The journey begins . . . here.
Monday 25th June 2018
Digoin to Paray-le-Monial
The issue of this boat being sold and a few repairs needed to be dealt with. We were still ambivalent about who to choose and how best to do it. What we did know is our boat had history with the marina at St-Jean-de-Losne. We had planned going back there. That meant the other boat sales agent would be out of the picture as they don’t work together. What’s a person to do? If we picked the wrong agent, we would sit with a boat that could have been sold. A last e-mailing session at the Tourism Office to make contact with key people was rather important.
And then an old school friend popped up and wanted to join us on the boat for a few nights. But of course. The biggest challenge was keeping in touch. Bad enough we didn’t have WiFi most of the time but for some reason both my UK mobile phone (EE) and South African phone (MTN) would not enable ordinary text messages. Hand on heart I had been into both their Help Centres prior to leaving both countries to sort it out. There was more than enough money paid in. A person gives up after a while.
Coming out the last lock before Paray-le-Monial we had a bit of a disaster. The wind blew the back of the boat across the lock so her nose was skew as we exited the lock. The canal was so full of grass cuttings that the bow thruster was jammed. We had to manually fend our way out the lock. That strip of lock canal was like a lentil soup. They had tossed cut grass straight into the canal. Big clumps of it drifted all over the water like mini islands. And then our one fender rolled up and got caught in the bridge. What a mess. As if coming out once wasn’t hard enough, we had to reverse back into the lock, get the fender loose and then come out again.
Last time we were in Paray-le-Monial was a year ago, but three weeks later. It was heaving with humans. I gather it’s a religious centre where people come to get healed and celebrate St Margaret Mary. Luckily they were setting up and it hadn’t started yet. Creatures of habit, we went back to the same places we visited last time and finished up the evening having a beer and a glass of wine for a whole €4. There is a lovely “8 a Huit” supermarket in town. Back at the boat we had heaps of food to taste test. I like Paray-le-Monial but there was only one other boat around. I suspect the busy road opposite might put people off.
The journey continues . . . . . . here.
