Tuesday 8th June 2010 Cravant to Vincelles. 4.3kms 2 locks

Cooler, grey and wet. Mike went by car to Champs-sur-Yonne to collect the post. After lunch we set off as the mooring at Cravant wasn’t very good with fast hireboats loosening the mooring pins, noisy frogs and an even noisier road. As we left a man and two women paused to chat. Kiwis with the hireboat that had stopped overnight on the far bank. Mike had been chatting with some of the eight who had flown over from Auckland to hire the boat. The guy on the bike was originally British and had the hotel pair Mabel and Forget-me-Not in the seventies. We caught up with Charley, they’d had to wait while a hireboat went down and the keeper refilled lock 72, Rivottes (2.13m). Mike gave the shy young lady a hand and got back on board down the ladder as I steered the boat (sideways, wind effect) out of the lock. A short distance lead to lock 73, Vincelles (2.10m) and a young woman worked the lock. Not far below the lock was a long new quay at Vincelles where one LeBoat had moored by a large new Dutch Barge called Uit de Maelstrom. As Charley came alongside the quay the woman off the DB told her the moorings were free but charges were made if we wanted water or electricity (we didn’t). Tied up and packed up. The neighbours went to have a look at the village. There used to be a small supermarket but it had closed and there were two boulangeries and a computer shop that was also an Internet café. 

Mike thought about walking the 4.3 kms back to get the car then asked the neighbours if he could borrow a bike so Diana lent him hers. I took photos. Put the laptop on and put the Internet on. Blue!! 3.6 Mbs Whoopeee!! I checked emails then Facebook, etc. Mike was soon back without falling off Diana’s bike once. Mike fetched a loaf, first one that cost less than a Euro from a bakery in a long time, 97c and nice bread too. Later I set up a new blog for 2010 and didn’t like the template I’d used so I changed it and then changed all the colours and settings. I blogged the first month, four days in April, we moved the boat from Champvert to Chatillon. Having done that I did a bit more on Ancestry and found a career criminal who was sentenced in all to over thirteen years in jail by Stafford Court for theft. They sent him to Gillingham in Kent and then Portland in Dorset so I wouldn’t think he had many visitors!