“Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing – absolutely nothing – half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.”
~Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows
I’ve read about people who live, full or part time, on barges (houseboats to some) and travel on the European canals. It sounds like something that would be wonderful, but with our lack of experience with boats, probably out of reach. It is, however, on our dream list of things to do some day. This trip to France gave us that chance to not only spend a short time on a barge, but to meet another online friend and fellow writer and her husband.
We were thrilled when Sandra said she and Neville would be near Dijon while we were in Melisey. “Near” is in this case a relative term. They were near compared to Chicago or England, but still about 2 1/2 hours from us. We thought that trip might be longer when the river was so high that the mooring they’d planned to use was covered, but we set out in the morning with borrowed cell phone in purse (ours wouldn’t work properly in France, no matter what Verizon had told us) so that we could get in touch for the final arrangements.
A call, in Sandra’s lovely English tones, told us the water was down enough, which cut half an hour or so off our trip and we arrived a bit after noon. The river was in full spate but lovely.
This, that and the other thing 