Woke to thick fog, so no Le Mans start to the morning for the line-up of bateaux, but within half an hour El Spaniard (as we'd nicknamed him, due to his flag) had cast off and disappeared into the mist. We presume he knows what he's doing, or has a deadline that nothing can wait for. Or is a matador and not scared of anything. El fog? Pfff! The rest of us swabbed decks, cleaned windows, had a leisurely breakfast and generally killed time waiting for le broulliar...

A Kiwi, a South African, an Australian and two Englishmen walk into a bar. Sound like a joke? Well, actually it was funny. At the evening Boys' Beer on Wednesday, there we were sitting outside the Brasserie L'Amiral in St Jean de Losne, chatting just like last Wednesday about all things boating. There weren't many others there, but Madame was very apologetic that they had almost run out of beer after an incedibly busy day. I put this down to the two boat-loads o...

Last Friday aftnoon's drive to Liz's parents in south-eastern France was straightforward. Arrived about 5.45 and launched immediately into helping Liz's Dad Reg who we found roped to a tree cutting scrub on an almost vertical bank. He's 83, and I can only hope I'm as fit as that when I'm that age. The weekend was spent mainly attempting to re-roof the carport where we would be parking Van Rouge for the winter. Luckily the weather was very much in our favour - w...

In this blog: naughty Jack goes swimming, Mike and Ross drink beer, we all nearly die, and Liberty flees the nest... Yes, at last, without visible means of support, we set sail on Liberty on a short "shakedown cruise". Not wanting to place ourselves in danger, we waited to do this until our good Kiwi friends Ross and Julia arrived to stay on board as the boat's "guinea pigs". Mean? No, practical :-) I need to know if I call "All hands on deck" that we actually h...

A bit tardy doing blogs recently sorry, but it's been a busy few days, so I will play catch-up... Unisex toilets. Need I say more? The first disconcerting thing about walking into the one at the Toisin D'Or shopping mega-mall in Dijon last week was the 18 year-old girl waiting just inside, possibly (hopefully) for a friend to come out. I don't know about you but this had an instant and suppressing effect on my need to urinate, as did the row of men's urinals in ...