Slow travel

26/9/2018 Our week on Le Boat ended in Jarnac. A fine town bordering the R Charente,  warehouses storing wine, cognac- this morning we walked past a gleaming tanker pumping its cognac cargo into a warehouse, as we went to retrieve the car from the rambling gated compound of nettles, rusting machinery, trailered boats. Yesterday we moored early afternoon at Bussac, to walk into the village to a large abbaye - cathedral, citerne, gardens - a sleepy medieval treasure. The boulangerie supplied us with baguettes and glazed pomme tartes, the apple slices delicately ridged. A baguette vending machine outside, for after hours supply. The village houses with vegetable gardens festooned with bright orange pumpkins, artichokes, fennel, tall red tomatoes. Near the river, a graveyard stand of trees, scythed by a tornado, splintered trunks, fallen giants, some  bowed away from the wind. Approaching Jarnac, the last lock, bordered by the fine municipal gardens, drowsing in the late afternoon sun.

24/9/2018 Couldn't attach these before. Chateauneuf is an old sleepy town, many buildings needing maintenance, a number of houses empty. French inheritance law may be styming efforts to sell - all beneficiaries have to agree - so some houses appear to be simply abandoned. This is common to every village, town we've seen along the Charente,  as well as in the Dordogne. Such a pity, the shutters unpainted, some de roofed, vegetation covered. The flight to the cities, mechanised farming? The distillery we visited has several acres devoted to red wine production (most grapes are for their cognac), and the harvest was to take place the next day- now a one day affair, with the machine harvester. And from rural France to northern England,  country Australia - the same picture. I'll stop before depression sets in!

23/9/2018 We join our Oz friends on their white cruiser, for a week's cruising. From Jarnac we've motored east up the R Charente, throigh cognac country. A wide slow river, tree fringed, small hamlets, a few towns. A cognac distillery a must. Last night in Chateauneuf, a splendid meal some mile or so on the edge of town,  a laughing walk back in the late evening. The locks on the river are manually operated, involving a small wheel to raise the paddles, a larger one for the gates.  It is quite a good arm workout. Our fibreglass boat is skittiah to handle, so has to be moored tightly during locking. Tonight we moored about 7.30, light fading, at a pontoon landing outside a taverna, coloured lights, river view verandah, and delight of delights, a singer-guitarist. He was wonderful, many of us ventured onto the dance floor, finally staggering back to the boat near midnight.  An accidental magical evening.

23/9/2018 Built in 1504, Little Moreton Hall lies in farmland, a remarkable, lovely place, dreaming in its moated protection. The round oak table dates from the 16th C too - one can imagine taking tea there, sun drenched in the bay window. An added attraction for boaters is its accessibility from the canal - a couple of miles from our mooring, following ancient footpaths, along hedge lines, over stiles. Bliss. The  weekend a rich delight of renewing boater friendships, staying on a wild treed hillside, high above the Cheshire landscape, a bird's eye view of the patchwork fields, stitched together by hedges, woodland dotted. And a lovely coda to the weekend, visiting delightful cousins for a feast of reminiscence, hopes, family.

23/9/2018 In the heart of the Dordogne, even the barns monumental in size, stone work, beams peg nailed, thick walls, a rural landscape with small hamlets, cattle,  corn, sunflowers, hay, winding roads. One morning we take a track on foot to a nearby village, climbing gradually through woodland,  to the boulangerie, for our daily baguette.  The tracks are maintained by a local volunteer group, maps available at fhe mayor's office.  Nearby a memorial to the fallen, in Algeria, Morocco. Yesterday we drove to Brantome, to a fine outdoor market, to shop up for our week here- local produce abounding, with wild boar salami, pate, a fine cheese produced by nuns which is washed in walnut oil, figs, crisp sweet radishes - a cornucopia of fresh foods. The village is bounded by rivers, an abbey dating back to the 8th century backed against a limestone cliff where the first monks lived in caves.

11/9/2018 Travelling north west up the Trent,  the opposite direction we came in May, at the beginning of this journey.  Through the Potteries, past the centuries old bottle shaped kilns,  moored the night at Lake Weston,  formed partly from mining subsidence. A dash - at 3.5 mph - to the Harecastle Tunnel,  taking the canal about 2 miles under the outlier hills of the Pennines. This is a one way tunnel, managed by the Canal and River Trust, so with life jacket on the Cap'n,  the rear doors closed behind him (helmsmen have drowned stepping back off a boat in a tunnel, through disorientation), headlight on, we just made the last passage. And so back to the Macclesfield,  where the journey started.