Cercy-la-Tour to St Leger-les-Vignes

14 kms, 3 locks, 2.5 hours

Another scorching, simmering, sweaty, miserable, unpleasant day. 

We left the mooring at Cercy-la-Tour at 8.00 seeing the first lock was 7.7 kms away.  We knew another 2 boats would be heading in the same direction as us and we didn’t want to be third in the queue because only 2 boats fit into these small locks (they are only 30m long) at a time.  We shared the lock with one of the boats.  It was a private boat (as opposed to a hire boat) and they knew what they were doing so all ran smoothly and we tied up at a quay in St Leger-les-Vignes known as a good place to stop and do some shopping shortly before 10.30.  

Storks nesting on top of a pole

This old lock keeper's cottage is now a gite.  Great idea.

The mooring at Champvert

No idea but it looks interesting

Right alongside the canal there is a Carrefour supermarket, within 100m there are  Lidl and  LeClerc supermarkets, and 200m in the opposite direction there is a BricoMarché with a laundry outside. Oh, and a garden centre, but that was not of much use to us.

In the searing heat we did most of our shopping at Lidl, then we went to the Brico where we bought a table fan (ordinary household appliance),  I did the laundry (standing in the hot sun waiting for the wash and dry cycles), then we went to Carrefour to buy wine (ages since we last stocked up and supplies were running low).  We also intended to do 3 runs to the fuel station at Carrefour but the heat just beat us.  That can wait till tomorrow.

We moved from that quay to another on the opposite side of the canal and a couple of hundred metres downstream.  The new household fan needs electricity to run it, you see.  But when we got there we were told that the water and electricity were out of order and someone is coming to fix it tomorrow.  Hmmmph.

By this time it was 4 in the afternoon, the sun was blinding, and I just went comatose with my small fan wafting the hot air around, but even the built-in mister didn’t help much.  The temp climbed to 34.9 inside the boat even though we had all the window covers on plus towels, held on with magnets, across the windows that don’t have any.

As it got fractionally cooler in the evening I got off the boat to take a picture and was bitten on the leg by the dog off the boat in front of us.  Charming.  Ian had a word with the owner who was not in the least bit concerned (he had been sitting in the sun drinking beer all afternoon - his brain was well fried and pickled!) so we moved back to the quay next to the Carrefour supermarket. 

Photo taken at risk to life and limb, well life is a bit of a stretch!

There are thunderstorms forecast later tonight and the clouds are beginning to roll in.  From tomorrow Mr Weatherman tells us the temperature will drop to the low 20’s.  Please, please, please let him be right.