Meaux

Seascapes Travel Log
Michael Grew
Sun 3 Jul 2011 19:14
Meaux 01.07.2011  48:57:41N  02:52:88E
Awoke to another pleasant morning. After breakfast I got the bikes off the aft deck and we went for a ride down  the tow path to a large park that the tourist information staff said was a hundred hectares in size and had lovely trees and flowers in it. When we got there it was nothing like we imagined. It consisted of a series of small lakes and swamps that had wild flowers growing around them. A series of tracks had been laid around the lakes, some of which were on elevated pontoons over the swampy bits. We never did see the lovely trees supposedly there. Back at the boat I decided to do some maintenance on my bike on the pontoon. I had no sooner started than a guy from New Zealand came up to me and asked me move my boat across to a different pontoon so he could get a cruiser in that was the size of an aircraft carrier. I was very tempted to tell him, “No” ( amongst other things) but he did ask nicely and offered to help pull my boat over to the other side so I relented and agreed and my boat was duly moved. The ‘Ark Royal’ took up station very serenely and I was surprised to see that it was being helmed by the guy’s wife ( no I am not being sexist, very few women like manoeuvring big boats in a tight spaces). I commented on this to the guy afterwards and he said one of the reasons he married her was because she was the only woman he had ever met who could reverse a large loaded farm trailer into a barn (obviously true love!). I introduced him and his wife, to the two elderly Dutch couples and jokingly told them that they were real troublemakers. (One the Dutch guys had accidently soaked Maureen with the water hose when we had got back from the bike ride and in the panic to turn off the tap, my bike nearly got knocked off the pontoon.) We told all the people on the pontoon about the Spectacular and everyone said they would probably go to it. We were invited on to the flight deck of the ‘Ark Royal’ for drinks and nibbles (Blimey looking down on to our boat from that height, she didn’t half look small). Around 20:00hrs we left them and walked up into town and had a nice meal in one of the creperies, before making our way up to the Cathedral for the Spectacular, which started at 22:30hrs.. It was excellent, it was a series of scenes depicting the history of events around the cathedral from medieval times through to WW2. There was a cast of over 500 people and about half a dozen or so horses. I think Maureen got more out of it than I did as it was all in French ( I am limited to “oui, non and merci”) One particular scene was very realistic it was a scene from the Napoleonic wars, groups of soldiers huddled around camp fires singing whilst snow cannons were creating a blizzard. The audience was already cold, as there was a very cold wind blowing straight on to the grandstand. This scene was after another very realistic one of six protestants being burnt at the stake. (very disturbing that was!) The show finally finished at midnight, and we scurried back to the boat to get a cup of hot chocolate and sit in front of the fan heater to thaw out.