November 2004 Saint Jean de Losne

Winter mooring at Saint Jean de Losne in Burgundy France

This is what David thought about our bike rides weather permitting, he's also getting our boules area cleared, us ladies kept winning of course we did, the men cheated. John and I loved it here as you can see, true boaters!!!

We had a wonderful weekend when Ursula, Mike and daughter joined us for a weekend, driving up from Migennes. It was great catching up and showing them Saint Jean de Losne, they would like to moor here next winter, or where we decide to go.

Evening entertainment on Normaddie with Judy & Paul, good friends we have made since arriving at Saint Jean de Losne, they live in Canada not far from our daughter Louise. That's Judy in black being the perfect hostess. They have taken a year off work to cruise the canals of Europe. Paul spent a great deal of his time helping me with my computer and setting up my lost GPRS, it took great patience and a lot of hard work, which I was so grateful for. He gave a lot of his time so freely.

Paul also helped other boaters getting them set up with broadband which was wonderful, hiring the equipment from H2O. Who would have thought... broadband on a boat.

This is computer check in on board Lea Crest, with David and Pam's cat gromit wanting a piece of the action.

David and Pam found this great car to buy... 100 euros. It had wasps nests in the doors, the car needed a little bit of work and a bit of love and attention and an MOT test. It had a boot full of tools... too.

We asked Pam and David if we could have a share in the car and split the costs... repairs, insurance and whatever came along.

What a little bargain our 20 year old Ford car was to become... this is David test driving it for the first time, after we insured it for the road. The car turned out to need a new front window screen, front headlight, and a new exhaust too. David picked these up in a scrap yard. Pam worked hard on the insurance details with her great knowledge of French. She ploughed through all the forms then we went to register our car with four drivers to drive. All in all it cost us around 150 euros each person's share, all inclusive. If our car can see us through the winter we will all be delighted!

Our little bargain car, not a bit of rust anywhere. We are all set for winter now.

17th November

Leaving Paris airport for Canada.

John and I were busy packing today and getting ready to set off to Canada, David was taking us to Dijon train station at 5am the following morning to catch the early fast TGV train to Paris where we would board our flight to Toronto.

Arriving in Canada the view of sky line

My first stop was a full body massage and then acupuncture appointment. Louise had booked all these for me, my nail's were manicured and also a fab new hair cut with her hairdresser.

The new me, I felt human again, and no longer a boater, Toronto here I come.

John helped Martijn with new units for the kitchen, Louise supervises the work. "Beer when you have finished boys...".

We tried to help Louise study, this is her final year at college, not sure how much help we were though! But we went along to the library, to her college, and met her wonderful friends... When in the huge library, I found a song book (first book I picked up) I opened the book at... song "Goodnight Irene"... I was very moved, my dad used to sing that to me. Felt he was near, though he died almost 40 years ago.

We were thrilled to be here in Canada to see Louise in her stage production show of "An Inspector Calls". It was a moving moment for us and we enjoyed ourselves very much, afterwards a party to celebrate. Martijn's mum and dad were also present. We celebrated Xmas early with Louise and Martijn and family and we had such a wonderful time, work rest and play went on. We also made Xmas cards together and decorations, I brought some of my card creations to show Louise. We also shopped till we dropped.

Evening stroll with Louise & Martijn around one of the bay's on Lake Ontario Canada.

Another highlight of our trip was to be with Louise and Martijn as they took delivery of their new sailing boat(yet to be named). Hopefully we will get sailing lessons when the boat finally goes into Lake Ontario in April 2005.

Riet, Martijn's mum took this photo. What memories we have of this holiday!

We had a wonderful trip but it soon came to an end and we were on our way back home to Saint Jean de Losne, France. This was a wonderful trip, always hard saying good bye to Louise. Judy and Paul were on the train platform at Dijon when we arrived off the train from Paris, and we felt like we had come home - wow France home!