Marne - Seine in Torrential Rain!

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After a good nights’ sleep in a peaceful boatyard with visions of toons on a loop through my brain, we got up fairly early in a semi sunny day and decided to head off the Marne and back to the Seine. The Marne is a lovely river with lots of traditional guingettes alongside offering French cuisine, live music and tea dances. Unfortunately we were passing through late on a Wednesday morning in August and only one was open - which was packed! Undeterred we decided to make the most of the dry day (bad weather was forecast for the next few days) and get as far along as we could. We hit our record for locks successfully navigated that day, going through 6 in total before arriving at the newly built Draveil marina on the River Seine. Mike was suffering from a very sore nose - we thought maybe he had been bitten on it as the tip was red, earning him the nickname of Rudolph from his ever sympathetic wife.
Along the river we saw all the usual wildlife; herons, ducks, geese, swans, dragonfly, moorhens, butterflies as well as a couple of things we’d never seen before. Swimming along the river bank was a big beaver looking creature. We slowed up to see it and watched as its heavily whiskered nose and curve of his back protruded from the water. We guessed it must be a beaver, but then it climbed out of the water and scrambled up the bank revealing a distinctly otter-like tail. It reminded me of the woodchucks we’d seen in the Rockies a couple years earlier and we decided it must be a fat otter or a lost Colorado woodchuck! Later that day we saw about a dozen dead rabbits floating by (I guess not good enough to eat, as we’d learnt by now that the French will eat anything and that lapin was considered quite a delicacy) which was a most unwelcome sight and very different to the wildlife we’d seen up to now.
When we arrived at Draveil and were tying up our boat, Mike suddenly shouted ‘Car, look!’ I wondered what had gotten him so excited and thought maybe he’d spotted a flamingo too far North for its own good (we’d been discussing the fact that two of the inland waterway books I’d read said that there were hundreds of Flamingoes on the inland sea at Camargue and my wee head was all a flutter at the concept of seeing wild flamingoes). Anyway, I looked to where he was pointing, just a foot behind me into the water, and saw another of the big toothed woodchuck looking fellows paddling away and sniffing at the air next to us. I took a few pics, determined to google it when we next got online. I managed to a day or two later and discovered that there were 2 similar water mammals that had been introduced to France from Americas and South America in the 19th century for their fur; the Muskrat and its bigger South American buddy the Coypu. We learnt that they had escaped/been released from farms into the waterways and fields and were considered pests as they wrecked river banks by burrowing through them. We decided the big fat ones we’d seen were definitely Coypu.
By this stage it was fairly late and, being a week-day in August, we knew we had little chance of finding much open. We walked to the small town nearby and found two closed restaurants, one closed bar, an open pizza place and an open corner shop. We bought beers from the shop and pizzas from the take-away and headed back to the boat for a quiet night in watching Ricky Gervais, whilst Mike nursed his ever increasing nose sore. The pizza’s were delicious - thin ans crispy bases with salmon, prawns and crème fraiche for me and various meats for Mikey.
The next morning we awoke around 7am and decided to pay for our berth at the marina and head off for a full day on the river again. Mike’s Rudolph nose was even redder and more bulbous by now and looked very sore. We both had a good look at it but couldn’t see a bite mark or the head of a spot. ‘It’ll be one of those blind spots, ‘ I said ‘ Give it another day or so and a big head will come out and it won’t be so sore. Now come on Rudolph, get dressed while I get breakfast on.’ ‘I know what I can do.’ Mike replied and disappeared out the back. He returned a few moments later with the centre of his head wrapped in blue masking tape. ‘At least you can’t call me Rudolph anymore.’ He said. I cried laughing as he sat down to drink his cup of tea and pretend that nothing was different. ‘I really don’t think that’s the solution, Goob,’ I said ‘the tape’s even more noticeable than the spot thing, and you look like a mentalist.’ ‘I can’t win,’ he declared, peeling off the tape and grinning.
We spent the day cruising the Seine, watching in consternation as rain clouds drew in overhead. ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘I was just getting really brown and now we’re going to have horrible weather!’ I was right. We had intermittent showers all day - no fun when in locks and trying to lasso with wet ropes and the skies really opened up later that night - just as we were cycling to the supermarket at our stop for the night! We both got drenched on the fifteen minute ride, and were remarkably dry by the time we got back to the boat as a glorious evening sunshine came out as we were cycling back again.
