The Long and Winding Road

Took a trip from Christchurch south to Timaru to visit our lovely old friend Theo Bakker and couldn't help singing, "The long and winding road......", but this road is everything but winding.
It is soooo straight that the most exciting event was a roundabout predicted for at least 68 km's by the GPS and we did end up counting down those K's in excited anticipation.
We had a lot of fun really, especially trying to figure out where some of the place names come from down here in Canterbury, I mean, where did they get Weedons from, or Irwell for that matter. 
Chertsey, Pendarves, Dunsandel, Sockburn and Prebbleton are some pretty weird names but the first and second prize has to go to Swannanoa and Cust. 
Just love those two names. 
Every time I go past Swannanoa, I just have to sing that old song, "Listen, do yous wanna know a secret....." and what do you do in Cust? Well you cuss of course. 
We cussed in cust. Everyone cusses in cust, it's that kind of cussing place.
Take a look at the second hand car yard in Hinds. 
Yep that's a beauty of a name as well. 
There is a lovely old triumph 2000 but where are the stags? 
There was a ripper of a thunder storm happening out to the east which just gave this garage a really dramatic backdrop and all those cars are for sale, none of them under $5000 and thirty years old.
Hard to believe this photo was taken on 25th march 2012. 
Nothing much has changed around here since 1964.

Local Car yard in Hinds

Aberration generation

We appear to have a dilemma!

We have a comfortable home, comfortable jobs, even children and grandchildren.

We ought to be settled, fulfilled even.

But no, there is this continual hankering for just one more adventure.

Is there one more step into the unknown available for us?

Actually, we live with the illusion that everything is settled and permanent. We are the lucky generation who haven’t lived through a war. 

We haven’t had to grab whatever we can and flee from our homes in the face of an invading army, although some of us had to flee our homes due to the Christchurch earthquakes.

We have had it too good, too comfortable, and where there is comfort, there is stagnation.

Almost every generation before us has had to face massive change and either adapt and move on, or go under.

We are the aberration generation. 

We have been comfortable from the moment of conception, a really dangerous state for human kind.

And we assume that it will always be this way.

But every day, all across the globe, normal people like us have had to grab whatever they can and run for their lives, and look what it has done for them.

So here we are, sitting in our comfort zone unable to fight off the reality that we too are capable of rising to new challenges, adapting to new environments, expanding as human beings realising some of the potential that lies within our DNA.

It would be so easy to stay put.

But what is life really for? 

To pay off the mortgage and retire to tend the rose garden?

Or to cram as many experiences as possible into your allotted time span.

For us the answer is not a quiet whisper. 

We cannot ignore the roaring in our ears that is screaming at us to make the most of our time on this earth, not just leave it with a clean slate and a well mown lawn.

So, there is the potential for another adventure.

Imagine that.

Imagine stepping out into the unknown.

Easy enough to do when you are twenty with nothing to lose and everything to gain, but why do we start clinging to things in desperation like a drowning man hanging onto a life ring, once we slide into the middle years.

These are the days when we can really take the bull by the horns. 

We know who we are, we know our strengths and our weaknesses.

And in our case, we have a relationship that has survived the journey through the furnace of our youth and has the tempered toughness to endure whatever comes our way.

So, bring it on.

Lets have another adventure.

OK once the initial knee jerk enthusiasm has waned, the reality sets in.

“Bring it on”, is a noble and often foolish sentiment usually expressed with a huge dose of Macho bravado, often assisted by half a dozen beers and in the cool light of the next day, it might not seem like such a flash idea after all.

The reality of deciding to return to France and buy a canal boat carries far reaching consequences, many of which we haven’t even imagined let alone given due consideration.

Just a few............. So how are we going to support ourselves on this odyssey?

What about our immediate family? The new grandchild, the old folks?

What about our house that we designed and built just for us?

What about our careers, our jobs?

What happens if we get bored with canal boating?

What about growing old and needing security in our retirement? 

That is only ten years away and all the collective wisdom says that we should dig in, save, pay off our mortgage, buy new cars, take out medical insurance, and find a quiet hobby to do in those boring hours when you just sit gazing out of the window wondering why you didn’t do something really exciting and foolish with your life.

So these questions started buzzing around our heads like a swarm of angry wasps and you just can’t close your eyes and ignore stuff like that.

We had to sit down and figure out exactly what our options were.

We just kept coming back to the concept of buying a canal boat.

It seemed to make sense.

We are boating people, we lived on a boat for 12 years, we can do boats.

You definitely see a different view of a country from the canals and its a slow experience travelling at just about walking speed..

Driving across France was pretty amazing, but you have to try not to blink because stuff goes by pretty fast.

We want the slow motion experience where the landscape has time to seep into your soul.

There was only one option open to us, go to Europe and buy a canal boat.

So we did.

We found what seemed like the perfect boat that suited all our needs and our minimal budget. It was on a brokers site in Rotterdam.

Before I new it, I was on a plane in May 2011, to check it out and sign the contract.

That’s the boat bit done, now we have to sort out our lives to go spend some time on it.

