The Start of Our Journey

During my various farewell drink ups and chats with people, I promised to keep in touch and send the occasional note to let you all know how things are going.  I hope you are interested and weren’t just being polite.  For those of you thinking of doing something similar at some time, maybe this will be a useful preview of what to do and what not to do.  Anyway, here goes …

It’s a bright morning in the Port de Plaisance (sounds nicer than “marina” I think) in Calais.  I’m sat aboard La Fulica on the visitor’s pontoon, surrounded by lots of other visiting yotties, mainly Dutch, Belgian and English.  Sue is having a shower in the marina facilities block.  We’ve been here since Monday, when we crossed the Channel from Ramsgate.  We had intended to spend a day in Calais getting “La Fulica” ready for the canals, but when we arrived at the Port de Plaisance we were told by a neighbouring yottie that the Canal de Calais was closed for repair until 1 August.  This is not Gallic bloody-mindedness but inefficiency on our part – it turns out this is part of a planned programme advertised well in advance.

When we can get our act together we’ll probably head out to Dunkirk or St Valery sur Somme and join the canals there, rather than stew in Calais for another week.  In the meantime the time has passed quickly enough, wandering the streets of Calais and chatting to other yotties.  As a whole the English present a depressing prospect in Calais, flapping round the place with their collections of plastic carrier bags and rucksacks full of lager and fags.  Many of them seem to think that France only exists to provide them with cheap drugs and that it is the duty of every Frenchman to direct them to the nearest tabac or hypermarket.

Actually getting here has been harder work than I imagined.  Since giving up work in early May we haven’t stopped.  This has included:

• Early May – launching “La Fulica”.
• Mid May – exchanging contracts on the house.
• Early June – five-day sailing course to get qualifications needed for the French canals.
• Mid June – completion on the house and moving possessions into store.
• May and June – revarnishing the boat and constant arguments with the boatyard at Gillingham about the work they did – they give cowboys a bad name.
• Early July – departure from Gillingham for Limehouse Basin in London and a punishing round of farewell drink-ups.
• Mid July –Limehouse to Ramsgate ready for the trip across the Channel.

There still seem to be a lot of things we haven’t done, but one lesson we have learned is that you will never be completely ready for a journey and if you wait until you are you will never leave.

We’ve already had a lot of good times and met a lot of good people on the way, some of whom keep turning up – a pattern I expect will continue as long as we travel.  Our principal fellow travellers so far have been Bernie and Sarah on their motor barge “Costus” and Geoff and Angie on their barge “Edith”, both of whom we met at Limehouse and again at Ramsgate.  “Edith” is also in Calais and “Costus” is waiting for a weather window to make the passage from Ramsgate.

Sue and I felt we really had to start our journey in London and as I had lived on my sailing barge “Catharina” in Limehouse for a few years, it seemed the obvious place to head for from Gillingham.  Both our Dads have been worrying about our capacity to make our journey to the Med, so we decided to invite them to join us on the trip from Gillingham to Limehouse.  The logistics of organising the Dads ended up being far more complex than getting the boat ready for the trip – collecting them from London and feeding and watering them at a local hotel before the trip, then keeping them occupied on the journey.  We made the trip on 1 July on a pissing wet and grey day, more like February than July, but the Dads had a good time.  Both spent a good deal of time on the helm and I noticed a tendency for my Dad to hug the bank, following each inlet, rather than steering a straight course – then we realised that was because he could only see as far as the bank.

A few years ago my Dad and I took a trip up the Thames in a small yacht to scatter my Mum’s ashes at Greenwich.  Passing Greenwich this time I made a point of lowering our small flag to half-mast for which my Dad gave me a solemn nod of thanks.

It was good to get back to Limehouse.  The place has changed very little since Sue and I lived aboard the barge there.  Still many of the same faces, some having come and gone, some having never gone at all.  My old barge “Catharina” was still in the basin on the same mooring I sold her on, now looking sadly dilapidated.  I love to live on the margin of different things and Limehouse is that sort of place – not quite the City, or the Docklands or the East End.  A home for transient populations of Huguenots, Chinese, Bangladeshis, young City folks ... and Janet Street-Porter, David Owen and the SPD.  Many thanks to all of you who looked in on us and made our time there so much fun.  In the end we had to leave and head for Ramsgate or we would have had to start the round of farewell drink-ups all over again.  This is a problem that has beset many travellers, including one couple that arrived in London with a boat over ten years ago and still haven’t left Ramsgate yet.

We left Limehouse early in the morning on 17th July, Sue’s birthday, intending to make the trip in two stages.  Having got rid of the last of our assets (a ten year old Japanese car) the previous day, this really felt like the start of our journey.  The weather was great but the wind was in the wrong direction for sailing.  However, we made such good progress motoring that we decided to make the trip in a single day, arriving in Ramsgate in the evening to find Bernie from “Costus” waiting on the pontoon.  Next day a couple of motorboats also turned up from Limehouse.

Ramsgate harbour is one big transit camp for visiting boats of all shapes and sizes heading in all directions, Belgians, Dutch, French and English.  It has become a second home for many of the people we know in Limehouse.  There is a small Council block of flats above the harbour, with views of the town and the Goodwin Sands and the French coast and five of the fifteen flats have been bought by folks connected with Limehouse, including the local vicar.  Anyway, we kicked around the town for a few days, waiting for the weather and indulging in the popular pastime of winding fellow boaters up about the state of the weather and being wound up in turn by horror stories of wrecks and accidents.

Ramsgate being our last toehold on the UK we stayed for a few days mainly to finish off outstanding business that would be more difficult to do outside the UK, then headed off on Monday 22nd July for our first passage across the Channel.  We left at 5.00am to arrive at Calais near high water and had a near perfect motor-sail in bright, sunny conditions.  Our passage took us a bit North of the main ferry route from Dover to Calais and we could see a steady procession of ferries and Sea Cats to our South.  The Straits of Dover are one of the busiest shipping Channels in the world, but we saw only two or three big freighters, all a safe distance away.

The passage took about five hours and so ... here we are.  In a state of transition I think.  The time preparing for the journey was so frenetic that I don’t yet feel exactly like a traveller, but still like someone preparing to be one.  My head is still full of details about our journey and the preparations and I’m still hoping that at some point soon I will feel more like I’m on holiday.  But maybe this will never happen, or maybe there will come a point when I will suddenly realise that I feel quite different.

I’d better sign off now as Sue has returned from the showers and is serving some fresh melon ...  I know, it’s a hard life, but someone’s got to do it.