To err is human, to communicate you need simcards

Tuesday 26 May
You've gotta love the French, though sometimes it's a bit hard. First task today was validation of my bank card, which I achieved painlessly at the nearby bank, having failed to do so or even work up the courage to try by telephone in Australia or NZ, with or without assistance of a kind fiancée who I'm sure would have been glad to help. Anyway, that was good.
Then I sought an sfr (equivalent of Telstra) shop. It's very pleasant wandering streets of St Malo, which clearly the authorities want the visitor to enjoy as long as possible, to which end they provide very few street signs, which certainly adds to the mystery and suspense, as well as the duration. By a little management and some luck (and without functioning electronic navigation aids), I reached 37 rue Ville Pépin, St Malo, which the sfr website had proclaimed as the location of a magasin espace sfr. There was a super spiffy friendly sign saying that the shop had been relocated and giving the names of the lovely staff ready to serve me but not actually disclosing the new address. Perfect.
I then visited the lovely Vincent, who had had charge of Mathilde over the winter, and who was surprised when I said i wanted to transport her by trailer this Thursday. My email of 18 May to him had said, and I QUOTE: "I look forward to seeing you next week, say 25 or 26 May. I hope we can then finalise arrangements for a trailer to transport Mathilde to the mouth of the Seine on Thursday 28 May. I suppose that there are boat ramps in or near Honfleur so that Mathilde may be launched from the trailer." This made me wonder which part of the word Thursday he hadn't understood.
He also said that there was a teensy problem with depositing Mathilde in Honfleur, at the mouth of the Seine, as his trailer was not the sort to back into the water, and there was no convenient crane to drop her into it. Passing over the implications of the word "drop," I received with interest his proposal to deliver the boat to Deauville.
After further discussion and testing that my phone would ring when he called it, he promised to get back to me later today. It is now 1734 and I'm totally surprised not to have heard from him.
My afternoon task was to visit an existent sfr shop a good busride (€1.25) away. When trying to top the phone up on the website, i had got the message that it was owned by Monsieur Fi*** Ti***, détenteur de la ligne, who would have to agree. A little over an hour later, the problem was fixed, with the tiny qualification that I didn't have web access on the phone. I had asked the helpful Jonathan (who was not long back from a tour of Australia) to top up both the phone and the iPad, which can be done via coupons bought and printed at an sfr shop. It can be done, that is to say, when the shop's printer is working. So that was a bit of a fail.
After taking the bus back to Intra Muros, as the walled city of St Malo is charmingly called, I bought a coupon at a little shop. Also a sandwich. Back in the hotel, feeling that it had been a long day, I used the coupon to good effect, punching its numbers into the phone's keypad. I believed that my efforts had failed, as I could not immediately reach the interweb on the phone but, no, it was just that the service was slow. Well, I'm used to Malcolm Turnbull's internet performance.
The final step was to use my newly activated bank card to top up the iPad on sfr's website. This I achieved on only the second attempt, supplying my mother's maiden name. No, that's not a flight of fancy: I really did. It must have been the right one, because Pangloss (the iPad) can reach the interweb without using the hotel's wifi.
So that was the forenoon and the afternoon of the first day spent in the one place in France this year.
Next challenge, apart from arranging Mathilde's transport to the Seine or thereabouts: buy a gas cylinder for her stove. I'm sure it will go smoothly.

At the Port de Versailles, River Erdre, Nantes

I visited the place of the dukes of Brittany, of which Nantes was long the capital.

The palace is guarded inter alia by dragons.

The moat

is also guarded.

Carefully took Mathilde's bike on a tram ride to a bike shop for minor treatment, carefully rehearsing the required vocabulary. Alas I failed to think that, it being a Monday, such commercial establishments would be closed. La belle France has her own way of doing things. 

Near here is an Espace Simone de Beauvoir, with many advertisements for discussions of feminism, lesbianism, feminism, lesbianism etc. As it was also closed today, I was spared the decision whether to enter.

I have taken advantage of a slight indisposition of my back to have a couple of bone-lazy days, during which I have been reading three books simultaneously--or alternately, or rotatingly: Dan Brown's Inferno, Edward Rutherfurd's Paris and another thing called Inferno by some Eytie poet or other. 

Nearby is a backwater of the River Erdre, with a heron and a scaringly large storks' nest: I hope I'm not around when the parents are looking for a morsel for the baby.

