Once again I have been remiss and once again we have been socialising – a lot. Today we are Billy no mates, at last, and I have chance to catch up whilst G does the roast beef and Yorkshire puds. We (and I include Daisy in this) have been shameless boat tarts – barges (mostly) but with a good smattering of motor launches, sailboats, widebeams and pretty much any type of vessel you can imagine. 

Beryl and Ray on Vrowe Catherina; Astrid and Razmus on Agrid (Danes) Klaus on Shalima (German) another set of Germans another set of Danes and Bjorn and Lene on Athena (also Danes) who knocked on our boat as they had broken their throttle cable and needed to pick up a new one from Toul. So we stayed at Chevillon another day so G could drive Bjorn across to pick it up. I’m sorry I’ve lost some of the names now and some of the pictures – it doesn’t mean we enjoyed their company any the less – it’s just that we have met so many lovely people and I haven’t learnt to file pictures properly.

These are pictures from in and around Chevillon where I spotted my first ever French sunflowers, a ‘narrowhouse’ and 2 sources of residence which were a bit different from the norm.

We then arrived at the stunningly beautiful Joinville; stopping at the delightful quiet moorings before those at the town. Both moorings were good, but the private mooring more to our taste, also there is a good supermarket with fuel at good prices in walking distance – remember all our fuel has to ‘ferried’ to boats; only once has there been an opportunity to re-fuel direct to the boat. We were horrified by this thought before we came out here but it’s never been a problem (so far – touch wood).

Our visitors that night were heading (by air) to Gran Canaria for winter and needed to find away of making a ‘bag’ for their delightful (not sure Muttley agreed with me as he was completely bemused by something that small that wasn’t a cat on his boat) little Terrier. We started off with a Tesco ‘bag for life’ before moving on to a French, slightly longer, version!

The small town is everything a French town should be, but it was so hot that we had to cut short our exploration and have lunch so that Baxter could have a drink and a rest! The locals are topping up their woodpiles though, despite temperatures still up in the 30’s. Later we were joined by Jacqui and Chris on the lovely widebeam Joli Roger. We introduced ourselves and then both couples declared they were shattered and needed a ‘night off’.

That, of course, lasted one night before we were at it again for the next two nights; during one of which Jacqui introduced the boys to fresh anchovies! My dogs are more partial to fish than Daisy.

I’m not sure if this was contentment or a spot of belly ache!