L'Avenir - cruising Europe's inland waterways

Tournus We are now at the confluence of the Saone and Rhone in the lovely city of Lyon. This is as far south as we have yet been and we now have to decide whether to commit to the 300km Rhone cruise to the south or return to central France. We have been here for a few days waiting for a part to be delivered for our air condtioner which naturally gave up the ghost during the heatwave. Being here has been no hardship; Lyon is a great city with loads to see, do and eat but mooring provision at the new port development is much too limited and the stressed harbourmaster is agitating for people to move on. Pressure on spaces isn't helped by one of the two pontoons being taken up by small day boats for hire. We will be leaving tomorrow. Will it be a left or right turn out of the harbour? The trip down the Saone has, so far, been very enjoyable. Compared to the hard work of the canal du Centre the river has been a leisurely cruise. There is very little current at this time of year...

France is criss-crossed with a network of marked walking routes the shortest of which are the yellow PR (petites randonées). Many villages will have an information board showing a map of the walks in their area with some details about the length, level of difficulty and time required. So, you look at the map, decide where you want to go according to how energetic you feel, and set off. Every so often there will be a marker pointing you in the right direction. Fool proof you'd think. Whilst visiting the tourist office in Santenay the helpful young man there showed us a photo of a fully restored local windmill telling us was that this was the last working windmill in Burgundy. "It's not far," he assured us, whilst waving in a vaguely easterly direction. Or maybe it was more north....Anyway, after consulting the map in the village square and discovering the windmill route was classed as suitable for families and required 2 hours, two of us decided that we'd ...

Paray le Monial The Canal du Centre passes through some lovely countryside but there's a price to be paid for hills. Locks. Lots of them. The locks on this canal ones are automated but they need to be set by an itinerant lock keeper who will arrange with you each day what time you will set off and will appear from time to time during the day to ask 'continuez?' in the firm hope that you will say, 'non,' so he can go home. Locks and heatwaves are a bad combination. The mechanisms (according to the keepers) don't like them and shut down randomly meaning a call to the control centre on the emergency intercom. The person responsible for answering the intercom doesn't like them either or is perhaps overwhelmed by calls, because they don't answer. The crew member handling the bow rope doesn't like them because s/he (me) has to stand out in the blazing sunshine for the 15 minutes ( assuming all goes well) that it takes to work through. And the eclusi...

We are about to descend 10 metres onto the River Saone. The final lock of 61 (in 114km) on the Canal du Centre. It's been a bit of a hard slog particularly for our crew flying from a balmy Scottish summer (highs of around 20 and the distinct probability of rain) into a week of temperatures just shy of 40. Libby and Brian you were brilliant. We'll have medals ready for you but only if you come back again next year. The Crew at Santanay- still standing! Before picking up our brave crew in Digion we detoured along the 50km  Canal de Roanne. We have previously missed out this canal as it terminates at Roanne and so necessitates retracing the same route within days. Extremely leaky lock gates The canal is quite rural and pleasant with some 'interesting' lock approaches requiring a bit of driving skill (says skipper) or plain luck to get through the cross currents and avoid bouncing off the stone walls. Helping the lock keeper, Canal de Roanne Ro...

In the shade Today is the 5th in a row with a temperature of just under 40 degrees. There's to be a slight respite in the middle of next week when the thermometer is forecast to plummet to 32 -for one whole day.  Then it's back to 37/38  for the foreseeable future which, in French Meteo terms, is 10 days. 'You'll be used to this,' is the cheery comment from most people  when they see our Australian flag (right after they have asked if we came from Australia in the boat). I confess to being temped at times to make out we're tough, adventurous types who spend our days toiling under the blazing Aussie sun panning for gold or hiding from it down the opal mines in order to fund our ocean voyages but I don't have the energy for creative thought (hence no recent blog posts). So, I admit that sadly, no, we didn't come by boat and no, we are not used to it. Believe it or not, in Melbourne, our really hot spells usually last only a couple of days at a time...