Moret-sur-Loing

After 2 extremely hot days (38 degrees inside cabin! and 3 or 4 dips in the river every day to cool down) we had a thunderstorm last night that cleared the air. Moored next to Champagne’s lock for the night, bought gazole (we must siphon fuel in next time rather than spill a great part of it….), met Francoise and her dog Moustique and still learning so many things: today we turned Wilhelmina because John wanted to tar the other side of the boat (over the battle scars…) and he wanted to practice turning without the engine on, ie with ropes only. Well… why did we do it right next to the lock?

We got away with it but we could have run into serious trouble had there been peniches wanting to go in or out. As it happens, a few minutes after we eventually managed to turn, a double followed by two others gathered around to get in whilst 2 or 3 were steaming out. Phew! Another lesson! We have now left the Seine and its huge peniches and are in the Canal du Loing just past Moret’s tiny lock (compared with the ones on the Seine. Everything is quiet and beautiful, we saw 2 air balloons floating by whilst we were having supper. Bliss! Tomorrow, Tom goes back to England and we will start the series of “automatic locks” (do we have to pull or lift the lever to make the lock fill up?) towards Briare.