Port de Pont d’Ouche - 13 June 2019

13.06.19 - Sorry this is a day late - we met some English people - more later!

Watched another couple of episodes of Killing Eve last night. Nice peaceful carpark, except for the church bells! They carried on right throughout the night!

I drove today, about an hour, but took a bit longer as first we stopped off at Intermarche. Needed mainly milk, yogurts, cheese, water, bread - not a big shop - but it was close to the start of the drive and on the way.

Then drove for about 30 minutes to Sombernon to service Dave (for free). As there was no one else waiting, we washed Dave’s outside too! We were going to get diesel, drove in, realized it was a tight chicane to get out - and anyway,  no one in the kiosk, so we can’t use our credit card unless with a real person (!).

It was a very pleasant drive, no one behind me, and not much traffic. We’re now parked at another Park4night place at Pont de Port d’Ouche.

As we enjoyed our bike ride so much yesterday, and as the weather is sunny 😎, decided to do a similar ride today. In the end rode for over 19 miles on the tow path. More canal boats, less herons!

Were watching a boat called L’Impressionniste go into the lock, and got chatting to the crew. Main man was French, but causally said - but I can speak in English! The boat is on charter for 12 guests, and has 6 crew. The company is European Waterways, just Googled, 6 nights on that barge starts from £4,190 per person! Tintin had seen on the map that the canal ended, so we asked about it. The canal doesn’t end, but goes into a tunnel which is the highest point of the canal. The locks the other side of the tunnel take the canal level down. So we rode past 19 locks right up to the start and found the tunnel - must be creepy going through there!

They recommended riding up to the Château de Châteauneuf. Steep climb - even with our electric bikes! Stopped off to watch the lovely charolais cows. We didn’t go in the Château, as we just wanted to see the views - and excellent they were over the Vandenesse valley!

The big dog was being cajoled into going up a ramp into a car!

Possibly through no fault of their own, one canal boat caused havoc for a while. There were men cutting down trees high up alongside a lock, and a big part of the tree must have fallen into the lock, and the barge somehow got wedged on it - for quite sometime. We got talking to some English people - they said the Americans were paying £2,850 each per week - didn’t look that special!

So, those English people - we’d gone to say hello before we went riding - they didn’t know if they were staying or not - but we saw them on their bikes up near the start of the locks. They went off for a coffee, so we came back to Dave, and Tintin kindly, and successfully replaced both my front and rear brake pads which were a bit iffy (especially coming down the steep long hill!).

We started chatting about 4pm, and apart from getting our Captain Morgan’s and coke to take over to their van, didn’t get back to Dave til about 10.30 ish - too late to write. We all bypassed on food apart from a few nuts! They are called Graham and Sally, from Durham. In their 3rd van, an Auto-Trail. They’ve been retired for 12 years (he retired early - had been a prison officer for 34 years). Lovely interesting couple, so much to say as they’ve been traveling for so long and been to so many places.

Trying to get to sleep, we were serenaded by frogs 🐸for hours and hours - boy are they noisy!

Lovely day - this is what it’s all about - warm weather, and a long carefree cycle with no cars, just observing nature and wildlife  🙂

Some more pics from the bike ride.