It's 4 A.M. and All's Well

The joys of jet lag--we're now in Florida and wide-awake way too early this first morning back. But of course, this is always the case when we're adjusting to a 6-hour time zone change, so we know what to expect. Our biggest challenge at the moment is having to wait until 8 a.m. for the (finally) newly reopened City's Bistro to start serving breakfast. But all truly is well, because our travel day was an easy experience--no nightmare airport scenarios such as those experienced by so many travelers this past summer--and even better, we returned to a home and city undamaged by Hurricane Ian. Things could have been so much worse, and our hearts go out to those south of us in the Fort Myers area who took the brunt of the storm.

Our last week in France continued to consist of days of boat preparation interspersed with more relaxed pursuits, including:

Port neighbors Steve and Rosie were kind enough to drive us to the boating supply store in Compiegne on Wednesday, September 25, so that we could pick up some supplies we had ordered to complete the winterization of the boat.

Debating next moves after a great lunch at La Brasserie Parisienne
in Compiegne

On Friday, September 30, we made our way to Paris for a last visit before our return to Florida. No visits to "significant" sites this time, we just wandered through neighborhoods familiar and unfamiliar, to-and-from a mid-day meet-up and lunch with our New Zealand boating friends John and Margaret. By the time we got back to the boat we had walked nearly 10 miles.

One of the entrances to the Assemblee Nationale, where the lower legislative chamber of
the French parliament meets. The building is the Palais Bourbon, built in the 1720's for 
a daughter of Louis XIV, and much modified under Napoleon I to complete its transition 
from residence to a building suitable for government functions

The beautiful Gare de Lyon, one of six train stations serving Paris. Built in 1900, it is a perfect example of what we envision when we think "classic European train station" 

Lon enjoyed the sun as we walked across the
Seine on Pont Alexandre III

The Art Deco imagery of the iconic
Maxim's of Paris Restaurant

Paris in microcosm: monumental sculptures, the Eiffel Tower, lots of traffic, and leaves just
beginning to turn their fall colors. You may think that the cyclist in the photo is taking his life
in his hands, but he is probably quite safe--Paris has added a lot of bike lanes
 since we last visited in 2019

Catching up with New Zealanders John and Margaret at Les
Antiquaires in Paris. When we went our separate ways after leaving
Amiens on the Sommes in mid-August, they cruised north toward Belgium
and the Netherlands and we went south toward Paris. They were in 
Paris for a few days prior to flying home on October 4

We again walked through Paris' premier leisure port, The Arsenal,
and it was more crowded with boats compared to early September. The winter
 residents are apparently making their way back "home"

The past weekend was a mixture of sun and rain, laundry, cleaning, last walks around the Cergy neighborhood, and a Saturday night "farewell" dinner with Aussies Steve and Rosie at the local Italian restaurant.

Autumn's carpet of leaves is evident at the finish line for the "run-swim" portion of a 
quasi-triathlon being held in the large park across the river

It was not an especially warm day for the swimming event

On Sunday the village of Cergy closed off the Rue du Port for a large "brocante", essentially a big flea market. I wonder if any of the attendees went home with the stuffed fox that had seen better days

The salon of C.A.R.I.B. III, ready for its long winter sleep: cleaned and straightened, 
cabinet doors propped open for ventilation, curtains closed, appliances powered down.
Here's hoping the spiders don't create too much of a mess when we're gone

We left the port on Monday for an airport hotel. A local express bus
conveniently runs from near the Cergy Prefecture train station to
Charles de Gaulle Airport. We were planning to walk to the bus stop,
but Steve was nice enough to offer us a ride

Much as we recognize that we've yet to have a summer turn out the way we planned, that hasn't kept us from starting to talk about what route we would like to cruise next year. We've gone so far as to make a reservation with the Arsenal Port in Paris for a 3-week stay in June, but since no money has to change hands yet it's a low-risk proposition. Meanwhile, as much as we enjoyed our time in Europe, it's nice to be home and we're looking forward to our Florida activities. Which means . . . the blog is now suspended until next year. 

