Canal archive

My new to senior school grandson is still trying to make his case to learn German instead of French so has asked his Grandad for a new German word every week during their FaceTime chats. At least DH says it’s making him relearn his German.

Okay hers another two Doo rou or Do row. The Douro was a notoriously dangerous river as were several in France that although not used by river cruise companies are by barge companies now. They were used for moving wood as in fire wood from inland to Paris. These rivers until canalised were also extremely dangerous. When you really get to the nitty gritty for the lock size reason it’s cash, how cheaply/inexpensively can we complete this project? Then the vessels are built to fit. Apart from most probably the canalised Main it had to fit vessels from either end.

Have you ever heard Welsh spoken? It’s wonderfully interspersed with English words, although Wales is in the process of changing everything it can to Welsh, could be interesting.

Ohh wow what a can of worms. Language is so so important why oh why do some have to be so precious about it we need - especially these days to understand each other more and more. Mind you my most interesting times have been listening to groups of Girl Guides and Boy Scouts from around the world attempting to converse with each other what absolute fun!

Sorry Notamermaid, the Main was built to enable shipping comfortably between countries and rivers so the locks can accommodate the same size ships as can use the Rhine and Danube. The Douro and the Seine use different length locks this is how it was built. I’ve never been aware that the cost of the Douro per company is any more than other per person or metre, out with the calculator. Regardless a Douro cruise is worth every penny if only for the wonderful people of Portugal.

We were moored up one evening and then we were joined by a hotel barge those on board a mixture of United States Americans and Germans. It actually turned out to be a very friendly evening as we would say in the U.K. a towpath party. The guy in charge thanked us profusely for our collaboration- we did absolutely nothing apart from join in. Non of the guests on the barge had ever participated in river cruise only the barges and had never even thought of hiring one themselves, yes full tour given on our oh so much smaller vessel but it did appear to be appreciated.

And Hmmmmmmmm now what was that other thing they were reputed to do? Gnome12 it is our pronunciation when we all use the same and theirs when we do not. Note the i in theirs denoting belonging to them it is one of so called rules I do remember. At least we don’t have as the French do a specific body to keep our languages pure, the Academie Francaise. In the U.K. The Oxford English dictionary’s lists the most used new words of the previous year and adds them to the dictionary, I must admit (tongue in cheek) nanny state or what but it is useful for Scrabble, not a game we play DH hates it with a passion, non reader more a spoken word listener type of guy.

Got caught out again by predictive hitch-hiked definitely not hitch-nicked.

Okay if your there for two days but Mont San Michel is a long way from Rouen.

Barge Colibri exiting a lock on the Canal du Nivernais. We hired a boat on the Canal du Nivernais and this is one of several barges we encountered over our two weeks holiday. Most only have room for 12 persons, wonderful for a laid back relaxed holiday.

I learnt Spanish from a really yummy young man when I was in my teens my mum and myself went to classes. This young man told us that before he learnt Spanish he hitch-nicked through France to the Spanish border where he was offered a lift by a priest luckily they were both heading for Madrid but one spoke Spanish and one spoke English but luckily they both spoke what is now considered a dead language - Latin, this is how the conversed from the Spanish border to Madrid (by the way a one of the most beautiful of European cities.

Jsn sounds good.

Okay this wonderful discussion is about English in its multitude of forms I really wish I was multilingual I bet the Latin and Germanic tongues have similar examples, I’m beginning to feel really sorry for anyone who has English as a second language.

According to many the only rule that has to be observed in the English language is the comma significantly the - I think the Oxford. You want to start a discussion go for it!

Go Canada!

Thems that do and thems that don’t. I see no reason for not mixing but is it a nationality challenge. As I’m pretty sure if it was Brit Kids of that age that would certainly mix and match.

The worst was when the phone rang, you picked up and it was from a faxxxxxx machine, ohhhhhh B. Been there done that!

My eldest daughters best friends father was, believe it or not, considering he was as English as they come a Professor of Ancient French at an English University. He was regularly consulted by the French about their language. The French are super cool about the quality of their language. On the other hand we as a nation absorb words from across the world it’s wonderful, why not, bungalow from India for example. The list is endless it adds colour to our language and why not every year the dictionary is extended, onwards and upwards I say.

The challenge comes when you leave Amsterdam during an April when the canals were only just unfreezing and arrived in Budapest in early May where shorts and t’shirts would be really comfortable.

Visiting the states some years ago in a restaurant near Death Valley our waitress had recently returned from visiting London, when she realised we were English she asked my DH to call her Love as the London cab driver had called her. He of course complied and she called all the kitchen staff out to hear him much to our daughters amusement. Both my daughters have been told that their French learnt at school is not correct. Were always told it’s mam as in jam, not marm as in harm. Or is it the other way round.

Ohh thank you so much.

Just thank your lucky stars that at least the use of Fs and Sss has been sorted out. They were still being transposed just over 100 years ago. Try reading a middle Victorian document. A bit of an example. Thif if sinifhed sor now. It’s difficult to read and hilarious to read aloud.

Having traveled on Scenic many times I do not recognise the description given by pontac there is no separate restaurant for top deck passengers but they do get an invite to Table La Rive on one evening of the cruise, it has a tasting menu. Everyone gets an opportunity to dine at L’Amour Restaurant which usually gives the chefs an extra chance to show what they’re made off. There is also a light bites section in the lounge which is open all day until the main restaurant opens in the evening. All very similar to other river cruise lines I believe. oops forgot there’s also cabin service just order when and what you require. You can also order a picnic if you decide to go off piste as it were.

Oh we I think have something similar on our oh so much smaller canals but it’s not an expression used over here. I will have to ask some of our engineers.

Okay so we’ve only done it once, U.K. to Paris not far I know but absolutely excellent product, yes we had locators in each case and yes mild panic when they went to Belgium but they soon returned to Paris. It turned out that the, I must say excellent company we had chosen knew exactly what they were doing had an excellent working relationship with our cruise company. The company we used assured us that they would undertake to transfer our luggage to anywhere in the world by whatever method. This was later backed up by our Cruise Director.