On April 6th, good Friday we will arrive at Schiphol airport, pick up a rental car and drive to the tiny village of Oostvoorne where our boat, Anasofia, is stored on the hardstand at a little marina.

We have two months this time, to sand and paint the hull, put her in the water and go north  and explore the canals of Holland.

This should be long enough for us to see if we really can go back to living on a boat and whether canal life is too expensive, too hard or just too darned boring.

Only three weeks to go until lift off.

Who said, “Bring it on?”

Anasofia, Dutch built, 1950, all steel river cruiser, 12 metres long.

Interior of Anasofia, all original mahogany, very classic.

Hauling the boat out at a little marina near Oostvoorne.

Paul cleaning and greasing the bilges, May 2011

The canal through the pretty little town of Schiedam
Where we did some of the boat trials.

A typical canal in Rotterdam.

Some of the original old buildings in Rotterdam that survived the German
bombings of World War Two.

Some of Anna's paintings

Anna has been doing some water colour paintings lately,  including some studies of scenes we captured while in France.  Early days for water colour technique but she is enjoying discovering the medium. There is also a couple of paintings in acrylic, of the geese on a hillside in the Dordogne valley with a chateau in the background and a Kawhia Harbour scene.
Take a look and let us know what you think.

Lizard on the side of a stone building, South of France, 2012

Stitchbird on Tiritiri Matangi Island, New Zealand, 2012

Canal Du Midi in winter, South of France, 2012

Dinghy in Kawhia Harbour, New Zealand, water colour, 2012

Dinghy beached in Kawhia harbour, acrylic, 2011

Geese on a hillside in the Dordogne valley, France, 2012

Piwakawaka
NZ Fantail in acrylic, 2012

Where does adventure start?

Is this it?

Is this all you get in your middle years?

Settle down, pay off the mortgage, prepare for your retirement, do the sensible thing.

All too familiar advice, but is it really the right thing to do?

Only you can answer that question.

But for us the answer became increasingly obvious.

Time to meet us.

Monet's panoramic mural in L'Orangerie, Paris. 
Anna and Paul.

Paul and Anna.

Pretty average couple, except for the fact that we are still madly in love after 40 years of being together.

Why? We’ll cover that later. 

But for now, we are pretty much your average couple. 

Anna is a kindergarten teacher in her mid fifties and Paul is a recovering photographer, currently doing a desk job managing a photographic archive for a major government institution.

So we are just normal people trying to get by on a normal wage but consumed with the concept that there really must be more to life than just getting through each day and living for the weekend.

I have to admit to something at this point in the story.

We have been down this road before.

In 1995 during the depressing years of government restructuring, we were living in Wellington, the capital city of New Zealand and it all became too much for us so we put our house on the market, pulled our two daughters out of school, quit our jobs and went sailing for the next three years.

So we have a bit of a track record for cutting and running.

But this time is different. This time we have been captivated by a foreign mistress. 

We want a Menage a trois. 

We are lusting after a passionate affair with an exotic foreign lover.

We are both in love with the same mistress......... France.

Montmartre, December 2010, our introduction to France

How can we go on living without her?

She is passion personified, everything that is beautiful, exotic, ancient, wise and gracious. She really is the answer to dreams that we are yet to have.

So now, you have a hint as to what the problem is.

Take two fairly average people, plodding through their nine to five jobs and throw into the mix a six week trip to France.

Dirty trick, I hear you say. Absolutely!

After six weeks in France, it became increasingly obvious that we could never just settle back in to the comfortable old ways and move gracefully into our retirement.

“There has to be more than this”........ kept running through the conversation for the weeks following our return from the six weeks holiday we spent in France.

It was, indeed, cathartic.

The stunning Notre Dame Cathedral with snow on the roof, also the view from our apartment on the Isle St Louis.

Montmartre and a White Christmas

First temptation, barges in The Bastille marina, Central Paris.

Houseboat barges in the snow along the Seine, Paris.

Old Dutch barges on the Seine.

Winter in Paris but still heavenly.

Classic Parisienne scene

Hotel Regina in Pau, South of France

My favourite sculpture outside the Papal palace in Avignon.

Anna and one of the white horses of the Camargue

The beautiful wetlands of the Camargue, southern France

The amazing Carcassonne Castle

Paul on the ramparts of Carcassonne Castle

Is this prophetic?

Somewhere in the Languedoc region of France

View over the Languedoc countryside from near the village of Aragon

In the Pyrenees, South of France

Bayonne, Atlantic coast river city, the Paris of the South.

San Sebastian Donastia, Spain.

Anna Basquing in the Spanish sunlight

Clinging to the side of a gorge the village of Rocamadour in the Dordogne region of France

On the banks of the Dordogne river a tiny village looking like a postcard scene.

The village of La Roque Gageac.

Up above the Dordogne valley in the village of Domme

The medieval village of Sarlat where we rented an apartment right in the heart of the old town.

The Canal du Midi in winter.

Annecy, canal town in the mountains of France, the Venice of the North.