Travelogue

Introduction - (2)

(All photographs can be viewed at a larger size by clicking on the image)

The next adventure involved heading to France and studying the canals again - this time on mopeds! You should know that shopping for these canal boats is not quite the same as getting a car or house. There is no such thing as "location" as with a fixed (not floating) home. And, the market is not very easy to get a grasp on it. It's a nebulous marketplace, full of boats from all corners of the world or the country you're in. The sellers may be owners, or brokers, and the prices are all over the board and difficult to compare. We flew to Paris and bought two blue MotoBecanes, the same mopeds the French police use, and took off for the canal hinterlands.

It took us three days to get out of Paris. Often we were lost and found ourselves going back to Paris, retracing our path. Eventually we were breezing along the road to Epernay, County Champagne, and smelling the crushed Chardonnay grapes on the road that had been dropped from trucks transporting them. Heaven.

We even found our way back to the little inn that we had stayed in two years previously on our bike trip. The lady owner welcomed us back as if we had been there last week! "Where are your bicycles?" she asked. "Mopeds this time" we replied. No matter, she laughed, back to the same garage we had put the bikes into. Also, back to her wonderful home cooking and bistro of local characters from this world renowned town. Her place is an oasis in a sea of pretension and high prices. We found that the delicious family style meals she prepared pleased our stomachs better than any of the fancy restaurants. But we still had champagne and the locals love it as well.

Our moped trip took us from Paris down to the Riviera. Along the way we explored many canals but the towpaths were too rough for the mopeds. So we eventually gave up traveling the towpaths, but still roughly followed the canals by road. We saw many hire company boats and some odd "one offs". One in particular was on the Seine, in the middle of Paris. As we peered inside, an English language newspaper was evident and so we knocked on the window, just hoping to chat with someone actually doing what we were dreaming of. We were cordially greeted by an older English couple and they very kindly offered us tea. We proceeded to have a tour of their boat. It was immense. Five bedrooms, 3 or 4 baths (with tubs) and it was simply overwhelming for us. For them too. They wanted to sell it to us but we already knew why - too much boat! We thanked them but declined.

Eventually, our trip took us over the Italian border (but just) then down and across the Riviera in a breathtaking and magnificent sweep of road that lasted for days. It was the highlight of our journey although we did not see any canals or canal boats. The road followed the sea and the lovely quaint seaside villages. By car it is a memorable journey, but by moped even better. We enjoyed the sea breezes, shimmering blue sea and sky and observed sheer drops from occasional cliffs. So swept away were we by this wonderful coast line that we simply continued down into Spain and the Costa del Sol all the way to Cadiz. Sometimes you get swept away and that's okay, all part of the plan in a way. Eventually we returned to the original idea. Still, we had more adventures in store.

Upon return to the States from our wild moped experience of about four months and 4000 kilometers we resettled in our hometown of Atlanta, Georgia - soon to be in the throes of hosting the Olympics. Just before this great event we found a beautiful classic sailboat in need of restoration located in South Florida. So we rented out the house to a good friend and set out on a new project. This was about two years after mopeding. It had a tabernacle mast that would allow it to go under bridges, not unlike many of the Dutch tjalks. We thought she would sail around the Caribbean and possibly cross the Atlantic and thus cruise some canals. Well, we never claim to be completely sane. We restored her, sailed her, but in our hearts we knew that it would not take us to Europe or on the canals. We realized that the six foot draft was too deep for most canals and the incredible weight of the 50 foot mast was just too much for us to handle by ourselves. At least we were finally floating in the water and we did have a lot of fun. We named her OO-LA-LA. A nod to our destiny, which we have always known is there, in Europe. Obviously, we enjoy the ride and not just the destination. After three years we sold our sailboat in Annapolis.

The Dream was in it's realization phase, finally. For now we had taken some trips (via airplane) to England and had discovered the world of narrowboats. Our dream was to be fulfilled, at least in England, in a narowboat or a Broads cruiser. Just which one we were not yet sure.

And we were still not yet decided when we packed up our home (now in Georgetown, Washington DC) and set sail on the incredible QEII for Southampton, England. Less than one month later we were firmly ensconced in our new home. We had visited the Broads, toured England by car, looked at dozens of boats and only found one we could not live without. The narrowboat OO-LA-LA of this website is the boat of our dreams and we live in it. This is our story…

......on to 2001