4 locks, 16 km, 3.25 hours

En route we spotted a stork sitting in her nest – every time we see one I’m freshly amazed at the size of them; they’re huge!

Decize is situated on an island within the river Loire, with the canal lateral a la Loire to one side and the Nivernais canal on the other. Both canals run North towards Paris from here and we had been waiting(ish) for the Loire to subside in order for us to cross onto the Nivernais.

All towns situated in such strategic positions tend to have big and ancient histories and I had been looking forward to exploring this one. We moored where the blob is on the right hand side of the canal to the left (keep up at the back) and accessed the town by bike – I’m still not at all sure about this bikeling business but, as it was market day morning on Friday, it had to be done. I definitely need additional carrying capacity on my bike and was struck down with envy at the capacity of this one.

After we’d loaded our rucksacks with fruit & veg, meat, cheese and bread, we chained up our bikes and wandered into the rest of this delightful little town filled with friendly people. We spied an immaculate little electrical shop – even though it was a sunny day Madame had put a t-towel on the outside step to avoid her white floor tiles being sullied. Despite her OCD she was delightful and, much to my surprise, we were able to replace our pressure cooker (cocotte minuite) and buy hair tongs and drive a deal for the two. Carrying these items back meant emptying the veg out of G’s rucksack into mine and, during the process, we scattered carrot tops all over the floor – I was frantically trying to pick up the bits whilst G unboxed electrical goodies and stuffed them into his rucksack. We thanked her profusely and beat a hasty retreat – leaving a trail of greenery behind us – to go and annoy the man in the green grocers who sold more exotic produce than the market stalls – he understood my pronunciation of ginger and supplied me with both fresh and ground. Nice man.

It was in Decize that I, finally, twigged onto the egg buying malarkey over here and wish to offer profuse apologies to the shopkeeper in Pierefitte-sur-Loire whose character I maligned by accusing him of selling me eggs beyond their ‘best before’ date. The French verb ‘to lay’ is ‘pondre’ and boxes are often marked with the date of ‘pondu’ rather than best before – it’s taken me two years, but I’ve got there now.

Muttley and I did a town walk……..

…..and then we did a country walk

The Saturday was a wipe out due to non-stop heavy rain and we gave some consideration to our cruising plan which involved doing the Nivernais (Decize to Auxerre), Yonne, Loing, Briare and Loire canals back to Decize to pick up our mates on 30th June. The Nivernais alone is 174 kms long and has 110 locks and unless we tore along (= missing everything) it was never going to happen. Our new plan is to continue North up the Lateral a la Loire instead and pick them up from where we get to and then drop back down to Briare with them in time for the DBA rally – simples and no time constraints! We’ll complete the ring after our visitors have left and we’ve done the rally. You can see the ring in the bottom right hand corner of the map.

So, after spending a night with a little sailing craft attached (too deep drafted to get into the side) and watching this couple have a MAJOR domestic over trying to reach the pull cord to operate the lock (they never did come up the lock so they, presumably moored below to file divorce papers), we left on Monday without pressure.

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One for the Facebook link: