Meaux
Seascapes Travel Log
Michael Grew
Fri 1 Jul 2011 10:46
Meaux 30.06.2011 48:57:41N 02:52:88E
09:00hrs the Capitainerie brought us croissants, a baguette and a souvenir (a small white plastic box on a keyring with first aid plasters and antiseptic wipes inside) with the marina’s name on it. That was very nice of her. We left about an hour later and pottered slowly up to the large town of Meaux, arriving at 11:15hrs. We did our usual and walked up into the town and found the tourist information office and there found out that there was another “Spectacular” being staged over the weekend. So we went to another office and bought tickets. (let’s hope it will be better than the first “Spectacular” we suffered). We walked back to the boat for lunch. A Dutchman arrived on the pontoon on a foldup bike and asked how much it was to moor there. We told him and he said he was going to cycle back down the river and bring his and his mate’s boat and moor up beside us. Sure enough about an hour later two large motor cruisers arrived and had great difficulty in getting alongside the pontoon finger. The first boat crashed into the end of the finger twice putting large scratch marks on his beautiful navy blue hull. The problem was caused by a strong cross wind that was acting on the high superstructure, blowing the boats sideways. The other problem was that neither skipper was very adept in boat handling and made excessive and unnecessary use of bow thrusters. Neither of the couples seemed to find their arrival at all unusual, or worrying. All four (all in their late seventies I would think) had a very good sense of humour and treated it as bit of a joke. I hope I can be as fit and able as this four are, when I get to their age ( and no that’s not any time soon!!). We then went for a walk up to the huge 12th century cathedral and found a huge crowd of people outside and uniformed police at all the nearby road junctions. It was a funeral for a young man (looked about 35yrs in a photograph) that was obviously very popular. The flowers that were on the car and in the cathedral were stunning. We then walked back to boat chatted to the Dutch until they went off to a restaurant for dinner, we had dinner and then read until it was bedtime. Today’s weather has been very pleasant, bright but not too hot or humid.