I hopefully will do a better job than last year on our blog, so here goes!
Friday 14th
April 2017
Good Friday
Roanne PK0 to
Chambilly PK33
33km/5hrs
30mins/6 locks
We left Roanne,
for the start of this years cruise. We came back to the boat for a week
in March and de-winterised Rangali. We enjoyed amazing weather for that
week and we thoroughly enjoyed being back on board. We had to return to
the UK for various reasons and we finally came back to Roanne last Wednesday.
Back to some more glorious weather, we've been very lucky. Let's
hope that's how the summer will pan out for us. Famous last words!
We are aiming
to get to St Jean de Losne for the Salon Fluvial, where our Piper Boat builder
is having a Piper Rally/gathering, which is the last weekend in April. We have one
small problem, a deep lock (7.2m deep) called Bourg Le Comte, is being renovated and
is behind schedule. We drove to see the lock last week and there was no
sign of the new gates, and there seemed to be a lot of work still to do to get
it operational.
We left Roanne this morning, after speaking to Hervé, the
captianaire, who said the VNF hoped the lock would be open sometime this
Saturday/Sunday/Monday. So we set off today (Friday) at 10.30am and
arrived at Chambilly at 4pm. Our next lock is Bourg Le Comte, so we can
go no further. This evening walked to the lock (a 5 mile round trip) to
have a nosey, they were still working at 6.30pm. The lock gates are
there, and fitted and we were told it 'could' be open tomorrow,
(Saturday), at some point, so fingers crossed, as we don't want to be rushing
to get to St Jean de Losne.
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| Leaving Port of Roanne |
We really enjoyed
our long cruise to Chambilly. It was another beautiful day, Spring was in
the air, lots of birds singing, new leaves sprouting on the trees, wild flowers
everywhere; we spotted a few Stork circling up high, and one sitting on a nest,
Black Kites, Heron, a Red Squirrel, we heard Woodpeckers pecking and so on and so
on. All our locks are all down, so all very easy.
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| Our mooring at Chambilly |
Saturday 15th
April
Chambilly to
Digoin
26km/5hrs
30mins/5 locks
We set off from
Chambilly at 12.30pm after seeing a small cruiser arrive and moor up at
Chambilly, so we knew the Bourg lock was now open. Another barge (Vagabond) moored at Chambilly went ahead
of us, and we finally got through the big lock by 2pm. We had another good cruise, but a long one
and we moored up at Digoin at 6pm at the Halte Nautique. No one was there to take any money so we
moored for free. It turned very chilly
in the afternoon, so warm weather gear was required.
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Danton Peniche returning to Roanne, they've stopped for lunch after going through the Bourg lock
We were pleased to see them moored up as we had heard they were somewhere along the canal
and we didn't fancy meeting it along the way |
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| There is some finishing off to do at the lock but we were very surprised it opened today after seeing it yesterday evening |
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| Spanking new lock gates at both ends of the lock |
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| We caught up with Barge Vagabond waiting for a hire boat to exit the next lock (over 2 hours after leaving Bourg lock) |
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Look of terror on the hire boaters faces as we slowly come towards them, coming off the Digoin Aqueduct.
They will have only just picked up their boats 1km away, it was quite windy so quite difficult for them |
Sunday 16th
April
Easter Sunday
12km/2hrs
30mins/3 locks
We woke up to a
rainy, chilly day, so wet weather gear for me!
But we had a good trip to Paray-le-Monial and we were happy to find plenty of
space on the quay. We are staying here
two nights to be able to give Rangali a good wash on Monday. We had a barge moored alongside us over the
winter at Roanne, so we couldn’t give that side of the barge a good clean when
we washed her down in March. We had a
lovely pizza in a local restaurant for lunch and then Kev was happy to come
back to the boat to watch F1 race, I had a snooze on the sofa, red wine for
lunch is not a good thing! Its now a sunny evening, but with black clouds looming. the forecast is quite good for the rest of the week, but its going to be quite cold, especially at night, some nights its forecast to be minus 1.
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| Micmac another Piper Barge we will be meeting at the Rally and no doubt along the way |
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| This is near where we are moored, Wysteria, one of my favourite flowers, a very impressive example |
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| I wish I could include the aroma from this, it smelt wonderful |
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As close as we could get to the electric and water!!
Busy day cleaning tomorrow
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