Before reading about beautiful Burgundy, please check out French Triangle Part One, where we said goodbye to our boat, Karanja; gorgeous gîte in Esbarres, near St Jean-de-Losne; homage to crossing the Channel on Karanja with David; flashback to cassoulet in Carcassonne; lamb shank and lavish scenery in Dole; by train to Dijon for lunch at Le Gourmand; onward to the Dordogne!
So, when we weren’t busy tearfully clearing our personal possessions off Karanja, prior to handing her over to her new owners at the St Jean-de-Losne Salon Fluviale, what were we doing? Exploring beautiful Burgundy while drowning our sorrows in duck-fat and Chablis, it would seem.
Jerramungup, a toddlin’ town; getting lucky at Lucky Bay; there’s a tavern in the town (of Condingup); Cindy Poole, heart of a glass artist; I say Esp-eh-rance, you say “Esprintz”; three firsts in one day; reviews and summation
This trip was all about Esperance, a destination that boasts some of WA’s – or even Australia’s – best beaches. Albany, Denmark, Augusta and Yallingup were lovely to revisit, but we’d been there before.
From Marseillan to Villeneuve-des-Beziérs, “wild”-moored at Colombiers, braving the low, low bridge in Capestang, Ventenac-en-Minervois, Homps
From Marseillan port, we set off at 8.30am back into L’Étang de Thau and to the start of the 240km Canal du Midi that will take us all the way to Toulouse.
After a quick round of the Carrefour at Confluence Lyon port, off we headed for our first day on the Rhône – two locks (one with a 9m chute, the other 6m), and a total of five hours. Differently from the Sâone, the Rhône has a specific channel that you (meaning Roy) have to watch for and follow. We had the famous mistral wind behind us, and a little bit of current.
Doubs River (briefly) and Sâone River: Roy in a good mood at Verdun-sur-le-Doubs, return to Chalon-sur-Sâone, treats in Tournus, Mâcon, medieval masonry at Montmerle-sur-Sâone, not-so-new Neuville-sur-Sâone
Four hours and two beautiful, big locks after leaving St Jean-de-Losne one lovely Sunday morning, Karanja berthed at Verdun-sur-le-Doubs, just in time for Roy to catch the last half of the British Grand Prix.
Boats moored astern at the port de plaisance of Verdun-sur-le-Doubs
Canal du Nord, Canal Lateral D’Oise, Rivers Oise and Aisne, Canal latéral à l’Aisne: Plague of flies at Pont D’Ercheu, télécommanding the locks, supper with Simon at Pont l’Évêque, surprising DIY success at Soissons, Eugenie and Inevitable at Vic-sur-Aisne, Californian Cindy and Emily at Bourg-et-Comin, it’s only lunch at Berry-au-Bac
Pont d’Ercheu and Noyon (Pont l’Évêque)
When I say a plague of flies, I really do mean a pestilential visitation of Biblical proportions. I’ll only ever remember Pont D’Ercheu for the thousands that somehow swarmed in – and, when I went down to make lunch, rose like a cloud from the kitchen sink. Disgusting!
Finally, I’ve done my first Umhlanga parkrun – those free, timed 5K runs that are held every Saturday morning in hundreds of cities all over the world. The Umhlanga one starts from the grassy area just opposite the pier, no more than 500 metres from the front door of our flat in The Oysters. So, why has it taken me so long to get around to doing it?
All ready to go – at the start of the Umhlanga parkrun in McCausland Crescent, just opposite Umhlanga PierPhoto taken by a friendly and chatty co-runner after my first Umhlanga parkrun
Now that I’ve done my first Parkrun I’m wondering what took me so long. There’s a Parkrun – a free, timed, 5K run – in most of the places Roy and I spend time in, including the UK, Durban, Singapore, and Perth, WA.
I first heard of Parkrun two or three years ago in in my home town of Durban. Roy and I were cycling gently along the North Beach promenade one Saturday morning with our good friend Jeff Fobb when we were almost mown down by the surging mob – the front-runners go like hell, and it gets very competitive. And there’s another Parkrun along the Umhlanga Rocks beachfront that goes directly past our flat.
When the first Singapore Parkrun was established last year in East Coast Park, we promoted it on the health and fitness pages of Expat Living magazine (www.expatliving.sg). Though it starts only a stone’s throw from the Amber Road condo where Roy and I lived until May this year, I never made it to the run.
My first Parkrun
Magically, my first Parkrun (about a month ago) was also my first run ever with my younger sister, Dale, who lives in Bromley, Kent – anything between 90 minutes and three hours’ drive from us, depending on traffic. Having started running only in January this year, she’s already done plenty of Parkruns, a 10K race and also – to everyone’s astonishment – a half-marathon! I’m hugely proud of her.
Dale and her “Zeroes to Heroes” running buddies
Me and my athletic sister
Leaving behind our snoring husbands – who’d stayed up until 4am to solve the problems of the world over a bottle of vintage tequila – Dale and I walk-jogged the 2km to the start of her local Bromley Parkrun in Norman Park. Meeting some of her friendly fellow-runners from “Zeroes to Heroes” (a free coaching programme), I could only admire their camaraderie and mutual support.