The people at the yacht club at Chartrettes were lovely and gave us a guide to the local area as well as directions to the supermarket and showed us a neat way of dealing with the dangling ropes - basically linking it all in a succession of slip knots that laid flat on the gunwales like a plait. Mike loved it and set about putting these into every rope we had. Bless. Whilst he fannied about with ropes, I looked through the info the yacht club had given us and discovered that the dense forest we’d been passing that afternoon was the forest of Fontainebleu with the town and famous chateau nearby. We decided to stay here the following day too and go on a big bike ride through the forest to the chateau. I made packed lunches from the supplies we had just bought at the supermarket then we ate dinner, drank wine and played cards as the sun set.
The following morning was lovely and sunny and warm so we donned our lightweight trousers and tops, put a map, money, phone and packed lunches in a bag and headed off in the vague direction of Fontainebleu and the woods. We’d been cycling about half an hour and were into gorgeous woodland when we stopped for some water and a carrot each and watched crickets, grasshoppers, beetles and butterflies hop and flutter around the long grass. It was so peaceful with the birds singing in the trees, it felt we were in the middle of nowhere, not just a few days (hours by car) from Paris. As we set off again we felt a few drops of rain. ‘It’s alright,’ I said ‘it’s probably just a shower, the sun’s still out. Let’s carry on.’ We carried on for a while, but the shower got heavier so we pulled over and crouched under a tree while we waited for it to pass. My cotton top was very wet and clingy already and my light grey trousers had big patches of charcoal colour where they’d gotten wet. My hair had gone lank (Mike had no such problem) and Mike’s shirt and shorts were wet. It had been so sunny that morning, we’d not thought to bring the rain jackets.
After a while it became clear that the rain was not stopping. ‘What do you want to do?’ Mike asked. ‘It can’t be much farther’ I replied. ‘Let’s carry on then.’ Mike said and off we pedalled down the dirt track into the woods further. The rain soon started pelting down, turning the path to slush with little streams running through it. My back was splattered in mud (I did not have mud guards like Mike so was getting covered) and my clothes were absolutely soaked. ‘Do you want to go back?’ Mike shouted over his shoulder, ‘ How much wetter can I get?’ I said, ‘ We may as well strap on some nuts and keep going, it can’t be that far now, we’ve been going over an hour.’ It turned out that actually I could get much wetter. The rain became a torrent, falling in sheets and soaking even my bra and pants. My top was stuck to me, my hair plastered to my face and I had to stop to replace a contact lens that had fallen victim to a rogue raindrop getting a direct hit on my eyeball. The path was now a stream and I had skidded twice, as had Mike. ‘Car, even if it isn’t very far to the Chateau, are we really going to go and walk around it like this? We’re soaked and muddy.’ ‘You’re right,’ I said, ‘Let’s get out onto the main road and cycle back to the boat.’ After a couple more slips and skids we found the main road - just in time to get doused from head to toe in yet more water as a car sped through as large puddle by the roadside. We looked at each other and started laughing - this was insane! By road we moved more quickly, our tyres throwing up yet more water as the rain continued to pour. Once off the main road and taking a short cut through the woods Mike looked at me, dripping with water, clothes stuck to me, splattered in mud, and just started cracking up ‘ Where’s the camera?’ he said ‘ I have to get a photo of this.’ I saw the funny side too and pulled my best ‘sorry for myself’ face while he took the shot, then took the camera back to capture his glee at my sodden state!
By the time we got back to the boat, the rain had stopped. We wheeled our bikes down the pontoon, much to the amusement of the other boaters around, strapped them to the roof, then went inside, shed our soaked clothes and had big mugs of tea and watched ‘Friends’ whilst eating the slightly damp picnic we’d prepared earlier. I was still determined to visit Fontainebleu so we looked at the map again. It seemed that the Seine passed much closer to it further down so we decided to head off there and then and get downriver to a spot where we could gain easier access to the chateau and town. After clearing up from lunch, we motored off in the rain. After about two hours the rain got really heavy again so we decided to pull in at Samois-Sur-Seine, a really pretty village with free berths for visiting boaters, as well as electricity. We got there and saw a guy catching a lot of fish as a woman sung old jazz tunes whilst cleaning her house - I don’t know if she was aware we could hear her but she had a lovely voice. We settled in to play cards and watch the passersby and had a lovely afternoon and evening. As the sun went down we were treated to a huge thunderstorm - lightning, deep peals of thunder and a stunning thunderous sky - and snuggled together with a glass of wine to watch it. When it cleared, we heard the lovely live music coming from the auberge along the river - as it was a Friday night, we debated going up there to listen but decided we were too relaxed and comfy to bother so stayed put, dealt another hand of rummy and switched off anything on board that made noise so we could hear the music clearly. A beautiful evening and eventful day despite the weather!

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Comments

[mum]

great read babe your little sorry for myself reminds me of when you were a little girl miss you both xxxxxxx