Patterns

It’s moments like that that remind you of the mediæval belief that men did not have as many ribs as women, because God had taken one of Adam’s to make Eve. I was trying to buy a new simcard in Bordeaux, city of beautiful trams, and was told I needed to supply a rib. I duly went round to a branch of the Crédit Lyonnais, my bank, wondering if they had rules as in the Merchant of Venice, whereby flesh could be taken but no blood spilt. I discovered that it meant some banking code, so neither bone nor blood. Even so, having given the rib to the telephone people, I was not allowed to set up a regular top-up to the simcard by my bank, because I did not have a French address. So all that trouble was in vain for nothing.

Above is a picture of a rib.
It was pleasant to return to Bordeaux and to admire its amazing reptile life.

I am now floating at Meilhan aboard a boat which I washed by high-pressure spray, amazingly effective. Mathilde no longer looks like part of Fangorn Forest, trailing lichen, moss and green beards. A bit different from last year, when I was packing me and preparing Mathilde for hibernation: then I had to get any work in the cabin done by about 11 a.m., after which it became unbearably hot.

Excitement was provided yester at 5.30 p.m. and again this morning at 8, when a loud siren attached to the nearby bridge loudly sirened, as though a whole fleet of RAF bombers was coming. In fact it was a flood warning for the Garonne River, which is some 80 metres away and flowing strongly, at a level well above that of last August, when I swam in it. People here are saying that there has been a lot of rain, which could mean the flooding of parking areas and possibly the camping ground. Fortunately the canal on which we are floating is well above the river, and nobody is suggesting that it is likely to reach anywhere near this level. Plus Mathilde plans to escape to the Loire next week. It’s still an exciting siren. Pics show evidence of strong winds overnight and Mathilde washed on the Canal de Garonne, with the River Garonne flowing swiftly in the background.

I'm still haunted by the Lady with the Hood, though at 23,000 years, she's even older than Froufrou. I see Sydney Opera House borrowed its decoration from her.

We may go for a little cruise over the next day or so. We won’t go far, as we have little petrol and there is no point buying any here before the trip by truck next Thursday. Speaking of Thor, I’m enjoying reading the Dark Age tale the Hammer and the Cross by Harry Harrison, though some of the interactions between the Vikings and the English are not very kind. I’d like to attempt the book Cloud Atlas, having seen the film courtesy of Singapore Air. I’m also doing some editing for my nice client.

Disability in Singapore

Watched a couple of good movies en route to Singapore: The Master, which wasn't at all about Scientology, and Cloud Atlas, and the FSM knows what that was about—but I look forward to watching it again on the next leg. It was a tour de force, with settings including an ante-bellum cotton plantation, a dystopian future with Tom Hanks living a Stone Age existence (some people might approve that fate for him), Hugh Grant as a nauseous politician, Jim Broadbent trying to escape from a walled residence for the aged of whom their families were tired, Hugo Weaving being evil, and TV John going slightly mad. Actors played several roles, so that Hallie Berry (how do you spell that?) was a modern journo and a Stone Age lass on a mission not from God—or was it?

The master in the movie did not write science fiction, so far as we know, but had a great gift for manipulating people—memorable party scene in which everyone was naked, except for the men—and attracting the needy and vulnerable. I assume that his arrest for embezzlement and his acolyte's violence against critics were features of the life of L Ron Hubbard, even though the film was not about Scientology. 

When checking in on Bencoolen Road i was feeling fine, thinking i had coped with the flight quite well but the hotel staff were clearly not impressed, as I was assigned to a room with unfamiliar layout, in which one enters from the corridor straight into a large bathroom, with two emergency buttons, i.e. designed for a person with disability. So far I have refrained from pressing.

While Adam is doubtless enjoying the air-conditioned hotel,  I am lurking in the shade in Singapore's amazing Gardens by the Bay, with stunning artificial trees. Next time I'll make sure to come by night, when there is a light show. Also, the sun will be less strong.

My disability in Singers is in coping with the heat.

Mascaret

Written at Bègles, which is a reasonable port de plaisance some 5 km outside Bordeaux; there is a good cycle path which I have used to get there. There is a good bus and tram service, but the last bus from Terres Neuves (the tram terminus) to Bègles leaves at 8pm. Stick to the bikes. The bloke who runs or helps run the port de plaisance is helpful.

Bordeaux is a lovely city with a great tram network. I went on a guided walk, which I enjoyed, the guide pointing out the many beauties of the city's architecture, including mascarons, the stone images by balconies. I also went to Compas Marin, a nautical shop at the western end of the basin (bassin) in town and bought a proper chart of the southern end of the Gironde (7427L). I tried to buy other Breil guides but no go. I should have bought a tide table.

