Monday 30th April 2018 Lamarche-sur-Saône to St Jean-de-Losne 27.8kms 2 locks

The old sand quay at Lamarche

8.8ºC Damp after heavy rain in the night. Later we had nasty squalls with gale force winds preceding and accompanying torrential rain. Cold. Set off at 9.55am leaving a large French cruiser moored on the end of the sand quay. A Le Boat hireboat had already gone past heading downhill and we passed an uphill one just before the first canal section. Brolly up as the first squall hit and the wind whipped up white topped waves on the 4kms river reach. Through floodgates into the lock cut leading to lock 19 Poncey-les-Athée and dropped down 1.5m

Pontoon moorings in Auxonne

. The cold wind in our faces made me search out winter gear, warm gloves and my furry lumberjack hat and Mike’s ex-army peaked hat with ear-flaps. There were fishermen with tents set up on the riverbank just before the TGV railway bridge. No time to get a photo as a TGV train crossed the bridge at high speed. Another Le Boat was sheltering from the bad weather attached to the bank under trees. 7kms of winding river took us through Auxonne, past H2O’s offline mooring basin that was packed with DBs and big cruisers

Part of fortifications in Auxonne

– we saw the bows of another narrowboat but didn’t see a name. More heavy rain – the wind tried to rip the brolly apart. Another Le Boat uphill. The floating pontoon was empty save for two Le Boats and a large cruiser. Passing Auxonne’s ancient fortifications we went into the next lock cut leading to lock 20 Auxonne. We sat waiting for the lock to fill then three boats came up behind us. The first, a yacht with stepped mast,

Sharing Auxonne lock with a yacht

flying what looked like a Brittany flag – black and white stripes, came in after us and went right to the end of the chamber. We did likewise to get to the rod. The other two boats looked as if they were hanging back and, while I was wondering why they weren’t following us into the large chamber, the yacht skipper was over the lock gates and lifted the blue rod! He went back to shifting his ropes about which caused his boat to twist round – Mike backed off to the other end of the chamber to give him plenty of room. Lock

Oh-ho - bad weather coming our way wind's picking up

empty, the yacht was away first and slowly disappeared into the distance on the start of the 30kms reach. At last a commercial on the move! OFNI, empty, heading uphill, crew waving. Another cruiser heading uphill was not far behind the péniche. The next squall was a bad one, it started with full gale force wind then torrential rain was added to the mix, Mike held on to the brolly, which kept collapsing as the ribs slid sideways under the force of the wind. I steered, heaving against the tiller to keep the boat roughly

Rain pelting down, wind blowing a hooley
trying to shred our brolly

in mid-river channel. That was the worst twenty minutes boating ever… It ended and the sun came out, rapidly drying the roof. My plants in large heavy plastic window boxes had been blown over – wouldn’t have thought that possible with the weight in them. Fortunately nothing was damaged. I made cups of instant soup to warm us up. Wish I’d have got a new waterproof last week but just couldn’t find any wet weather gear. The two cruisers that were behind us at lock 20 came past. We followed a large Swiss

Looking back upriver at the storm cloud that drenched us

cruiser on to the pontoon mooring about 2kms from the town. Hurried to get tied up and the TV set up before the next deluge. It was 2.45pm. Had a very late lunch then Mike walked into town to retrieve the car and park it by the boat. 

This one missed us