Experts

Yesterday's dream run with the locks put us in a great position for a cruisy day, pardon the pun. We had a very late start (well past the 9.00am kick off for the lock keepers) but only had a handful of locks to tackle and we're moving faster now that we know what we're doing. The Canal du Nivernais and the River Yonne have gone their separate ways, today was all canal. A lunch stop and village stop rounded out our day before we pulled in to Cravant as our mooring point for the night. We've got the hang of how to keep The Tub under control, or at least give the impression that we've got it under control, so all this stopping and starting is much easier and efficient than it was when we set off last week.

It's our last night on The Tub and we tied up at the port rather than camping along the edge of the canal like we have on previous evenings. This is the first time we've moored with shore power and unlimited water. Long hot showers and kettle boiling without having to run the generator ... what a luxury.

Our onboard supplies are running very low so we walked into Cravant to have dinner. There's only one cafe/brasserie in the village and they only have 4 things on the menu ... 2 entrees and 2 main courses. Deciding what to order was pretty easy but they had a slightly larger choice of beers, that's when thinking got hard.

By the time we got back to The Tub the little port has filled up and boats were double-parked. The guy behind us had given The Tub a serious nudge while jostling into place and almost dislodged our front mooring peg. Perhaps he'd only received 5 minutes of Franglish instructions when he hired his boat.Read more