France Holiday - Part One | Phil Long's blog

France Holiday - Part One

by Phil Long

I write this on day four of my holiday, on my bed in the mid-section of my mum and dad’s boat - The Falcon. So far the weather has been… confused. It’s rapidly switched from rain to sun to rain again with somewhat surreal timing punctuated most recently by a sudden torrent yesterday upon opening the gate that opens on to the jetty the boat is mored upon.

The journey down was uneventful and quick enough - on the England side I had plenty of rest - with an hour at services and two hours before the ferry (and of course 2 hours on the ferry to Dunkerque itself). On the France side it took around 4 hours to get from Dunkerque to the boat in Le Mans - I avoided stopping for anything other than diesel to get to the boat and therefore bed asap. We arrived just after 1am.

On Saturday we got some food in - including masses of burger-type stuff (only better) and a few meals that would suffice should barbeques not be possible (which hasn’t been possible yet). After that we had a wander in to town and went to the Irish bar myself, Tufty and Carl frequented last year when we brought the boat to Le Mans.

That evening we went to watch the Nuit de Chimeres - lights projected on to the Roman walls of Le Mans and the Cathedral, as well as a couple of light shows elsewhere in the old part of the city. We didn’t get to see it all though - so that leaves something for another evening.

On Sunday we went for a walk along the canal, with my intention to find the part where the bank had collapsed - most of the tow path was fine but eventually we reached a part that was impassible using conventional weapons. That is to say, I was wearing shorts and there were a LOT of stinging nettles on a clearly rarely-passed section. We briefly looked for an alternative route before deciding we had no option but to return to the boat. For the rest of the afternoon we just enjoyed the sun. We had some beer, I aged (it was my 30th) and I accidentally ruined the ending of ‘The Stolen Earth’ for Tufty when he implied that missing Top Gear was in some way comparable to missing the series finalé of Doctor Who. I pointed out the last episode didn’t finish with Jeremy Clarkson starting to regenerate…whoops. We finished the evening watching my back-catalogue of ‘Play Value’ Podcasts on my MacBook Pro.

Monday was pretty uneventful - bit of shopping. Paul, Luci and I went in to town and picked up endless leaflets from the tourist office. After that Luci and Paul went for a run while I went for a drive to find out what the canal looked like around Spay. The water is low, though doesn’t look too low for The Falcon to manage, but I guess it wouldn’t be wise to risk it. Once back we ate (Paul did a decent Bolognese with meatballs) and I went through the leaflets planning what we could spend the holiday doing - having bought a map on my adventure to Spay.

Today we went to the Abbaye de L’Apau - which is rubbish. It’s been restored but looks almost fake and too modern. On the plus side though there were deer in the grounds and I got a few photos. This evening we’ve eaten some of the burgers we bought on Saturday and if the weather holds up we may go and see the remaining light shows we missed. Tomorrow I’m hoping for a (relatively) early start to go on a bit of an exploration down the Sarthe to an active Abbey that we passed previously when heading upstream to Le Mans.