L'Avenir - cruising Europe's inland waterways

Lyon Port A Memorable Journey Upstream from Lyon I'm writing this almost a year later from lockdown in Australia. Looking back at my diaries and photos from last summer's cruising should be cheering but it's not really. With our borders closed to international (and even internal) travel there is no chance of us rejoining l'Avenir this year. This will be our first full winter in cold, damp Melbourne since 2007 but we are hopeful for next year.  I hope every one of you stays well; those of you who manage to go cruising this summer, have wonderful adventures and those of you who don't, keep dreaming. After leaving Valence it was only a couple of days to lovely Lyon, stopping on the way at Andancette and the good little port of Condrieu sur Roches. The town of Vienne looked interesting in passing but not a comfortable place to stop overnight. There are concrete wharves on both banks and as the river is quite busy here (one of the cruise ship stops) the water sloshes bac...

Next stop was Valence. The marina itself is enormous; the largest river port in France, it has 450+ berths. A shortish hike away, through the 17 hectares of sporting ovals, is a Géant Casino hyperrmarket - a bit sad to get excited about a supermarket I know but there you go. The other main attractions at the port are a launderette and a restaurant. With all that excitement on offer we decided to stay 2 nights.  The restaurant specialises in fish, is quite pricey but the servings are huge. We shared a plate of the biggest oysters I have ever seen followed by a giant plate each of cabillaud (cod). cauliflower, carrots, zucchini and potatoes. Everything here seemed to be super sized - including, I was a bit horrified to discover on my plate, whelks. Hot this time. Against my better judgment, I was persuaded to give them another try. Never again. Despite the port being large and fairly full there were only a couple of boats 'en voyage.' We were joined, on the second day, by Boschpl...

Cruas - frozen in time After 2 nights and a rather mediocre dinner at the cafe at Viviers port (memo to self: don't buy any more menu items called 'fish 'n chips'. In France anyway) we decided to move on. The first lock  (Chateauneuf 19m deep) is just around the first bend. We were called straight in and on our own. That was about as good as it got for the day though. We travelled for about three and a half hours in very blowy conditions, with intermittent downpours and quite a strong current: so slow-going. I remembered this section from our trip south when we were caught in a bad thunderstorm and it was quite frightening. The river opens out into some very wide sections: lake-like and exposed. It would have been pleasant on a normal August day but what is normal these days? A couple of boats stormed past us at high speed really knocking us around. Enough we thought. We'll stop at Cruas. This port has a tricky entrance necessitating its own special blow-up s...