Cooler night. Hot and sticky, sunny, clouds arriving mid-afternoon. Mike went for bread, no queues this morning and two serving in the shop – there had been only one assistant the day before and a shop full of people wanting cakes as it was Sunday. He said the shop was open from 4.30 a.m. until 19.30 p.m. except Thursdays. Saturday and Sunday it didn’t open until 5.00 a.m! They had a lie in! I ‘phoned the VNF. OK the lock would be ready for 9.30 a.m. Went to ask Bob for his key to get our electricity cables out of the box. Told him we were heading off back to Bray, then south. Wished them well and hoped they managed to get to Marcilly. Untied and set off up the weir stream and Mike said it was a difficult turn into the lock with the swirl of current and the thick banks of weed up and downstream of the lock. Good thing we’d got plenty of room to manoeuvre and the lock was ready.
We were a little late, it was 9.45 a.m. Our blogger, Guy, and another VNF man were there to work the manual lock, Nogent lk 4, for us. Told our lockkipper that his blog was excellent and he was an artist with his camera. Charley came in alongside and we dropped down 2.92m. Through Nogent a lot quicker than we came up. Vegas and Bambi were loading grain. The container quay was vacant, but there were two blokes leaning on their loading machines watching us go past so Mike shouted “We’ll take two!” (dunno where he was gonna put ’em!) and they laughed. At the new loading berth tug Courageux with a tanker pan was waiting to load. Curiosity about his load prompted me to ask what it was. He said something I didn’t understand so I asked what it was and he said colza oil! He must have said bio fuel. Interesting.
Mike dodged the floating clumps of weed in the floodlock (Beaulieu lock 5) as we entered the canal, the derivation de Beaulieu à Villiers-sur-Seine. A pair of sandpipers flew in front as we went down to the lock, Melz lk 6, where the young lock keeper had the lock ready for us. He was collecting bits of spalled concrete from along the lock edge. We dropped down 1.37m then followed Charley out of the lock. The keeper went back to mowing the grass and waved as we passed. As we went down the canal a group of four herons took flight and then a flock of seagulls started diving into the water in front of Charley. Must be pushing a shoal of fish in front of them for the birds to be doing that. Bilitis was still moored above Villiers lock 7.
We hadn’t noticed on the way uphill, but the boat had no rudders as he’d had a problem and they’d been taken off to be repaired – it was in the lockkipper’s blog. Guy the lock keeper was busy, he had another commercial waiting to come up, so he dashed down the bottom end and raised a manual paddle to empty the lock a bit faster. Had a brief chat with him and asked if he knew he had mis-spelled lock keeper, he said yes, but he didn’t know what a kipper was. I told him. A smoked fish, that stinks, he said! No, they’re lovely - a British favourite for breakfast. He laughed. We asked what the writing on a tank on board Bilitis meant. It said slobtank. He said it was a Dutch boat. Maybe water for putting out fires? He would ask.
(I checked online, it should be slop tank, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crude_oil_washing)
Emile V, an empty 85m x 9.50m tanker (1,602 tonnes – from Cercy la Tour) was waiting below. 
We passed him in the narrow channel below the lock without any problems. 5.2 kms to the next lock as we bid our bloggeur au’voir. Followed Charley on to the river again. Nick said he’d just seen the little tjalk (which had set off downriver the previous afternoon) coming out of the old river and heading downstream. Our guide book says the old river is in a bad state of repair. I made sandwiches for lunch on the move. Le Lyonais went uphill empty. Sitalise, loaded with bales of cardboard for recycling, was moored above lock 8, Vezoult. We had a short wait while a Belgian cruiser called Atlantis from Wachtebeke came up in the lock.
Dropped down 1.16m plus a bit more, so Mike had to ask the keeper who was leaning out of the lock cabin widow why two low water level marks on the lock walls. He said it was the automatic weir. Finished our lunch following Charley down to Jaulnes, lock 9. There was traffic coming uphill. We stooged about until Trucker, a loaded péniche, and empty pan Esturgeon pushed by tug France (a chopped péniche – I’m sure we’ve seen that working as a full length péniche!) cleared the lock, then we dropped down 1.27m. A combine harvester was working upwind and a load of chaff and dust covered us and the boat until the gates opened and we escaped into fresh air. The wind was blowing so it soon blew most of it off the boat. The keeper stayed in his smart cabin and waved. Followed Charley downriver. Empty tankership Irina (another one with Cercy la Tour on the stern) came upriver. There were people on board the boat that was there on the pontoon at Bray when we left on Friday. They’d moved to the upstream end of the pontoon now, so Charley winded and moored behind them. They had trouble getting alongside the pontoon with the swirling flow of the river and a strong wind which had just started to blow. We winded and came alongside Charley and tied to them, then put more lines out to the pontoon. It was 3.00 p.m. The electricity was dead so Mike went to the Mairie and asked if they could send someone to fix it, yes, be there in half an hour. Great. A man in fluorescent yellow trousers arrived before half an hour had passed and the electricity was restored. Connected up, set the TV up and had a cuppa.
