28 Sep Wed We had a lovely quiet morning, and a late start as we had all had a chance to have a quiet sleep in. We had breakfast on the boat, then were about to head off when we had an electrical problem. Despite calls to Le Boat office and reading manuals, we were unable to fix it. The boat would still run but only on diesel and emergency power, so no water pumps working, and no thrusters that are needed when doing tight manoeuvres through bridges. This meant we had a few “exciting” moments including doing a loop de loop in front of an oncoming boat. Apparently this was something to do with avoiding a low branch and as a result losing control of the steering which is dicey at the best ... read more

Narbonne 24 Sep Sat We had an uneventful journey to Narbonne. After the first 2 hours there were many stops until after 4.5 hours we arrived at Narbonne. The train wasn’t quite as modern as from Paris, but it was fine. We couldn’t reach Helen & Rob, so we read the Plan de Narbonne at the station and decided to walk to Quai dÁlsace on the Canal de la Robine, despite our previous bag toting episodes. Luckily, only about 15 minutes later we arrived at Le Boat. The boat we hired is a Le Boat 1503, quite big at 49 feet by 15 feet (14.97m x 4.65m). Here is a link to a virtual tour http://www.leboat.com.au/flotte/15034?bsreturn=stage02&startbase=TRE&endbase=TRE&showdate=2011-10-15 . Helen, Rob, Dave and Kath had already been there a couple of hours and learnt all about how to ... read more

21 Sep 2011 Wed London Barry and Sally have gone back to work this morning. Sally gave us an Oyster card to catch the train to London Waterloo station. No real fixed plans other than to sort out our Europe train tickets, and then to go on the London Eye and/or to one of the Museums. Our first stop was to be the Eurostar office to change our tickets and buy some more for Spain. Number 1 Regent Street but where is it? Regent Street numbers start from 50 at Piccadilly Circus and the street on the other side has a different name. It is now drizzling and after pondering over unhelpful maps for some time, we decide to head down Regent St and see if the numbers restart. Somehow, we ended up in SOHO in ... read more