Tuesday 27th July 2010 Montbouy. Day off.

Getting hotter again. Rain in the night, grey clouds, sunny spells. The neighbours decided to move up to Chatillon-Coligny. We stayed put. We went by car to Chatillon to see if our post had arrived (nope, not yet) and then went to look at the port. It was full except two places, one on the finger moorings (bows to bank for cruisers no longer than about 10m) and one gap Charley-sized at the downhill end. Mike rang to tell them there was one space. Back to the boat via the back road through St Geniviéve-des-Bois. The Dutch boat Meeuw (Seagull) had moved behind us, the crew were French, not Dutch, as Mike found out when he spoke to them in English. There are two electric/water posts, one at each end of the moorings, the one at the uphill end had a bag over it – out of order – and Mike said you could see marks where someone had tried to lever the box off to get at the tokens. Mike went to get a token – 2,50€ (daylight robbery) for 4 hours of water and electric – the only place open to get one was the bar and a very miserable faced woman sold him the token. I got the washing sorted and he ran the lead out. Put the token in at midday and I did two loads of washing and the rest of the chores. The Dutch MTB left with just the port engine running (it actually had twin engines, so heaven knows how much an hour that cost to run) and a tjalk with a British  couple arrived. They moored in front of us. I was changing wash loads, making some soup and Mike had run the hose out, when the crew of the tjalk went past with a splitter to connect up to the electricity. Mike went out to stop them, the soup started boiling, the phone started ringing - it was in my handbag in the wardrobe, so it took a few minutes to find it by which time the answering service had taken the call, Nick had left a message and SFR rang to tell us there was a message! Hectic! Nick had to moor on the wall and ask someone to move up so he could get on the quay. The gap on the finger mooring was still there but was far too short for us. Mike rang him back to say we’d stay where we were at Montbouy and see them possibly at Dammarie (we’d given up on mooring at Chatillon as it’s always full) in a couple of days. He said they might go further up to be in bike riding range of Rogny to see the fireworks. The tjalk moved back down the quay to moor behind us and reach the electricity (like us they’d said no way to 2,50€ for 4 hours, but perhaps they’d got loads of washing to do too - they didn’t, they were doing steelwork repairs using an electric chisel by the sound of it).