of sailing off to explore whatever lay there.

Sadly, "one" and "we" are mutually exclusive terms, and while "we" are fond of travel and exploration, and for that matter even delight in the times we have spent touring our coast on small boats, "we" expressly ruled out the concept of crossing oceans in them.

But there are other ways of seeing the world, and "one" remained unperturbed, and still dreaming of those far off lands, began a quest to travel through them.

We had heard of the European Canal network, and in 1982 while poking around in Amsterdam, we saw converted barges being lived in for the first time, igniting a spark which has remained glowing ever since.