Friday 18th May 2018 Molinet to Pierrefitte 11.2kms 2 manual locks

Sign board at Molinet

8.3ºC Sunny but still with a cold wind. Fleeces on. Went out in the car at 8.30am to have a look at the next three mooring possibilities, Coulanges, Pierrefitte and Diou. All looked OK and no boats moored on any of them. A boat had gone past, also heading downhill, as we set off in the car. It was 9.45am when we left the quay. The campervans were just starting to move off and the cycle path was already busy. Nice to have the sun out for a change. Past the excellent moorings at Coulanges,

Outnumbered by campervans

we needed to go further to charge the batteries. Mike phoned the VNF man in van who does the next two locks, he said he was at lock 3 and would be at 2 in fifteen minutes. Told him we would be about half an hour. A whole school of ten-year-olds plus teachers on bikes went past, all waving and shouting hello, bonjour, coucou! We could see the lock from about 500m away and there was one boat in the lock and the bottom end gates were still open. Another boat arrived and the keeper closed the gates and wound the paddles to

Leaving the mooring at Molinet

fill the lock. Two very large hire boats emerged and went past and we went into lock 2 Thalène. I put our centre rope around a bollard and Mike closed one gate behind us and wound a paddle for the keeper. A drop of just 2.5m and we were on a 3.2kms pound winding between fields of ever-present Charolais cattle with trees along both banks, with lots of acacias in flower among them. Some of the school kids on bikes went past heading back to wherever they came from. At lock 3 Odde we had two keepers, the previous one and a helper so we were redundant. The younger one gave Mike the phone number to ring when we want to leave Pierrefitte. They opened both bottom

Moored at Pierrefitte before the
hireboats and campervans arrived

end lock gates and set a feed paddle to keep the pound topped up. 3.9kms to the next but we’re not going quite that far today. Past the nicely refurbished restaurant called La Péniche and moored on the long quay at 12.20pm, nicely timed for lunch. Again we had campervans for company, lots of them seem to be keen fishermen. Mike went to recover the car from Molinet. Now we must get ourselves psyched up to start painting the roof and handrails as this is an ideal spot to do it.