On the French Waterways – 2016 – Back on board Shangri La

Shangri La in St Jean-de-Losne

For waterway wanderers, we did a lot of trains today!

King’s Cross St Pancras

Overground from Tolworth to Vauxhall, Underground to King’s Cross St Pancras, Eurostar to Paris Gare du Nord, RER to Gare de Lyon, SCNF to Dijon-Ville and TER to St Jean-de-Losne.

Eurostar – 10.24 to Paris

Of course any regular reader will spot that I did this journey once before at the beginning of June.
This time though all trains were running, on time and we arrived at Gare St Jean-de-Losne at 18.10 hrs.
A comfortable walk from the station, and we were back on board by 18.30.
Gosh it is always wonderful to be aboard Shangri La!

View of St Jean-de-Losne en route from station

She was still in pretty good condition, so all we had to do was remove the covers, a little light cleaning and wash down, and power everything up.
All good except: the new generator!
While I was away the electrician fitted a power management unit which is supposed to enable us to switch seamlessly between generator, shore power and inverter without change over switches or unplugging the shore power.

Jetty at St Jean-de-Losne

Quite what they have done is not clear but it is going to take a while to sort out.
So H2O has lent us a small portable generator.
We will manage for a short while with this, and they can sort out all the electrics when I go back to work next month.
The other addition I have made is a new name board for Shangri La.
At the moment the only place where the name is is on the stern, and at every lock the lock-keepers would ask me for the boat’s name.

New nameboard

The words Shangri La seem incomprehensible to the French ear, so I would have to point to the stern furiously.
But now we have a forward facing name board that should solve that problem.
For the last few months while I have been working in Azerbaijan, or here overseeing the boat maintenance, Karen my better half has been back in SA.

Life on the back deck! Vegan meal and sparkly.

Amongst other things she has become quite an expert in raw and/or vegan food preparation, so it is wonderful to be eating her divine meals again.
Vegan bean burgers with her homemade veganaise, green salad, washed down with a bottle of sparkly, compliments of H2O.
( I should think so too, seeing the amount of work I have given them over the last few months!)
My original plan had been to head down the Saone to Chalon-sur-Saone and up the Seille River to Louhans, and return to St Jean. We have lost a couple of days, so the plan has changed and we will rather go via the Canal du Rhone au Rijn to Dole and Besancon instead. Both are supposed to be very beautiful.
That’s it for the moment. For Karen’s take on our travels, see her blog here

Bon voyage.