contentedsouls

Friends Tim and Heather, who had left Corbie ahead of us, phoned and gave us a heads up about a lovely mooring at Samara so Saturday 2nd we continued on downstream, back passed Amiens. The usual lunchtime stop whilst we waited for a lockie (we never seem to get the timing right to avoid their lunch break) but it does give us a chance to get a bite to eat and walk the dogs.

18k and 3 locks where Mike and June kindly gave us the long pontoon for the animals. The 2 little pontoons you can see in the 2nd picture are sited in shallow water so the Temujin crew moored nose in and had to either disembark off the bow or make a leap from the gunwhales. The mooring is situated through the middle of a country park so perfect for the menagerie with good walking.

Later in the day we were joined by Kevin and Debbie in their motor home; just off the ferry to re-join WB Avalon for the season – we happily provided supper in exchange for our new Vax cordless vacuum cleaner and a large bag of pork scratchings for the boys. Muttley was happy to see his Airedale mates and seems to have forgiven Herbie for nipping his bum last year. Mike and June joined us for drinks after. A lovely evening, as ever, in their company. We’ll be seeing them again in the environs of Paris on the 17th May to do a bit of dog and boat sitting for a few days. I’ll probably spend those days walking round their bed – just because I can!

We left Samara on the Monday morning after a weekend of, mostly, rain. 19k and 2 locks to Long which we covered in very good time due to the strong flow although one stretch was terribly weedy. Mooring was tricky in a very shallow backwater that we reversed into but Daisy enjoyed the playground of a small sailboat that we shared it with.