We didn’t wake until 7.45 am on Tuesday which resulted in an unseemly scrabble to hit the coffee machine before the electric went off at 8. G had recovered the car the previous afternoon so we drove into the city to offer up some cash into the local economy. I binned my old boating waterproof (not surprisingly torn, lock slimy and no longer waterproof after about 15 years of use!), designated my ‘better’ waterproof to be the boating coat and purchased something a little more chic for wet days in town; together with a rather nice winter weight cotton jumper. Being France, of course, I wasn’t allowed to leave the shop without buying a new coordinating scarf – it really is compulsory. We just had time to call in at the post office to see if Daisy’s tracker collar had arrived (it hadn’t) before everything closed for lunch, so we thought we’d find somewhere for lunch too. My chocolate fondant was disappointing but the rest was excellent.

The town is built on an escarpment 130 metres up and can be seen from miles around. It is a fortress town and surrounded by 3km of ramparts and ancient gateways and towers – some of which date back to the Romans. Amazingly traffic is allowed to drive through the narrow streets although, rather cleverly, if you leave your car below the town walls you can park for free and ride up in one of the free funiculars. Wednesday (having got up at 7 to put on a wash whilst the electric was on) we went back with the dogs to walk the parapets and used the funicular – Baxter was fine but Muttley became quite anxious and clamped his curly tail firmly between his legs for the short duration. I’ll let the photos do the rest; choosing which photos is going to be difficult.

Yeah. I know. Too many photos again. By the time we’d done all that lot poor old Baxter was wilting fast so it was time to find a bar and let him have a drink, porky scratchings and a rest. ‘Mine host’ made a huge fuss of the dogs and happily complied with G’s (aka big mouth again) request to keep our conversation strictly in French.

All good fun must come to an end though, so it was off to do a big supermarket shop as (even hopping the car) we will be unlikely to see any major shops for a week or more once we leave the summit; the next 65 kms and 43 locks down to the Saone go through the remotest of countryside.

Back at the boat a call from my mate Sally (our postal drop in the UK) informed us that she’d received Daisy’s tracker collar there – we’d still been charged the European postage + VAT though. To cut a long story short the company had another sent to Langres on 24 hour delivery from a French stockist – so we stayed an extra day and went in to collect it yesterday. It wasn’t there of course.

Our neighbours had certainly made the most of their hour of electricity!

Lovely skies whilst walking Muttley late ish last night.

We decided to leave this morning anyway and sort the package out later.