Tree paintings #17 - Burgundy again

Even without the catalogue of mishaps, the canal holiday was disappointing.

We were living in Norwich at the time and Norfolk is well known for its 'Broads', a network of waterways resulting from the digging out peat for fuel in times past. The Norfolk Broads are alive with wildlife - and people; trippers on 'day boats', visitors to the area on guided tour boats, and people who are spending a week afloat, as we were in Burgundy. There are plenty of welcoming pubs along the banks, so there's no need to go off in search of a supermarket, as we had to in Burgundy. And a jolly good time can be had by all!

 

By comparison, the Burgundy Canal seemed totally dead! Beautiful scenery, row upon row of trees, but very few signs of life. Hardly any other boats and we scarcely saw a duck all week!

We only once found somewhere to eat by the canalbank and I think we must have been the first visitors in a long time as they seemed totally unprepared for us. When the meal finally arrived it was, of course, well worth waiting for and it was during the wait that I took more photos, this one of a pot of geraniums in the evening sun -

 

This painting, too, surprised me by being accepted for the Bath Summer Exhibition, so I managed to salvage something positive from an otherwise very stressful experience! 

Tree paintings #16 - Burgundy Canal

The canal holiday I mentioned yesterday was a complete nightmare, mostly due to the fact that the boat we hired was too sophisticated for us to manage.

We left the 'bassin' in the early evening, after just half an hour of instruction by a young Frenchman, in rapid, technical French, rounded the first bend in the canal....and ran aground! But while we waited for help, I was able to take photos and the one above turned into one of my better paintings, I think, as the Bath Society of Artists accepted it for their Summer Exhibition!

We seemed to have some such calamity on each of the six days we were afloat; we ran out of water one day, another day the bilge pump overheated; we lost one of our fenders in a lock and discovered on the final day that our 'reverse' hadn't been working all week, which is possibly why we kept bumping into things, as we were effectively without brakes!

We also got stuck in the lock below for hours in the midday sun - not our fault! - so I had plenty of time for more photos and I even got out my little sketch book and pastel pencils. Eventually a man rolled up in an old Renault 4 and, after a long and loud discussion with the lock-keeper, involving much arm-waving and shoulder-shrugging, took some string out of his pocket and used it to somehow get the lock gates working again. And we were on our way!