On 3 August we left Bègles for Blaye, a town on the Gironde with a castle owned by a troubadour I had read. I had also read the Breil guide to the Gironde, but not carefully enough. I thought I knew about tides but, apart from mooring at Bègles, had no experience of tides so fast and with such a range. Of course we went with the tide, which ran fast, and got to Blaye early in the afternoon, mooring at the end of the pontoon, facing the ebb. I went on land, gave the tourist office an exorbitant €20 for the mooring; I was given no receipt (which is very unusual) or warning about the tides: this I find irresponsible; where I live I would have had to sign a disclaimer, undertaking not to sue the authorities if something went wrong. I then went to see my troubadour castle. When I got back to Mathilde the tide had turned (as it does) and water was washing unpleasantly into her stern. When another boat left and yet another moved forward, I turned Mathilde so that she could face the flood, and all was well. After that I saw a small sign at the mooring saying: moor facing the current. I pumped and sponged out Mathilde's bilge—it could have ended badly for her.

By then I had seen what I had wanted to in Blaye. I left around 0500 the following morning, at slack water (which is a very short period). The buoys in the estuary are lit, so I made my way, using the chart, to the mouth of the Dordogne, where I hung around a bit, because the buoys there are not lit. Once in the Dordogne we were doing 16 km/hr, which means the flood must have been about half that, because I chose to go slowly through the water, bearing in mind the debris. We passed a few moorings (shown in Breil) and eventually moored at Libourne, on the river Isle. As I went for a walk away from the pontoon I could see, once on land, the signs saying: don't use this pontoon, it's unsafe. There is another pontoon a hundred or so metres away in the Dordogne itself; it was locked and it was Saturday. Libourne is very pretty, with defences built by the Black Prince (a town can't really hold its head up in this area if it doesn't have defences built by the Black Prince or was not pillaged and burnt by him). Later in the afternoon we went a couple of km up the Isle, which was pretty, though certainly not in the class of the Baïse. The ebb was still flowing, so I anchored mid-stream (I had seen no tourist traffic all day). At 1930 I heard a roar and saw the mascaret coming up; I had time to start the engine and face it, though it was only 20' I mean 2' or so high and would not have done much harm anyway. It's just the terrifying roar that made it sound like 20 feet high. So now I know that: one minute you have the ebb, then next minute you have the mascaret, the water in the Isle has risen by a metre and there is a strong flood. I went back to Libourne, moored and had a drink.

There is a bit of flotsam in these rivers, which bumps against the hull when moored. When Mathilde is moving I like to keep a lookout and move through the water not too fast.

Guys at the river bank at Libourne told me that the mascaret at the mooring was not a big deal, and the pontoon rose with it. I was not sure: it probably would have been all right, but I did not want another cleat pulled out by a sudden wave, perhaps with the boat rising faster than the pontoon.

I could have gone further up the Dordogne but I wimped out and headed back. I got under way so that we would not face the mascaret when moored. We bounced around a bit when it came but it was not a problem at all. Went back to Libourne, moored and waited for the ebb. We left shortly after noon, and soon the current was running at 6 km/hr. I got to the Gironde and hung around for the flood up the Garonne, mooring at Bègles a bit after 8 p.m. At slack water near midnight I moved Mathilde a bit further in, to a pontoon where the current was not so strong. This was for comfort rather than safety. I don't turn Mathilde here, but she is moored facing the flood. A sign at the office gives times for the mascaret, but most days there is none—depending on the moon.

We have the Loire on the agenda for next year. I may have another go at the Dordogne then. I think I would then plan to go from Bègles to somewhere upstream of Libourne in one go, and I would avoid a full moon, i.e. choose a time of lower tidal coefficient.

.................

Back in Meilhan I saw a notaire about my problem with Cathare Marine.

Canal de Garonne--Agen

Mathilde is going strong, having reached beautiful Agen. The only cause for her failure to post is lack of wifi.

Down the Thames to Greenwich

I took a ferry downriver, travelling deck class.
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Past Tower Bridge, holding in its arms has The Shard (Europe's tallest building pending an effort by the French)

Past the building from which John Cleese hung naked, in A Fish Called Wanda

And so to Greenwich and the Cutty Sark

whose bow has a fine entry

and much the same technology as the tall ship James Craig (they were built just five years apart). The main difference is in the colossal amount of government support which Cutty Sark receives--apart from the tiny fact that James Craig actually sails,
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while Cutty Sark rests on her bed of glass.

Who needs the seaside when you have a Thames beach?

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