Comings and Goings, Highs and Lows

Crazy people on the bridge in Oxford that our boat can't get under

My parents came to visit on July 24 and it was great to see them.  The plan was to motor up to Oxford and start our way back down the Thames during their two week visit.  We managed to get to Oxford, though we didn't see as much of the city as expected, particularly the famous colleges of the University, because we had a significant plumbing malfunction on the boat. 




Tom mucks with the plumbing...

Thankfully, Tom has both the skills, the will, and the internal fortitude in the face of sewage, to solve the problem. 


...while girls and grandparents play cards on land



Walking the Thames Path

We spent just two days in Oxford and then turned the boat around to head down river.  However, just as we started down, Tom got the news that his brother, John, was very sick which turned into the news that he had pancreatic cancer and a very bad prognosis.  Tom needed to fly home and for this we needed to be docked somewhere with power and toilets.  He got the boat to a marina just outside Reading and jumped on a plane.  Sadly, Tom's brother passed away before Tom made it home.  He was able to be there for the funeral and to support John's wife and daughter, though, and he also made it to the island service for Leann's mother who had also succumbed to pancreatic cancer.  Oh those pancreases!!!

 


A coffee break at Nero Café in Reading

Unfortunately, I have been remiss in my duty to learn to drive the boat.  I can manage it fine on the open river, but I have not learned the finer points of manoeuvering on and off docks and in and out of locks.  As a result, during the remainder of my parents' visit we were stationary at the Thames and Kennett marina, a lovely marina but not so well located.  We explored Reading, but even according to the tourist websites, Reading's big draw is good shopping. 


Georgia and Grandma played lots of card games and read together and the girls found an excellent blackberry source with their grandfather.

  


 

The girls picking blackberries on the lane out of the marina








Seven miles of beautiful sand beach at Bournemouth

In search of excitement, we found the beach town of Bournemouth where we had a couple of great days and splashed in the sea with the Brits.

 

 

My parents flew back to Canada on August 8 and Tom made it back to the boat on the 10th.  

After a big grocery load up at the most convenient grocery store ever, we started back down the river. 

 

The highlight of this part of the journey was the River and Rowing Museum at Henley where Georgia rowed a bit and enjoyed the Wind in the Willows exhibit. 

 

Finally, on August 19th our pass for the Thames expired, meaning that we needed to be below the last lock, in the tidal part of the river.  We headed down river with a pretty vague plan and ultimately wound up motoring for 11 hours, out the last lock of the non tidal Thames, through London, and into the mouth of the river.   
 
 
 

 

 

 

During this adventure, Emily, who had been sick with a runny nose and face ache that seemed to be sinusitis, wound up sleeping for four or five hours.  Needless to say, this is unheard of for her.  On August the 20th we made it to the town of Chatham, where we were familiar with the marina, and got Emily to the doctor.  Sadly, we followed the doctor visit with a hospital admission as a urine test showed that Emily's blood sugar was sky high and her blood was full of ketones.  She was suffering from Diabetic Ketoacidosis, brought on by undiagnosed Type I diabetes and a deficit in insulin production.  The pancreas strikes again!!

 

Emily had just one night in the hospital, receiving fluid and insulin by IV before being discharged with a load of information and diabetic paraphernalia.  She's taken it all in stride and instantly determined that she did not want either of her parents on the other side of her daily needles.  In addition to doing all her own blood tests and insulin injections, she's monitoring her own diet very well and monitoring ours at the same time!

 

We need to stay here under excellent British follow-up care until Emily's blood sugar is stable in the healthy range.  This will mean regular visits to the nearby Historic Dockyard where an admission ticket is good for a whole year.  We went yesterday for a bit and Georgia took her turn at making rope in the ropery.

 

 

 

 

England

It is as Emily said.  After 5 days waiting in Dunkerque, France, we crossed the English channel and survived. 



Crossing the shipping lanes in the English Channel - not as frantic as we'd expected

We then waited 5 or 6 days at Ramsgate for good enough weather to get up around the corner into the Thames. 



Neat shops are tucked under the road that runs up the cliff

The marina at Ramsgate

While we waited we visited towns such as Broadstairs (where Dickens wrote some of Bleak House), Sandwich (where the Earl invented some kind of convenience meal), and Canterbury (where they make great French fries - oh, and have some kind of old cathedral).