The Pace Slows

With our UK trip done, and no day-to-day cruising, our past week has definitely been spent at a relatively relaxed pace. We've had some glorious, sunny early fall days here, so we are trying to take advantage of the mostly dry weather and complete as much as we can of our exterior painting and staining projects. It's not a huge amount of work--the painting is basically just touch-ups, repairing a few scrapes that we acquired as we cruised; and the staining merely some light sanding and a couple of coats of fresh stain on the one wooden exterior door we have on the boat. 

The docks adjacent to the boat are pretty short, so Lon has
to use the dinghy to get access to the hull
for the spot painting

Last Sunday, September 18, the need to complete projects warred with the desire to have fun and explore the area on a beautiful day, and "fun" won. 

Our first stop of the day, a 4-km bicycle ride away from the port, was Axe Majeur (Major Axis), a huge work of public "urban sculpture." Meant to be both monumental and a highly symbolic linkage of the "new town" of Cergy-Pontoise to the historic Parisian axis, it was the vision of the Israeli sculptor Dani Karavan. Work began on the site in the early 1980's and reached its current level of completion in 2009. This area of landscaped walks and contemporary art includes 12 stations stretching over 3 kilometers.

The portion of the Axe Majeur from the red pedestrian bridge to the "Twelve Columns"

The view of the high rises of "La Defense" on the perimeter of Paris, as seen from the
level of the "Twelve Columns"

Lon demonstrates the amount of ascending and descending
required to get from the Twelve Columns back to our
bicycles on a lower level

Later that same day we cycled to the nearby town of Pontoise, the other major founding town of the "new town" of Cergy-Pontoise. Pontoise is built along the Oise River, and we had cruised by the town, but didn't stop, on our way to Port Cergy. Like Cergy, Pontoise has an historic core surrounded by relatively new development, but it is older and larger than Cergy. Pontoise dates from Roman times, and its many vestiges of the past--such as medieval lanes, convents, churches, museums, and a castle--led to it being awarded the "City of Art and History" label in 2006.

A bit of serendipity for us was that our visit to Pontoise coincided with the annual European Heritage Days. This is typically a weekend in late September when many towns throughout France develop programs to highlight their historic and artistic heritage, and access to various historic sites and museums is often available at no charge. Such was the case in Pontoise, and we wished we had arrived earlier in the day to take better advantage of what was being offered. Still, we did our best in the time available and saw enough to make us want to go back when we have more time.

Vestiges of the old city fortifications. The old castle lay at the upper level, but was 
demolished in the mid-1700's. "Castle Park" currently occupies the site

The view of the Oise River and "left bank" Pontoise as seen from Castle Park

For Heritage Days, the city opened access to what was a 
small limestone quarry for the castle, and later a storage
site. Here, Lon climbs up the 66 steps of the 15th
century staircase that allows access to the old quarry

A tour guide addresses a rapt audience inside the church
of the 17th C Carmelite monastery (in French, unfortunately for us).
Although the nuns were temporarily expelled during the French
 Revolution, they returned in 1803 and the Carmel of Pontoise is the
 oldest Carmel in France still active within its original walls

A bit of intelligent business location, with butter,
eggs, and cheese (on the left) being sold 
next to a bakery (on the right)

The view over old Pontoise from Castle Park. 
The Saint-Maclou Cathedral, dating to the 12th C, is the high point
 in that part of the old medieval town

Nearer to our current "home" is the vast parkland around the artificial lakes on the opposite side of the Oise from Port Cergy. The lakes lie at one end of Axe Majeur. It's a great place for taking a daily walk away from traffic. It is set up for an enormous number of water-based activities, so the fact that it's not very lively now that summer is over is no surprise. However, on my walk on Friday I did see several school groups taking advantage of some of the activities that didn't require water immersion.

