Waking up like Philae

Goodness me, it's summer 2015, and Saskia has woken from a deep sleep - like her owners. I feel for the little robot sending out calls - is anyone there? can anyone hear me? in Philae's case, it seems we have - only 300 million miles away! In Saskia's, I'm not sure, but I will try to drum up some business through facebook and e-mails to long-suffering friends and relations.

Anyway, departure is imminent for the great summer 2015 cruise, and despite the suggestion in the final post last year that we might go south this summer in search of the sun, we have in fact decided to head north, taking Saskia back to her home territory - Holland, Amsterdam, Utrecht, Delft, all sorts of nice places. We plan to meet up with friends from California who are hiring a boat near Utrecht for a week at the beginning of August. The blog will have photos, but probably fewer castles, and rather more windmills.

The trip is long, so we will not try to do it both ways this year: we have found a nice marina near Utrecht where they can store Saskia for the winter in what they quaintly call a shed: I think that we PR professionals would suggest a little rebranding: heated onshore dry store perhaps?

Anyway, this is the timing: we will drive up to St Jean de Losne on Saturday. It is the weekend of the Pardon des Mariniers, or Blessing of the Boats. It includes a float past of boats on Sunday, all decked out with flags etc. Not sure if we will participate, or simply take photos. Then we will set off on Monday morning - Reims will be the first major destination, quite a few days north.

Over the winter we visited Morocco, also the UK by way of Mont St Michel, and Omaha Beach.

Here we are at the Ouzoud Waterfall in Morocco.