The beach at Broadstairs - A little too cool yet for swimming

Cycling along the white cliffs at Ramsgate
 



Before Dunkerque (I forgot this part), we took a side trip to Iepers (Ypres), a town in France with a significant role in WWI for Canadian troops.  We saw where John McCrea wrote In Flanders Fields, walked through a rebuilt trench system, and stood with lots of visitors for Last Post at the Memorial arch.



 

Rows of headstones at a graveyard in Flanders - no poppies where the grass is mowed

After Ramsgate, we got into the River Medway, stopping first at Chatham where they have a most excellent museum built on the Historic Dockyards.  We got to tour a submarine and warship, make rope the old fashioned way, and learn how wooden ships were built hundreds of years ago. 

After a few days there we headed up the river to the first lock, where you get out of tidal salt water and into non tidal fresh water.  This was exciting on account of the many times we ran aground.  When this happens in tidal water, you simply have to wait 'til the tide comes in and lifts you off the sandbar or rock bed, or wherever you happen to have got stuck.

 



 The Medway was lovely and we left the boat for five days and stayed in an apartment while Tom did a boat show in Southampton.  As Emily mentioned in her post, we watched an inordinate amount of television  - because it was there.  We also visited an excellent exhibit about the Titanic, as Southampton is the city it sailed from on its unfortunate voyage.



After reaching the top of the navigable Medway, we turned around and returned to Chatham, from where we set out for London. 

London was fabulous!  We were not expecting to have such a good time, being not big city people.  But the whole event started with an excellent mooring at St. Katherine's Dock, just below Tower Bridge (which is the nice looking one, not to be confused with London Bridge which fell down and was replaced with something completely nondescript).  Having done no real research ahead of time, we were very pleasantly surprised to find that the Tower of London (really great castle/palace/fortress) was just down the street on the other side of the bridge.  We also found all the usual sights such as Trafalgar Square and Canada House, Buckingham Palace, St. James and Hyde Parks, Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, and the parliament buildings, etc.  We managed to visit the Science Museum, Maritime Museum in Greenwich, Tower of London, Museum of the Bank of England (who would've guessed that would be interesting!?), the British Museum and the National Gallery. 



After London, we headed up the River Thames, landing at lots of places we've never heard of, and some of great fame. 

For instance, books and spring rolls were acquired in the main street of the town of Staines. 

LEGOLAND was thoroughly enjoyed in the town of Windsor. 

Oh yeah, we popped in at the Queen's place in Windsor, too.  That was actually very cool, and although we didn't see her, the changing of the flags on the central tower of the palace let us know that she showed up while we were wandering through her little abode.

 After Windsor, we moved further up the river and focused on getting the boat ready for our own royal event, the visitation of my parents.  They arrived yesterday evening, and after just one small mishap with the rental car which must be driven on the "wrong" side of the road, Tom obtained them from Heathrow and delivered them to the boat.  So now we are six folk on a boat and have found ourselves moored about 50 feet from a pub in a town called Sandford on Thames which has absolutely nothing else going on so is very pleasant and rural and quiet, and is a short morning's boat ride from Oxford.  We will spend a couple of days in Oxford and then turn around and make our way slowly back down the river. 

That's assuming I can pull Tom away from his new local, the King's Arms.

The River Medway

We just got back to Chattum after spending fifeteen nights on the Medway. Five of those days wee spent in Southampton. In Southampton we rented an apartment. Dad went to be in a boat show and Georgia, Mom and I went swimming, shopping, wandering, out for lunch and staying at the apartmrnt watching TV and being bored. we had left our boat in Wateringbury. On the Medway, there are ten locks. Eight of those you have to do by yourself. it is a bit hard.

Georgia and I pushing one of the lock gates.

 

 

Tomorrow, I think we are going to start going to London. mom wanted to be in London for Canada Day, but we weren't.

