Phil Long’s blog - Teletranone

Good day fine people of the Internerd, an update for you to prove I can occasionally remember to post stuff on here for your…erm…. for you to read.

As I said in my last post, I was going to give you a bit of background on my 2002 holiday. First time out of the UK in around four years…

On the 15th of August, 2002 at 8am I shall be heading off for the fair inland waterways of France avec monsieurs Dom Roberts (Megadom), Aid Bool (Shockbool), Matt Blower (Blodgemos), Darren Quin (Quin-tesson), and Marc Eyres (Eyre-o-bot). We shall be flying out via Easyjet (perhaps these will have jets, unlike Manx Airlines and their turbo-prop nightmare busses) to Charles de Gaulle.

We are going to be going on my mum & dad’s narrowboat, the Falcon, starting from the Paris Arsenal, near the Bastille, and cruising up on the St.Martin canal; one of the purpose built canals of France.

The French waterways are a reversal of our own in many ways - for a start they are still used for a lot of commercial transportation as, indeed, are many waterways in Europe. This means they are not suffering from the same decay as many of the English waterways - and also benefit from investment.

They are also predominately “canalised rivers” - that is to say, they have locks built on them to control the waterflow and channels are dredged for boats to travel in. In England many canals have been built from nothing, or using very small sections of existing watercourses (in most cases though they merely use excess water from nearby streams and rivers).

And also, unlike English canals, many of the systems are automated - including locks that know when you’re coming and prepare themselves, filling or emptying on the touch of a button once you’re in. A far-cry from the windless-operated systems we rely on (which, personally, I find more interesting).

Because of their commercial nature one can’t just hop on a boat and sail about. There are considerable dangers that are present on the French and European system that are not on English canals. For a start - bloody great house-sized cargo barges aren’t likely to smash your boat up if you get in their way; and dangerous wyres are not so common. Therefore, before anybody is able to pilot a boat above the size of a dingy, they must pass some kind of qualification.

In my case this was the CEVNI test (basically a boat version of the written driving test I guess, if I had had to take it ) and go through a day or two’s training in boat handling on the UK system.

This I did in a day, with a fair amount of competence. I got 13 out of 14 questions right. The one I missed was because I lined up the answers wrongly on the paper so wrote B instead of C - so blatent when you see it was two arrows pointing in the same direction with a cross through them. Suprisingly that means “no overtaking”. I learnt a few new things I hadn’t known previously - like getting off banks when you run aground (very handy in a river because there’s more chance of it happening).

I also now get to boss people around and they have to call me ‘Captain’ (well, they don’t HAVE to, but I’ll feel happier if they do, and that means I’m less likely to drown them).

All the paperwork and my, suitably crap looking, passport photo was posted two days ago to the Royal Yachting Association, of which I will now become a member. I’ll get my magic pass back and a lovely A4 certificate to mount on the wall/lose under the bed in around 21 days - er two days before I leave. Yay me!

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