It's difficult to see against the trees, but there is actually one person crossing over this water on 
a zipline, and two youngsters "cycling" across the water on a taut line (their small reflections
are visible in the water about mid-photo)

We're also happy to be able to break up the work with visits
with our Australian boat neighbors Steve and Rosie

Although it would be nice to have another "fun" Sunday, we need to finish the exterior painting today, because the weather forecast for the next week looks uniformly wet. Great news for replenishing water levels, not so great for doing outside activities. We are planning a trip into Paris on Friday, where we will meet New Zealand boating friends John and Margaret for lunch and a "catch-up" on post-Amiens adventures.

We're also keeping an eye on the weather back in Florida and hoping that Hurricane Ian doesn't create too many problems.

Farewell to the Queen

It is sometimes said that timing is everything, and so it was for us, that we were scheduled to be in London as commemoration activities for Queen Elizabeth 2 were taking place.

The morning of Wednesday, September 14, saw us driving from Totnes to Exeter to return the rental car (with a big sigh of relief and a blessed absence of scratches and dents), followed by a relaxing train ride from Exeter to central London. By 2 p.m. we were in our hotel room near the King's Cross/St. Pancras train stations (convenient for our Eurostar on Thursday morning) and watching the procession on TV as Queen Elizabeth's body was moved from Buckingham Palace to Westminster Hall. Nicely rested up, we put on our walking shoes and set out for those centers of activity. Walking the 3-miles one-way had its advantages--avoiding crowds on the subway and giving us the opportunity to reacquaint ourselves with London neighborhoods.

Bloomsbury neighborhood-no problem. Crowds started getting heavier as we worked our way into Soho and Mayfair.

We passed this guy--Eros on the fountain in Piccadilly
Circus--as we walked through Soho toward Green Park

The new and the old--that was my impression as we walked. It's been
over two decades since we were in this part of London, and there's
been so much change that it did not feel at all familiar to us

Lon's thought had been that we'd work our way to the gates at Buckingham Palace to see all the commemorative flowers and messages that had been left. What we didn't realize was that those items had been cleared away from the fencing and moved to Green Park. Ah, well, after the summer we've had we're used to having to go with "Plan B." And Plan B was really no plan at all. There were so many people and so much security that it was just easiest to follow the crowd along whatever pathways had been mapped out. 

Defying "keep moving, keep moving" momentarily to snap this
view down The Mall toward the Admiralty Arch (in the other
direction was Buckingham Palace)

Flowers and notes surrounded the bases of many trees in Green Park

A brief pause as we made our way toward Buckingham Palace
(upper left of photo)

This is what "humans as lemmings" looks like 

Big crowds around the Palace of Westminster (also
known as the Houses of Parliament) and the iconic
Big Ben clock in the tower

In the middle is Westminster Hall, the oldest building in the Parliament
complex, and almost the only part of the ancient (11th C) Palace of
Westminster which survived a devastating fire in 1834. It is in this
hall that Queen Elizabeth 2 was lying in state

We had hoped to walk onto Westminster Bridge to catch a glimpse of the people lining up to pass through the Hall to pay their respects, but it was absolutely packed, and we decided that we'd had enough of crowds for one day.  As we headed north along Whitehall to find a place for dinner and then get back to our hotel, we were surprised at how relatively quickly the crowds thinned out. 

"The Women of World War II" monument on Whitehall/Parliament Street. Most people were being
kept to the sidewalks, but even so, it was not too difficult to walk. A wreath with the Queen's photo
was left at the base of the monument

  

A quiet shopping arcade in Covent Garden

After 8 miles of walking, and a lovely dinner at "The Alchemist" in Covent Garden, we were back at the hotel. Although we had to get up a bit early the next morning for our 8 a.m. Eurostar train, it was an "easy-peasy" kind of day. It was maybe a 10-minute walk from hotel to train station, fast processing through immigration at the station, and after an on-time, 2+ hour train ride we were back in Paris. A British rail strike previously announced for the 15th had been cancelled due to the death of the Queen, so everything ran smoothly.

We are now down to our final 2 weeks in Europe, and the cooler temperatures of autumn have arrived. We will be mixing "business with pleasure," with some small boat projects, including preparation for winter storage, and some local sightseeing.

