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Published: January 9th 2016
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Well here we are back in Briare for the winter; we had to
get here fairly early to carry on with all the medical stuff for Peters
prostrate (quite nice alliteration) more health stuff later. . We arrived late
September after our cruise along the Nivernais Canal and the Canal lateral la Loire.
Our blog seems to have turned into a New Year letter this year as we seem to
have been very busy and not really felt like writing.
Apart from a few very cold days in November early December
the weather has been fabulous, daytime temperature up around 15 degrees and
plenty of sunshine, Xmas day we were in tee-shirts. So the title is a bit misleading really.
Cruising
Our cruise along the beautiful Nivernais was fairly
uneventful, just magic scenery, friendly charter boats and some stunning
weather, almost too hot at times, if we were tied up alongside the bank we
would have to run our generator so we could use the AC unit as it is a bit too
powerful for our inverter. When plugged into shore power in the halt nautiques
the AC unit got well used
We spent some
time in Clamecy where we were joined for lunch
and almost dinner by our friends Phil and Katrina from Australia, We really
like Clamecy for a week or so, whilst we were there they had the annual raft
festival where everyone makes their own fancy dress raft and basically go up
and down the canal, through a lock, drinking all day, having water cannon
fights etc and finish off with a barbie that goes on all night. Looked like just the sort of thing we like doing,
with a bit more notice we would have joined in , after all isn’t vintage cru is just a big raft ? Clamecy is a
very old town, one of the houses we looked at was built in 1234, and we don’t
think much maintenance had been done on it since it was built but it was cheap.
At night wandering around Clamecy is just like being on a deserted film set ,
something from Harry Potter ( depending on which locals you meet) or from a
medieval ghost movie( not many locals out at night)
Yeti loved the cruising life enjoying long walks along the
canal path, escaping into fields and
running for hours. One day he managed to
slip under some barbed wire into a field full of large Charolais cows, he just
thought they were large white dogs and wanted to play with them, when we thought
that he was going to get trampled Peter got sent in with the instructions to
rescue him, this was fairly successful with yeti being sent out of the field
but ended up with Peter trapped against the hedge by hundreds of cows saying we
like your red jumper, hang on whilst we send for the bull. The next day all the
cows stampeded past the boat, bizarre (they use this a lot in France)
We finished The Nivernais in St Legier des Vignes Just before Decize
where we decided to stay for a few days. One night someone was banging on the
hull shouting something, we thought it was a local nutter or yobos behaving
badly. It turned out to be the guy from the boat behind us telling us to
slacken off our lines as all the water was going out of the harbour. We got up
and let the lines looses as the boat settled on the bottom. Some
idiot’s idea
of good fun was to break off the padlocks on the lock gate handles and opened the
sluice gates. Nothing we could do but go back to bed and sleep. The fire
brigade came (the fire brigade seems to be the answer to everything in France)
closed the sluice gates and by mid morning we were fully afloat again.
We then cruised the Canal Lateral a Loire from Decize back
to Briare, catching up with various friends as we went slowly along what turned
out to be a delightful stretch of Canal. We had been along this canal 20 years
ago in Swara but could not remember much of it. We had some delightful walks
and visited one of our favourite wine areas, Sancerre (we seem to have lots of
favourite wines). We walked from the canal up through all the vineyards, collecting
huge blackberries as we went to the town which is on top of a hill. We had
lunch in the town with a few bottles of local produce (not blackberry juice)
and did our Grand Old Duke of York impression and wandered back down the hill,
collecting more blackberries. We think it was the
first day of the grape harvest
as we stopped and watched some grapes being picked , put in a small truck which
then went through the town blowing its horn and everyone cheering and waving as
it went by. We had filled our freezer with blackberries by this time but the
Sancerre ones were so superb we had to make room for them.
Vintage cru had gone well all summer apart from the house
battery alternator playing up ,figuring out the wiring was a challenge and we
are still not sure what is wrong, first job in January. Our hot water tank
split so that was out of commission for a while, now has been welded and put
back in, it wasn’t a big issue as we have an independent gas hot water supply
for showers etc. Getting it in and out before Pete’s operation was the
difficult bit.
Yeti the Therapy dog
Despite all our health problems this year Yeti has kept us
smiling and laughing all year , watching him grow up from a puppy to fully
grown dog has been great, his so happy nature and pure enjoyment of life has
definitely been good
therapy. He will
come and hug you and give you a sloppy lick if he thinks you are feeling down. His
training, grooming, exercise etc has kept us busy, and he continues to keep us
entertained with his behaviour. He is very catlike in some ways as he like the
high places in the boat; his favourite is sitting on the settee top looking out
the window. Great dog. Get a Tibbie
Health
Margaret’s broken ribs seemed to have healed well apart from
the odd ache when it’s very cold, her broken wrist still gives her problems
when used a lot and she has to still wear her wrist brace occasionally.
Peter’s prostrate removal went well, in hospital for 7 days,
catheter removal after 5, Guadeloupe nurse after 7 days. The worst parts of the
hospital stay were the atrocious food and the two very large ladies detailed to
give bed baths. Not understanding the language was not a big problem but when
they shaved me from knees to throat I began to worry, amazing where they want
to stick electrodes. Almost back to full pre op fitness level now and swimming,
ballet classes etc
planned for near future. Biopsy of other bits during operation showed
nothing had spread PSA level after 1 month .0014 where less than 0.1 is
considered ok, more blood tests every 3 months but fingers crossed. My advice
is get your PSA checked on a regular basis as other physical exams did not show
up anything.
Plans
Off to South of France for a while in next week or so for a
bit of extra vitamin D and to catch up with some friends. Assuming all is well
with next tests we will start cruising in April , currently planning to head South
and then North for a while , maybe the Marne maybe the Canal du Midi, in other
words we don’t know yet.
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Roz
non-member comment
Cheers. Here's to good health in 2016
Enjoyed the read and the photos.