Meaux – Sunday 11 May

7 years ago
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We have spent the last week travelling and completing the rest of the Canal du Loing, the whole of the Seine from Moret to Paris, and then turning right onto the Marne for the last two days to Meaux.

The boat was finally made good by the intervention of a wonderful new French friend Jean-Frederic (known as Bougnard=a man from Auvergne), on his boat Lady Josephine, one of life’s real treasures you come across from time to time.  He very competently and dramatically moved the new alternator into a better position.

After he had finished the alternator was in a perfect position and has worked brilliantly ever since.  If you stop at Nemours please go and say hello to Jean Frederic and share a glass of wine with him.  He also introduced us to a splendid new drink, white wine with a dash of pamplemousse (grapefruit) sirop.  The same idea as a Kir but with a delightful new flavour.

From Nemours we moved to the top of the Loing at Moret where we spent the night.  The following day we started the run down the Seine towards Paris.  The Seine is a beautiful river with some amazing dwellings on the river bank; there is money in them there riverbanks.

The other good thing about boating on the Seine is that every lock has leisure boat friendly moorings on the upstream side of the locks, which makes boating on the Seine very user friendly.

On Thursday we turned right onto the Marne at the Chinaglora Hotel

and stopped at the upstream side of lock 16 at Neuilly-sur-Marne.

Then on Friday morning we left early and had a trouble free run to Meaux arriving yesterday at lunchtime.

We passed Jonny and Laura on their wonderful and unique boat Spice 2 at Lagny but they were not on board so we will meet up later.

The remarkable thing is we did not see one moving boat on the journey, commercial or leisure, but at Meaux there was a good collection of leisure boats, including Ann and Bret on Kismet, and Irish newbies Adrian and Nula on C’est la Vie.  We all had drinks on board C’est La Vie on Friday night before venturing over to the best Chinese grub in France at Planete du Dragon, which fortunately or unfortunately is situated on the port.

Two ex prison governors putting the world to rights in the Planete Dragon

Yesterday was market day in Meaux and as the weather forecast is poor for the rest of the weekend we will stay here for a few days before moving up the Marne and Champagne country, and enjoying the glorious weather due next week.

At least the baby swans at Meaux are enjoying the wet weather

This post was written by Terry Barrett

Photographs by Tes