Back to reality--folding myself into a pretzel on the helm in order to
tape window frames in preparation for painting the salon and 
lower passageway. One day of prep and one day of painting--all done!

Wet 'n Wild

No, this is not a blog posting about spring break in Cancun, merely a synopsis of our time in the UK. To be fair, while we have had some rain during our time in England's southwest, it hasn't been nearly as wet as the weather forecasts led us to believe it would be. Wild? Yes, in two ways.

First, wild is the only way to describe some of our driving experiences on the oft-times very narrow roads in Devon and Cornwall. The two-lane roads are not particularly wide in many cases, but the one-lane roads--hemmed in by hedges and/or rocky walls--have been truly cringe-worthy at times. There's a whole version of road etiquette associated with who should be backing up when two cars meet on a one-lane road. Speed limits may give one permission to go 60 miles an hour, but that doesn't mean it's a good idea. Add the factor of an American (Lon) driving a stick shift from a completely different side of the car than he is used to, and a 30-minute drive can feel like an hour or two. It's left us rather exhausted some days.

A relatively wide one-lane road on our wet drive to Falmouth in Cornwall.
I probably had my eyes shut on the really skinny lanes

Second, we made an attempt to get away from towns and villages and managed to have some wonderful walks in the "wild" great outdoors. 

While we can't help bumping into the "historic" in a place as old as England, we feel as though we're on "vacation" at the moment. I've been content to simply enjoy the atmosphere and not obsess about retaining too much information about where we've been and what we've seen. It was great to see my friend Kitty and her husband Stan in Bath, and the sightseeing they treated us to was incidental to the "catching up" we were able to do. That said, we've seen our share of the following over the past 9 days:

Churches. As in France, one can't move without encountering a historic church. We saw many in the past few days, including:

St. Mary's Church, Totnes (Devon), 15th C

Cathedral of Truro (Cornwall). Quite new in the scheme of
things, it was constructed in the late 1800's

Here we are with Kitty and Stan at the Wells Cathedral. Consecrated
in 1239, in size it falls in the mid-range of English cathedrals

Castles. We love castles--as does the English Heritage group, which is the custodian of over 400 historic monuments, buildings, and sites. On our first afternoon in Cornwall we stopped by Tintagel, in legend said to be the place where King Arthur was conceived. In the 12th century the legend inspired Richard, Earl of Cornwall, to build his castle there. The ruins of that castle along the western coast of England feel a bit "touristy", but it was still fun to wander the site.

Modern-day Tintagel village in the background (upper left), with the ruins of the 12th century castle
spread over the mainland and a headland connected to the mainland by a newly built bridge.

St. Materiana's Church, 11th or 12th century

View from the headland to the north

The ruins of an early medieval settlement on the headland

One of King Henry VIII's finest coastal fortresses, which defended Cornwall against foreign invasion from Tudor times to the Second World War, was located in Falmouth (our base in Cornwall).

Pendennis Castle, built around 1540, and much still original from
that period. More a defensive fortification than what might typically be thought
of as a "castle", it guarded the entrance to Falmouth harbor

The entrance to Falmouth harbor as seen from Pendennis Castle

Our base in Devon, Totnes, had its own castle remains, this a castle first built just after the Norman invasion of 1066. Its builder was one of William the Conqueror's commanders in the Norman campaign. The original 11th century castle was an earthwork and timber construction. Although the earthworks still survive, the current stone wall at the top is from the early 13th century and an extensive reconstruction about 100 years later. 

Totnes Castle

The view over Totnes from the castle

Towns. Towns and villages in Cornwall and Devon can be rather overrun with tourists, but they're hard to avoid (nor would one want to). They have some fun things to see, and they generally have a great collection of restaurants.

Our base in Cornwall was the coastal town of Falmouth. The town is relatively "young" for this region, having only been established in the early 1600's. Falmouth is a seafaring town. It has the 3rd largest natural harbor in the world. 

Downtown Falmouth, with pennants left over from a nautical
event the week before we arrived

Panorama of Falmouth harbor

On our drive to Falmouth, we stopped briefly in the village of Port Isaac. It's a small village that gained fame thanks to being the shooting location for a British television show called "Doc Martin" (now going off the air after 18 seasons.)

