1 lock, 4.5 kms, 1.5 hours

Well, we don’t want to overdo it. The adjacent hotel/restaurant had been reported as closed but it has been renovated with its exterior decorated to reflect it’s name; La Peniche.

Rather apt as we are starting to see the odd ‘small’ commercial again now. The skipper gave us plenty of room though, even if his dog looked down on us!

As the village was quite close to our mooring, I persuaded G and Baxter to accompany Muttley and I for an afternoon walk into the village on Monday. We had a choice of a village shop cum bar or a (very) small supermarket. Deciding to support the little guys we bought everything we could from the village shop before walking to the supermarket – the latter was closed for lunch from 12.30 until 4.15; that’s going some even by French standards. I walked back at 5.00pm to find it still closed; I hadn’t read the small sign that said the owners had gone on holiday that morning and that, in their absence, the shop would only be open from 7 am until 12. I also discovered that my ‘support the little guy’ philosophy had stitched me up with two boxes of eggs more than a week over their ‘best before’ date.

On that note, I set off around the lake with Muttley where he learned the meaning of a sign saying “terrain humide”!!!

I thought I was in for a soaking too, but we made it all the way round before the heavens opened.

We had already booked passage for 10 am on the Tuesday, so I had to get up early to get to the shop. I could only just see the sunrise through the mist and there was a severe frost on the roof of the boat. Even getting there at 8 there were only 3 croissants left and, in the veg department, I had to resort to salad and endives; I haven’t seen a mushroom outside of a tin since we left Roanne!

The sun quickly burnt off the mist and we were in for a glorious day.