Je suis arrive en France, enfin! Oui vraiment, yesterday I finally arrived at the small inland port of St Jean de Losne in Burgundy after a very long and tiring motorbike ride from Caen on the French north-west coast.

This has been a much looked-forward-to destination because it's here that there are many boats for sale, and a major part of our Grand Plan is to buy a boat and live on the French canals and rivers for a year or so while exploring France at an escargot's pace. For the last few months Liz and I have trawled the Internet to see what's for sale, and what our money can buy.

We'd identified about half a dozen likely bateaux, and this afternoon I set off to take my first close-up look at them. In the picture is the marina of the boat brokerage, and all the boats along the pontoon in the foreground are for sale. There's everything from huge gin palaces to cute Dutch tjalks (pron. "challacks") over 100 years old.

It was about 30 degrees, but it wasn't just the heat that brought me out in a sweat; what wasn't obvious from the Internet descriptions is just how much work some of the older boats need, so it wasn't long before I had crossed most of them off my list. On the other hand I did find some others that might fit the bill - including one being sold by a Kiwi couple - so tomorrow I will go back and take a closer look.

Liz arrives in France in two days, so by then I hope to have a short list of boats to show her. Watch this space!