 

 

EMILY

WE SURVIVED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We made it to England alive. Thank goodness for that. Yesterday everybody woke up surprisingly early in Dunkirk. Sorry, we forgot to write about being in France. Well... we were in France. Just Dunkirk really. So we woke up, and started getting everybody and everything ready. We packed things away because we knew from experience that when it's wavy, things seem to fly all over the place. Then, mom and dad cast off (I was supposed to, but no one told me we were leaving.) Then we went under two bridges and through a lock. I hate locks. They are so boring. And this one took about three hours. Finally, we got out onto the sea. I was thankful to get out of the lock, but I was not thankful to get out on the sea. This is the north sea by the way and there are lots of waves and lots of current and lots of ships. We talked for a bit and then Georgia fell asleep. Then Mom started not feeling well, so she went to lie down. I was reading and I felt fine. So did dad. We left at around 9:30 and at lunchtime we were around the shipping lanes in the middle of the English Channel. We weren't really sure if we were going to make it to England that day, but when we got to Calais, mom and dad decided we would keep on going. So around lunchtime, we asked mom to make us lunch. We hadn't made sandwiches before we left because we had no bread. Actually we had no food at all. Except for pasta, but I'd rather not boil water when the boat is rolling. So mom made us ham and omelette wraps. She says that it was very hard for her not to throw up the whole time she was making dinner. Georgia didn't eat all of her wrap, but after a bit she threw up.
We cleaned it up and all went back to sleep. I slept or read the rest of the way and before I knew it we were passing the White Cliffs of Dover. Then we were in Ramsgate (a.k.a. Rampage). We got landed around 3:30. That was confusing because we had re-lived an hour and we weren't sure if the clocks had changed. Apparently they had. We paid and mom got confused with the pounds. Then the girls walked around town and got groceries. We had indian food for dinner.

Today, we went to Broadstairs. I couldn't remember what it was called so I called it Fatstairs. When we were getting the bikes off the back of the boat, Georgia dropped mine in the water. It was high tide and Georgia and Dad had to go find something to get it out of the water with. They came back with hooks that they had found in a scrap pile in a boat yard. They got my bike out and it was covered in grey muck. They had to clean it and by the time we got going it was 2:30. We biked along the dodgy bikepaths, and got to Broadstairs around 3:00. We had lunch of fish and chips. Georgia and I are having a problem with speaking in a British accent when we hear other people speaking with one. After lunch we had icecream and got back to the boat by 4:00. Then Dad went to go get groceries. That's it for our adventures in England so far!!!!

(: EMILY :) is happy to be where you can buy English books!

 The purple line is the route we took roughly

Bruges

Having found Ghent to be quite spectacular, we didn't really expect Bruges to surpass it.  It did, however, and has now made it to the top of our Most Beautiful Cities in Europe list.  Virtually every corner turned reveals a quaint streetscape, charming square or picturesque canal. 


Many of the medieval buildings are still standing are and maintained in very good shape.  This does mean, however, that the city is packed with tourists and all the trappings of tourism.  The main arteries in the old city centre consist primarily of shops selling souvenirs, Belgian chocolates (the country's best chocolates being offered at virtually every shop) and waffles. 

We spent some of our time in Bruges doing chores like laundry and replacing the bicycle that was stolen in Ghent (a very expensive mistake!) and spent most of our tourist time just walking around.  The girls and I visited only one museum, a medieval hospital with artifacts and art from the late middle ages.  Needless to say, it makes us thankful to be living in the age of advanced medical science!

 

The Old and the Beautiful

After docking in Ghent, we proceeded to do absolutely nothing.  Being a constant tourist can get tiring, and sometimes you just need a day of rest.  When we got up the next day we walked toward the centre of the old town and were astounded to see how great it all was.  Among other things, Ghent boasts multiple cathedrals, all in a row, and a tremendous number of old buildings.  One of the main gathering spaces is the Graslei along the river Leie.  On each side of the river the streets are lined with old buildings, many with outdoor cafes. 
In one direction you can see the Castle of the Counts, also called Gravensteen, a story book type of castle built in the 1400s.  This is now a museum that allows you to wander the rooms, some displaying artifacts of battle (full suits of armour and the like) and some showing off devices of torture (we skipped this room).  You can also climb to the top and look down on the city below.



While we were in Ghent we also visited the Museum of Design.  This establishment cleverly placed a series of playmobile characters around the museum and required the kids to find the characters hidden amongst the objet d'art.   We also visited the Museum of Textiles, as Ghent's claim to fame is the production of fabric and its distribution around Europe.  We also took the requisite canal boat tour and ate a box of Belgian chocolates.