Thames Valley Park Parkrun
Luckily for me, Reading’s beautiful Thames Park Valley Parkrun flags off almost directly across the Thames from where our Dutch barge Karanja is moored at Thames & Kennet Marina – again, coincidentally, less than 2km away as the heron flies. But it’s 6 or 7km away as the foot walks or the car drives, unfortunately: so I have to drive and park, either at the paid commuter car-park at Reading Bridge, or at the free Tesco Extra parking that’s an ideal six-minute trot from the start line.
Like the Bromley Parkrun, it’s a great course: flat and rural, mainly short grass and earthen paths. I’ve done the Reading Parkrun twice, and plan to go back this weekend, now that my bruised knees and grazed elbows have just about recovered from my coming a cropper 10 days ago while running the tow path between Henley and Marlow. (No, I didn’t blog about that. Least said, soonest mended.)
This man was raising awareness for the Samaritans’ Swim the Solent 2016 – using real ales and music as lures
Reading Parkrunners are keen on cake
More about Parkrun
Though “Parkrun” sounds like a translation of “parcour” (or “parkour”), the former is a lot less exotic and lot more attainable than the latter. Parkruns are free, timed, five-kilometre urban or suburban running routes over generally accessible courses that often include a park; and if you watched the spell-binding, bone-crunching intro to the 007 flick Casino Royale, you’ll know that parcour is a very different animal!
Founded in 2004 by one Paul Sinton-Hewitt in Teddington on the River Thames – not too far from the marina where I’m sitting right now – Parkrun has spread to 14 or more countries, including Australia, South Africa, Ireland, Poland, Russia, New Zealand, Denmark, the US, France, Italy, Singapore, Jersey and Guernsey. It’s run every Saturday morning of the year at the same time. It’s easy to find the Parkrun nearest you: go to www.parkrun.com. Register just once online to get your eternal barcode, which you present at the end of the run to have your time registered and posted online.
In preparation, I mentally practised flattening myself against a box hedge to avoid becoming roadkill
Ah, those famously narrow and twisting English country lanes! At first, I wasn’t sure which would be more nerve-wracking – being driven pell-mell by Roy along them (and no, I don’t have the nerve to drive them myself), or running on them. Sometimes there’s room to jump out of the way of oncoming traffic, as in the picture above, but that’s not always the case. In preparation, I mentally practised flattening myself against a box hedge to avoid becoming roadkill.
So I plucked up the courage one chilly June morning and headed out from Chapel Croft B&B, set in the farmland surrounding the town of Biddulph near Stoke-on-Trent, praying that most of the morning commuters to Congleton or wherever would still be nibbling their egg soldiers and slurping their PG Tips.
This being England’s Peak District, the wind was fresh, to say the least, and the terrain challengingly hilly – a far cry from what has been my standard sweaty run in Singapore’s dead-flat East Coast Park. I passed a field full of blanketed horses – a riding school, it seemed – and several beautiful farmsteads, including one with a discreet sign boasting Charollier sheep.
In the end, I had the lanes mostly to myself. There was an uncomfortable moment when two large lorries come head to head on a bend, and I had to stop while they sorted themselves out – clearly all in a day’s work for them.
Back at the B&B, I felt I’d earned my plateful of locally smoked salmon with deep-gold “scrammled eggs” (according to the blackboard special) from landlady Lynn’s own fat and beautiful chickens.
Lane convert
Within the week, I’d braved two more sets of lanes. The first was just beyond Victoria Park, a small industrial suburb of Biddulph, where Piper Boats was putting the finishing touches to our barge, Karanja. (To “snag” the boat, we were spending a somewhat surreal weekend living on board – not afloat, but in the boatbuilder’s big car park – cooking, bathing, washing clothes and so on to test the electrical, water and other systems.)
Unexpectedly beautiful running trail, directly off semi-industrial Biddulph’s Brown Lees Road
Seems that unless you’re in London, you don’t have to go far in England to find countryside. No more than a kilometre from Piper Boats, down Brown Lees Road, I found a pedestrian and cycling track that took me a couple of miles through idyllic fields and meadows to where the houses started again; or I could turn right off the road for another leafy mile or so to another village green.
And then, a week later, we stayed for a few nights with Roy’s sister, who lives in a horsey part of the Warwickshire countryside. In the ice of winter, you can slide dangerously along the slippery lanes and it’s not much fun to be on foot. This time, though it was beautifully dry, the lushly shaggy trees and hedgerows seemed to shrink the narrow lanes still further.
Again, I had them almost to myself: even at 8am on a weekday morning, I was able to count on my fingers the number of passing cars in the course of 70 minutes. And when you walk – as I did the final stretch home to Lyndsay’s – you’re more likely to see the swooping of fat magpies, and the odd bunny-rabbit hopping across your path.
