This week has flow by. Roger managed to fix Dave and Jane's boat Narwal and we finally got underway again on Sunday morning. We'd booked the flight of 3 locks for 10.00am and moored below Chambilly lock at around 11.30. It rained but that didn't stop me catching up with our lovely lady lock-keeper who remembered us from last year. Roger stayed indoors and drove the boat in the warm and dry while us "girlies" got wet. Over the winter a new Halte Nautique has been built above Chambilly lock and it would have made a good mooring place for us for a couple of nights except that it's overlooked by very tall trees so we wouldn't have been able to get a TV satellite signal and it was Grand Prix weekend. C'est la vie.........
The reason we'd stopped at Chambilly was so that we could visit the market at Marcigny on Monday morning. It's one of the best markets in the region and we'd arranged to meet friends from Roanne there for lunch. It's a 3K walk from the canal, but with sights like this beautiful wisteria en-route it soon passes.
Marcigny market has a large livestock section where you can buy all kinds of pet birds like canaries and budgies, laying poultry such as quail, hens and guinea fowl and rabbits. I really hope these two cuddlies were meant for pets rather than the pot!
Over in the main food section of the market there was a stall with this amazing roast pig. I'm not sure if it was real though or just a display model as the stall-holder wasn't selling any. He did have a poster promoting a hog roast business but his main produce for sale were pork pasties. The sample I tried was pretty bland tasting so I didn't bother buying anything.
We met Milly and Robin, Jan and Pete from Roanne and went to the bar du marche for lunch. We've been a few times before and as usual the set meal was really good. 4 courses including wine and coffee for 13.50 euros. We'll definitely be stopping here again on the way back in October.
We set off again on Tuesday morning, once again having booked the lock for 10.00am. To be honest, having to pre-book passage through the locks is a bit of a pain but when they're this deep you really appreciate the fact that someone comes and operates them for you and the good thing is that the lock-keepers are always on time 😀
We only had the one lock to pass through and are now moored at one of our favourite Halte Nautiques in this region. Croix Rouge is a lovely quiet mooring and hardly any other boats ever stop here. Occasionally one or two camper vans park here overnight but apart from them the main "traffic" seems to be cyclists who stop to use the picnic facilities and the toilet block. Another benefit of mooring here is the lack of light pollution and on a clear night the stars are amazing.
For the past two years the water and electric have been free as the Jeton machine was out of order, but it's recently been fixed. It looks like a Las Vegas slot machine and you buy jetons (tokens) for the electricity and water borne using any credit/debit card.
Electric is 2 euros for 8 hours and water is 2 euros for 20 minutes. Thankfully it's been quite bright and sunny while we've been here so we only needed to plug in once to do the laundry. The rest of the time the solar panels have been keeping the batteries topped up.
Have you ever wondered what happens to all the recycling that we do here in France? It's a big thing over here and there are bins for separating your glass, plastics, paper etc. as well as large containers for gerenal unrecycleable waste. Yesterday this huge wagon turned up to empty the recycling containers that are in the car park. There were 2 for plastics, packaging and paper, all with separate compartments and another for glass. All 3 were overflowing so the locals obviously recycle well. Each container was lifted in the air and emptied into the back of the wagon.....everything that had been carefully separated was dumped in together, even the glass! Makes me wonder why we bother........
Today is Friday and was to have been our last day here at Croix Rouge. We've been trying to get to a local restaurant here for the past two years but something has always cropped up to curtail that and this year is no exception. First thing this morning we got a phone call to say that Narwal had broken own again and could Roger go to fix it? We're at least two days away from them by boat so a lift was arranged and Roger has gone off to see if he can get them going again. The restaurant will have to wait until we come back in October. Oh well, that's what friends are for and two lunches out in one week was probably a bit much for my waistline anyway.
Bye for now, see you soon X
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