Merville to Estaire and Sailly-sur-la-Lys

Happy birthday to me!  Thank you everyone for your phone calls, emails, etc.

I took a quick walk around the town of Merville this morning but there is not a great deal to get excited about.  The most interesting thing is the damaged monument to fallen soldiers right next to the lock.  It was erected in the 1890’s to commemorate soldiers who died fighting for their country, with the list of names of those lost during WW1 added later.  In WW2 this area was occupied by the Germans who decapitated the statues and painted it black.  After the war it was cleaned up but it has not been restored.

The damaged monument 

A more cheerful piece of sculpture, the front end of an old barge

Lovely public gardens

The belfry and town hall

A rather modern looking church

Our mooring, cheek by jowl with wild flowers and nettles, which I had to cut down so we could get off the boat

On my way back to the boat I stopped at the busy bakery/pastry shop and bought a “baguette de chorizo”, a very slender baguette with chunks of chorizo

in it, for breakfast and two pastries for morning coffee later.

My birthday cake(s), Tartelette de Fruits and Delicieuse Mervilloise

Then we set off for Estaires just 6 kms and less than an hour away.  

Downstream of Merville the river gets a bit wider and we saw a couple of industrial sites.  Perhaps the commercial barges do still use this waterway.

2 nests: a coot with 3 chicks and a grebe still waiting

Approaching Estaires the white spire of the church is visible for miles

The free pontoon at Estaires, no services

We walked around for a bit but, again, it is a town that suffered a lot in both world wars so the buildings all look quite modern, even the church although the spire was impressive.

The church at Estaires

The Belfry and town hall

After a half hour pootle down the river we came to the town of Sailly-sur-la-Lys with a pontoon at a delightful picnic spot.  We thought, hoped, we’d find a restaurant here that would be open on a Sunday evening, but unfortunately not – so my birthday dinner will have to be postponed.

We saw lots of cows and fields of wheat today

Approaching the pontoon at Sailly

It has an interesting church

and an enormous cemetery 

Here we are sharing the pontoon with another cruiser which left a couple of hours later

And here is my birthday present, 2 bottles of my favourite French wine (no, I didn’t finish them both in one evening!) but I’ll get my real present when we get back home.