Firstly, my apologies for stopping the last blog short (ran out of day) and not altering the ‘mega cruise’ title.

We were up early and at ‘em (courtesy of Mr Baxter sleeping through the night again), cruising straight through Reims (done it twice) to Berry au Bac.

The following morning we couldn’t travel far as we needed to collect important post and we were too far ahead of ourselves (doesn’t happen often). After 1 lock and 7 kms, G spotted this gorgeous mooring at Variscourt which we shared for the night with some horses and a red squirrel (latter pics taken by G).

Now, the observant amongst you will have noticed that I am wearing a rather posh headset in that picture of me above. It didn’t take us long to get fed up with screaming at each other from one end of the boat to the other whilst in locks or mooring up. Happy as I am to scream like a fishwife should the occasion demand it; it really pees me off in a routine situation, so G purchased these. Cheap they were not, but they are wonderfully comfortable and allow us to operate the boat with both hands free and ‘discuss life’ in a civilised manner; the mics are mega sensitive though so we have to be really careful about the volume of our voices; do not shout ‘bonjour’ to passing locals. We have a deal; I won’t sing if he doesn’t whistle!!!!!

After 11kms the next morning we – rather randomly in the middle of nowhere – move from the canal Lateral a L’Aisne to the Canal des Ardennes. The only thing which marks the transition is a lock; PK 0 one side and PK 60 the other; weird. 3 kms further on from this lock we had arranged to pick up our post at Asfeld and I was quite concerned that, with it being Easter and all that, we could be lurking here for several days waiting for this post. We all walked into the village thinking maybe lunch or a beer but there wasn’t as much as a bar/tabac – the post office was so well hidden down a back street that I was beginning to feel we had had our post sent to somewhere that didn’t exist. It did exist though and our post had arrived the previous afternoon – amazing, it only left the uk Tuesday and arrived Thursday.

So that was it; all done and dusted and it was only 12 am so I suggested we carry on to Rethel, another day’s tally of 35 kms and 6 locks. I tell you, I am a woman transformed; up at 7 am every day, waking (a very confused) G with tea in bed each morning and on a mission to Friesland.

That’s G listening to me attentively in the lock yakking with the VNF guys.

675 kms to go