Montceau les Mines
Seascapes Travel Log
Michael Grew
Wed 7 Jul 2010 09:09
Left the moorings with Claude at 09:30hrs and commenced the very short hop of 17 kilometres (and eight automatic locks- some of which were quite vicious), to the old mining town of Montceau-les-Mines. The only interesting things of note during the journey was to watch the aerobatic displays of various pairs of Red Kites, then I saw a complete fishing rod,reel,line and float in the reeds, but my navigator refused to allow me to turn round and retrieve it!! With Claude we walked (more like a hike!) to the local(?) Le Clerq supermarket and picked up supplies. After dropping off the supplies at the boat all three of us walked up into the town for a much needed icecream. Saw the temperature indicated on the pharmacie wall was 34.5 degrees! About 19:00hrs whilst Claude was on our boat drinking wine, a huge (and I mean HUGE) cruiser with a Swiss flag, came backing up into the port to tie up right behind us. There was just a man and woman on board and she was having trouble getting to the back of the boat due to a large rubber dinghy hanging across the stern, on davits. Straight to the rescue went Batman and Robin (Claude and I) and helped them secure their liner. As a reward the owner, a Swiss/German dentist invited the three of us aboard for some wine and even allowed us on board with just shorts and tee shirts on. We heard a tremendous amount of shouting and blowing of horns, coming from the direction of “Bella Vista” and concluded that Holland had won the semi final of the world cup. (Jakob in fine form). We called over to see Jakob and he was really wound up about some decisions by the referee.