contentedsouls

The problem with not blogging for awhile is the short term memory confuses people and places. So please forgive me if I’ve any of this wrong. One of the reasons I’ve not blogged is because we’ve had a brilliant and interesting social time – again.

Leaving our shady mooring at Sillery, we pulled over into the basin proper so as I could set off with rucksack and bags to the local supermarket. By the time I returned, the hotel boat ‘Princess’ had shifted MR to claim ‘their’ mooring – they were perfectly good natured about it but there were no signs to say that it was a reserved mooring. We stayed the night at Wez which was beautifully remote and allowed the menagerie to lay out, undisturbed, in the sun.

Moving on to Conde sur Marne (how different it looks in the summer) we descended on Tony and Hazel on their beautiful barge Rhania, spending a brilliant couple of days sharing stories, food and wine.

Moving on we tried the odd spot of fishing in the locks (having spied a potential fish for dinner) and the odd spot of climbing to fish for a ‘phone signal – both with little effect!

On the last lock before going up into Challon (previously here with Sue and Vic in February), the lock was too tall to get a rope up onto the bollards so we went up without. 3/4 the way up a lady lock keeper appeared and gave me a right ticking off for not having a rope on; reminiscent of being called to the headmaster’s office. It begs 2 questions really; if G was on the helm he was ‘skipper’, so why wasn’t the bollocking directed at him? Also, as she was about, why didn’t she come and take a rope for us?

Pulled onto the VNF (free) mooring overnight but were told that we would have to move off the following day as the hotel boat ‘Raymonde’ was due in and had priority. This is the infamous Raymonde that gave Kevin a very difficult time when he was in trouble with WB Avalon. I’m not going to re-air this issue and the Greek captain (not the same one as Kevin encountered) was affable and happy to join us mere mortals for a beer in the evening as he was ‘between’ passengers. Sadly we didn’t get invited to look round his boat, or ship as he referred to it. Anyone of you clever people out there know when a boat becomes a ship?

We spent several days there, outside the boat, hiding from the heat under the shade of the trees – unfortunately they were Horse Chestnut trees so we had a few problems with raindrops conkers keep falling on our heads.

This restaurant had an amazing system for keeping their customer’s cool – not a rotating fan but a rotating water sprayer!