… day I had today.
It finished by being all right on the night, but it not without a great deal of effort.
For a start, I had what they might call a nuit blanche. Despite a reasonably early night, I don’t remember going off to sleep at all.
I suppose that I must have at one point though, because I was off on my travels for a short while. And here’s a blast from the past. I was back playing in a rock group again and we had a booking lined up somewhere in West London. There was a girl from school whom I quite fancied (which I actually did all those years ago, funnily enough) and she was at University down there. She had suggested at one time that I should drop in and look her up. I’d suspected that this was just a little bit of flannel but nevertheless it was worth following up so as I was in the company of her brother (who coincidentally has sent me an e-mail just yesterday) I’d check up. His reply was that “she’s very popular with her fellow-students down there, you know”, which of course told me everything that I needed to know. Even I could read between those kind of lines.
I was definitely awake at 05:20 and when the alarm went at 06:00 I leapt out of bed (well, sort-of) immediately.
With most things already being packed, I just drank the rest of the contents of the drinks bottles and rinsed them out, gave the room a quick once-over, and was then out of the door well before 06:30.
There was snow and ice all over the place and it was a difficult walk up town.
But I was on the station in time for the earlier train to Brussels. It was being pulled by one of the Siemens Serie 18 electric locomotives.
The SNCB owns 120 of these and, beleive it or not, despite their looks they are only about 8 years old. They get plenty of use.
My train from Leuven brought me early into Brussels.
This gave me a good opportunity to go for a look around outside the station at the heavy snow was falling. It looked quite impressive this morning, illuminated with the flash on the camera.
And then off to the supermarket, which was now open, for my raisin buns for breakfast.
The TGV was on time this morning.
It’s our old friend 4302, one of the PBKA (Paris-Brussels-Kôln-Amsterdam) series 43000 units of which there are 19 – built in the mid-90s when the service was launched
I was looking forward to having a good sleep to catch up with what I had missed during the night but it wasn’t to be.
Instead, because of all of the snow (it really was heavy) the train had to slow down because otherwise it might overrun signals. And so we crept along at a slow but steady 180kph instead of a flat-out 300kph.
We were warned that we would be at least 40 minutes late arriving in Paris. That meant that I had to go off and hunt down the train manager to have her sign my ticket. I have a feeling that I’m going to be horribly late in Paris and if I miss my connection, the next train is 3 hours later.
I don’t fancy spending three hours sitting on a freezing cold, draughty platform and I certainly don’t want to have to pay for the privilege if there’s a way of avoiding it.
First off the train and along the platform – a long time since I moved so fast. And just as I arrived on the Metro platform a train pulled in. So I leapt aboard and it rattled off.
Arriving at Montparnasse, I was first off the train and off on the long walk to my platform right at the far end of the station miles away. I even took all of the travelators and even though they were rolling, I walked along them to speed things up.
And I was lucky I did. It’s about a 2km walk from the metro to my train, and I couldn’t afford to hang around.
I turned up at my platform just as the guard was about to signal the departure. No sooner had I put my feet on board than he blew his whistle and the train pulled out.
I was so stressed out with all of this that it took me a while to regain my composure. Totally out of breath I was.
The snow eased off by the time we reached Surdon and we rattled along quite steadily. Somewhere round about Vire or so I fell asleep because I remember nothing whatever from then on until we arrived in Granville. Dead to the world.
It was another struggle back up to my apartment.
What with all of the effort I stopped to catch my breath half-way up the rue des Juifs and I could admire the harbour.
As well as Marité down there at her mooring too we have Thora tied up at the quayside. I can’t see what her load is today, and there didn’t look as if there was anyone down there
In the previous photo you might have noticed one of the gravel lorries driving onto the quayside.
They have obviously been very busy because there’s quite a pile of gravel accumulating on the quayside now, and that can only mean one thing.
Very soon we might be receiving a visit from Neptune who will come to take it all away back to the UK
It was cold and windy out there, although nothing like as cold as it had been in Belgium. But it was freezing in here and the first thing that I did was to switch on the heating.
There were a few things that I needed to do back here but round about 18:30 I’d had enough. I’d had a very bad night with almost no sleep, I’d been up early, dashed about all over the place and moved like I had never done for years. On top of that, I’d missed most of my siesta.
So that was that. I went to bed. When I awake, I’ll carry on.
