Lovely sunny morning, blue skies, but with a cold blustery northeast wind. By lunchtime it had clouded over with thick grey stuff. Rain arrived later. Mike went for bread before we set off at 10.15 a.m. Fetched the quant pole in and followed Charley the short distance down to lock 1 Epineau (0.94m). We had a short wait while a Locaboat pénichette came up. As it left the lock it went to our right, passing us on the wrong side. Now this was probably an error or it may be that he was clued up on French river custom – when locking up river and the weir is to the left of the lock (as this one was) then uphill boats exit the lock and keep left on the side nearest the weir so that downhill boats are furthest from the pull of the weir.
A middle aged man worked the lock which had press button operated gates but manual (up and over lever) paddles. He rode down to the control panel by the bottom end gates on a mountain bike. With just a centre rope to the roof the lock emptying made a yo-yo effect, first pulling hard towards the bottom end gates then reversing. We followed Charley 4 kms down to lock 2 Péchoir. Mike had heard someone call the lock on channel 8, the channel he was talking to Nick on – they should have been calling on channel 12. Couldn’t have been a commercial because the lock was ready for us. A young man worked the lock, which was all electric, push buttons and no yo-yo effect. He asked if we were stopping in Joigny.
Below the lock a small smoky tjalk called Phaedra was waiting and a British cruiser called Tracker was catching up. The crew on the latter were smiling and waving, the crew on the former looked fixedly ahead as if we were invisible. 2kms to Joigny. A little pénichette came upriver, crew waving as we passed. They winded and went back to Joigny to the main Locaboat hire base. I took photos as we went into the town. Nick moored at the upstream end of the quay by the Point P builder’s merchants. Trees at the downstream end had been cut down so there was room for us to moor end to end, stern to stern, but the remains of an old sloping stone quay prevented our bows from getting right into the quay. We put the quant pole out at the fore end this time to keep the boat off the bottom. Lunch. Nick and Diana went shopping by bike at Intermarché. Mike went by car to fetch diesel, petrol and ice cream (Magnums) but forgot to take the petrol containers and had to return! It’s his age!
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