contentedsouls

Once we were sure the big boys going passed the end of the backwater weren’t going to bother MR, we wandered into town with the dogs. Pretty though the mooring area is, when you head off towards town it looks as rough as old boots – I expected tumbleweed to roll down the street; well the railway lines. The town itself was OK though and we found ourselves a friendly local bar for a beer. The boucherie/charcuterie was next door and it was perfectly acceptable to nip in and bring something to eat back to the bar – we were starving so shared some game pie. Baxter and Muttley did rather well from the chaps sat at the next table who took quite a shine to them and kept feeding them slices of meat.

Wherever we went we seemed to be watched – I suspect they don’t see many tourists there.

Given that we’d been burning the candle at both ends in Metz – not to mention the 2 nights grappling with the CO levels – we decided to stay on Wednesday and enjoy the grassy bank and sunshine and just chill for the day. I offered two men who had been fishing next door, both days, a cup of coffee and they were overwhelmingly grateful and we ended up having quite a chat; also solving an irritating mystery for me. Often when I’m out with the dogs people ask me, ‘brousson?’ well that’s what it sounds like to my untrained ear. I asked the bi-lingual TV guy what it meant and he had no idea either! It transpired that the two fisherman were brothers and when they try and say ‘brother’ in English it comes out like brousson. Easy when you know! No wonder they can’t understand my French half the time when the pronunciation of the two languages is so vastly different.

A nice little spot with great dog walking and good to be away from it all for a couple of nights. Feeling a bit less jaded we were up early Thursday morning and off to Pont a Mousson – a fabulous, lock free, run in the sunshine although the wind was quite strong by the time we were moored up.