Taddy Tales

The picture is a little blurred but, yes, it is a beaver - or castor in French.  Two of them swam by the boat late one evening whilst we were moored on the Oise in quite an urban area and only about 50 km north of Paris.  We took this picture with a phone and have cropped it heavily.  But we were pretty close. This made for an exciting first evening for daughter and son-in-law Al and Jon who arrived in their campervan together with baby Peggy who was just 3 months old. We had turned off the Seine and onto the Oise at Conflans-Sainte-Honorine a few days previously.  That's an interesting place being 'home' for many of the commercial boaters.  There's a floating chapel and boarding school for the children of boaters.  There's also a lot of boats moored with retired boaters who have decided to spend their retirement on their boat. On to Pontoise where we were a bit dismayed to be the only boat on an 80m pontoon in August.  OK - there's no c...

Paris was packed with tourists all snapping the views and having a great time.  But very few of them were passing the Eiffel Tower in their own boat that day.  It felt VERY cool.  Probably the highlight of several exciting days visiting the city of love.  But first we had to get there. We cruised the lower reaches of the Marne which pass through the up-market southern suburbs of Paris.  Very pleasant but not many boats and just the odd commercial. The extravagant loops typical of the lower reaches of a river are shortened by a short tunnel at Joinville le Pont.  Everything changes as the river becomes very busy and quickly joins the Seine and you're crossing under the Peripherique.  We'd been joined by other pleasure boats and there were large commercial boats moving fast in both directions and passing under the many bridges.  The navigation instructions warn against stopping to admire the view.  I get their point - there's so much...

The River Marne runs through the Champagne region before it joins the Seine south of Paris.  It's navigable from Epernay which is about 130km from Paris.  The river makes it way down a beautiful shallow valley where the hillsides are covered in vineyards or trees.  There's not many locks and there's some lovely towns to visit.  It's popular with boaters so we were expecting it to be crowded at the end of July.  But it wasn't really.  There's plenty of boats but following the basic rule of 'cruise early, moor early, we found we could tie up in the places we wanted to. The intense heat had gone and the weather was glorious.  We didn't rush.  We found some nice restaurants - the dessert trolley in Dormans was to die for! The First World War theme continued.  There were 2 battles of the Marne (1914 & 1918) and there were reminders of this in most towns. Each town has more champagne houses (apparently there are 5000) but we'd learne...

Warning!  This post contains pictures of a grandchild . . . We're back.  Where have we been?  Everywhere!  And we just lost our 'round tuit' when it came to Taddy Tales.  But we're going to have a catch-up on our amazing summer now. We were joined by Cat and grandson, Alfred, at Reims for a trip into Champagne.  The following day, we were joined by Julie's mother.  So Taddy was pretty full as we headed back down the Canal de L'Oise a Marne. Alfred soon settled into boat life.  At 13 months he was very mobile and many crew members feared he might fall overboard.  We have a small person lifejacket but the weather was incredibly hot and it seemed too much of a challenge to negotiate him wearing it.  But he was no fool - all the food was on the boat and this boy really likes his grub. We climbed back over the canal summit and through the 2.3km Billy Tunnel.  That didn't frighten anyone, old or young.  On a baking ho...