Melun

This is our third day in Melun.  It is nice town but doesn’t really warrant 3 days, however, between here and Paris the marinas and town quays get more and more expensive.

This is an ancient town, preceding Roman times, but most of the old buildings are long gone, just the churches remain and a tiny section of Roman wall.

A section of Roman wall alongside the river (I think)

Interior construction of the Roman wall

The church of Saint Aspais

A sixteenth century stained glass window

Saint Louis' hair shirt

Part of the Priory

The Priory dates from the 11th century

Some old narrow streets remain 

Most have been modernised

The weather has been hot, hot, hot – 31C yesterday – and we have had a few thundery showers in the evenings, but no rain at all during the day.

The town quay is right on the big busy River Seine, with barges passing by throughout the day until it gets dark, the locks being open from 6 a.m. to midnight.  They pass by in groups as they bunch up at the locks, possibly 10 or 12 per hour, I lost count.  They tend to come by quite fast and we have rocked and rolled a bit but yesterday one came past so fast that we didn’t just bounce, we got chucked around like a cork in whirlpool.  We were inside having lunch and didn’t see the boat until we got thrown around and heard a mighty crunch and felt the bank as the boat collided with the quayside – more than once.  The movement was so violent it was difficult to even get out of the boat.  Ian saw our stern line stretched so tight it looked it would break.  We found sections of the edge of the gunwhale had been scraped clean of paint, right down to bare metal, plus a dent, and a chunk of paint off the hull (painted at vast expense and effort 2 years ago).  

The dent 

The hull damage

 Lynn was the only one that saw the barge and noted its name: Endurance. 

Elle also suffered similar damage but one of their lines snapped and the pulpit and anchor of the boat behind them hit their stern, scouring the underside (fortunately) of the ledge just above their aft windows.  How come the windows were not broken I have no idea.

Elle was damaged underneath this ledge by the anchor, how did the window escape?

Their snapped line

 The boat behind had serious damage: apart from a bent pulpit, his stern was hit by the iron rudder of an old Tchalk sailing boat behind him resulting in a sizeable hole in his stern thruster.

Ian patching the hull

The Frenchman chats to the police

 He phoned next lock that the barge was heading towards then jumped in his car and drove off.  Before he got back the police arrived, about 6 of them,  fully kitted out, radios and notebooks in hand, flak jackets, guns on hips, and spent the next hour taking notes and photos and talking to goodness knows who on phone and radio.  Very efficient.  Our damage, and Elle’s, is not serious enough to claim against insurance so we didn’t need a police report but poor Mr Frenchman, who is on his way to Barcelona no less, has many thousands of Euros damage.

We have noticed that since then the barges are coming past a lot slower so something has been said.   And rightly so, this is an official port (Port de la Reine Blanche) with “No wake” signs on the approach both upstream and downstream, so they really should have been taking more care.

Port de la Reine Blanche on and island in the wide Seine river

Why didn't they put the port on the narrow arm of the Seine behind the island