Thank God I've found WiFi

We're up and sailing on the Feniks bike and barge charter tour. We made our way by taxi to the mooring point on a canal just north of Paris on Saturday morning. The crew were taking on supplies and still cleaning the boat in preparation having just completed the reverse trip from Bruges to Paris. Once settled on board, we were briefed on the boat and given an informal general safety induction. The Feniks is an 80 year old converted dry cargo ship that was refurbished in the 80's to include the cabins. It is 39 meters long and 5.5 metres wide and is the standard size of similar boats and barges that use the French canal system. It is a perfect, tight fit into the lochs. It is decked out with 9 double cabins below deck and a kitchen dining area. Each cabin has its own ensuite. Above deck is a shaded seating area, an outside seating area where meals are generally served during good weather and storage areas for the bikes.
The plan for Saturday afternoon was to negotiate 9 lochs along the canals to eventually enter the Seine River. It is an interesting yet arduous procedure navigating the lochs and attracts a significant crowd of onlookers observing the process every time you work your way through one. Unlike other canal boats we have been on, this French loch system is completely automated and the loch gates and pumps are operated from a central control room somewhere in Paris and relies on the overhead cameras to provide all of the information required by the controllers to operate. Part of the journey was through an underground tunnel 1.8 Km long in almost complete darkness. Eerie indeed.

Once on the Seine, we sailed past central Paris and the Eiffel Tower before eventually reaching our mooring point for the night.

The tour is not full. At the moment there are 9 passengers and 4 crew on board. The crew consists of Captain Fiona, a first mate, Rainier, Annyta the cook and Sietse the bike guide. As well as us, the guests are two Americans, an Italian lady and another couple from Perth. There is also and a couple of young ladies from France and England who are only on board for the weekend.
After dinner we went for a short ride to make any required adjustments to the bikes in preparation for Sunday's first official ride. We'll be heading off to the Palace of Versailles and a ride through the gardens. Most, like us, have visited the Palace before so will not tour inside.
We laughed when we had one of those luxurious river cruise boats pass us with full view of passengers enjoying fine dining in the restaurant. We wondered what they were thinking looking back at us having drinks at a table on the deck. They wouldn't be laughing if they'd seen us an hour later enjoying a magnificent 3 course meal prepared by Annyta.

Now, about the cook. I have to admit I was a bit worried when the soup came out. I was thinking we needed to do a whip around to put in to get her a box of matches. All was good though - it was a Spanish Gazpacho soup meant to be served cold. The rest of the meal was sensational. Salmon with sweet potato chips and veggies followed by chocolate brownie cake straight out of the oven with ice cream. The standard has been set!
Now the bad news. There is no wifi. It looks like I'll need to put these blogs together and ready to post if and when we stumble across internet access along the way. For that reason, they'll probably be big multi day posts with plenty of photos of course. 

Ok, we're back on board after day one riding. It was a pretty easy 37 Km with a few good hill climbs early in the day and fairly easy riding later. There were plenty of breaks with lunch on the lake at the Palace of Versailles, and a visit to St Helenes where we spent a couple of hours touring the former chateau of Napoleon and Josephine. The temperature today was 30 degrees but you wouldn't know it riding through the forests and along the river banks. 

The bikes are great. Whilst fairly heavy, they have exceptional gearing that makes them pretty easy to ride. Chez is on an e-bike that takes all of the effort out of the hill climbs and she is able to get to the front position on those climbs. It's not fair that her legs are getting a gentle workout while mine are going like buggery.
The route was impressive through many parks and forests. As we are not far out of Paris yet, there is still plenty of dismounts needed as we work our way through busy towns. After tomorrow's ride we should be in more rural areas where we can sustain a more regular pace.
It's pretty clear that we're having a ball eh!
Cheers.


Monday 28/5
Hold the bus! Still no internet access so this posting just gets longer.
We've survived another day of 27 degrees and have travelled 50 Km on this Monday. I had good intentions of walking into town from our mooring place to try and find internet access but 3 things stopped me. The first was the Grolsch beer that I needed to rehydrate myself, the 2nd was Annyta's amazing 3 course meal that I wasn't going to miss out on and the 3rd was the fact that the sky's have opened up tonight and there's no way I'm going out in it. Not even Santa Claus would go out in this! Sorry.
Today was good riding. We copped plenty of dog walkers along the river for the first 8 or 10 Km or so but then had a couple of hill climbs. We ended up at the birth place of Lois the 14th but there's not much left there except a restoration of part of the original building and a magnificent elevated view of Paris in the distance. Further up the hill was the St Germain museum and believe me, it was worth the €7.50 to get in. (The mongrels wouldn't have a bar of our seniors cards though!) We spent an hour and a half there before riding on to our lunch spot in the town of Maison La Fetit about 10 Km down the track. We pack a lunch ourselves at breakfast so only have to seek out a decent coffee to top it off. We had about 30 Km to do after lunch on the way to the mooring stop so we only had a couple of brief stops along the way. One was at a village made up of derelict barges that have been connected to services to provide floating accommodation. They even have mail boxes on the river bank for them. Our final stop was at a small pub but as tempting as it was, it was only to fill water bottles. We coasted in and were just enjoying a cool ale when the rain started.
Tomorrow will be a bit different. We sail for an hour or so during breakfast and then do a walking tour of a town. (They can walk while I try to post this) Then there is another short sail before we head off on bikes at midday for a 50km ride.
Here's hoping this gets to you.

Tuesday
Bugger me, the post continues. There was no hope of wifi anywhere this morning. Our morning started with a walk around Pontoise where we were berthed for the night. We were out at 7:00am and there were some steep hills. It was just the 2 of us and we managed to cover a fair bit of distance finding the Cathedral at the top of a hill and a beautiful park in the middle of a suburban area. The narrow streets meandered around the contours of the hills so we started to worry if we were hedging in the right direction to get back to the boat. No drama, we were comfortably back 10 minutes before breakfast.
After breakfast we sailed for a while before mooring at the town of Auvers Sur Oise where Van Gogh lived for the last 2 months of his life. We walked to his grave, a paddock where one of his works was painted and to the house where he lived. The walk was only about an hour but pretty interesting. 

After 2 hours sailing we reached Boran and set off on the bikes. The planned lunch stop was only 12km from the boat at Coy la Foret so you can't have much more of an easy morning than that.
Hold the bus. I think I've found Internet. - To be continued