The tide's out in Port Isaac harbor, and the boats are sitting on
the mud. The village had some nice old Tudor-era buildings,
but we didn't stay long

Our base in Devon was the town of Totnes, rather wealthy in the Middle Ages, but these days not much known by those outside of England. On our drive between Cornwall and Devon we stopped for lunch in the seaside town of Dartmouth. Both towns--Dartmouth and Totnes--still have a Tudor-era "vibe" to them due to the relatively large number of "listed" buildings from that era in each town. 

The Cherub Inn, a pub, is the oldest building in 
Dartmouth, and dates to the 1300's

Dartmouth Harbor

Dartmouth Inner Harbor at low tide 

A cat owner in Totnes has created steps for their pet to
exit the house

The Dart River is tidal from Dartmouth to Totnes

An Elizabethan market is held in Totnes on Tuesdays during summer
and early fall

The Guildhall is built on the foundations of a 1000-year-old
priory, and has been the seat of Totnes city functions since the 1500's

Walks. We had two "days out" walking that we really enjoyed. The first was along a stretch of the Cornish South West Coast Path and the second was in Dartmoor National Park in Devon.

Lon on the South West Coast Path

A panoramic coastal view from Guddens Point

Praa Beach. A surfing competition was being held the Saturday of our walk

We could see St. Michael's Mount on its tidal island in Mount's Bay. The causeway to the island is 
under water at high tide. We wanted to visit, but it was closed on Saturday (the only day we
had available), so we had to satisfy ourselves with the view of it from Guddens Point

The ruins of Wheal Prosper tin mine. Cornwall has quite a history
of mining, but this particular mine only functioned for about
six years in the 1860's

The moors of Dartmoor National Park were the inspiration for Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes tale "Hound of the Baskervilles." Dartmoor is a vast moorland in the county of Devon, dotted with tors (granite rock formations), Bronze Age stone circles, and the remnants of abandoned medieval villages. I was expecting a swamp-like environment, but what we saw in the area we were in was nothing like that. What is interesting is that the roads leading into the park have cattle grates, because the local farmers are allowed to graze their livestock on the moors. 

Watch out for the livestock! As if driving the narrow roads wasn't difficult enough, it is necessary to exercise care for the animals near/on the roads:

Cows 

Ponies

Sheep

The weather cooperated and we had a great time walking over some iconic landscapes.

One of the granite outcroppings at Haytor

A second outcropping at Haytor. We climbed this one (if you can see
two little specks on top of the rock, those are people). It looks pretty 
impressive from this side, but before anyone gets too amazed that
we scaled something of this magnitude, consider that it's easier to 
access from its other side

The "back" side of the rock seen in the last photo. Not so far from the ground, and . . . 

. . . the rock face had some steps carved into it and some metal
bars for hand holds, so . . . 

. . . the climb was manageable for me as well

It was a great view from the top

Besides just walking in the moorland, we also stopped to see the
prehistoric settlement of Grimspound. The stone circles are remnants of
round houses in a Late Bronze Age (1450-700 B.C.) settlement

Lunch after walking was in the Tavistock Inn in Poundsgate, 
the oldest section of which dates back to the 1300's

Today was rainy most of the day, so we stuck close to Totnes. We leave Devon tomorrow and will spend the night in London before catching the Eurostar to Paris on Thursday. The death of Queen Elizabeth II on September 8 has, of course, been much in the news here. We signed a Book of Condolence at the church in Falmouth, and such books seem to be in all churches and other public places as well. Because of her death, the railway strike originally planned for Thursday has been cancelled, but we will be curious to see what London is like when we arrive, because her body is being moved to Westminster Hall tomorrow. Huge numbers of mourners are expected to line up to see the Queen lying in state. Our departure train station is a few miles from Westminster, so we don't expect to be directly affected, but we'll decide when we get there whether we want to get closer to Westminster just to get a sense of the atmosphere in the city.

A memorial to the Queen at the church 
in Dartmouth