We're back!! But what a journey getting here! Three days of constant rain (lovely on the motorways with the heavy spray from all the trucks!) and a maximum of 12 degrees. At least we didn't have to worry too much about our cold box containing precious fillet steak and sausages! We stopped at a lovely converted water mill on the Seine in Conelles, just south of Rouen on the first night Such a shame the weather was so awful - we could have enjoyed it so much more otherwise. Day two saw us making for Limoges which involved many kilometres driving down the A10. It was soon apparent that the A10, for some reason, was not available and an alternative route needed to be found. As neither of us trust our GPS (that woman has sent us up mountains and round in circles!) Crew became navigator. We tried to join the motorway about 50 km further on but still to no avail.
We ended up having to make a huge diversion west to finally reach Limoges. The post code was plumbed into our fantastic GPS lady (use the word loosely) who promptly deposited us somewhere in central Limoges, assuring us that we had reached our destination! Given that we were booked into a golf hotel and with not a blade of grass in sight, we decided that she had got it slightly wrong again! Three or four phone calls to the lovely lady on the Hotel du Golf reception saw us in the car park and finally booking in........we had been on the road for 11 hours!! Two cold beers for Skip and a glass of cool white for Crew improved our demeanour somewhat, followed by a Steak Tartare each......slept like babies!
The weather was not much improved the next morning, added to the fact that we had to travel through the high hills of the Lot Valley - it was like driving through clouds! Which, in effect, we were!
We arrived in Moissac at 1.15 p.m. to our great relief but as we were rafted alongside another boat we had to climb across to get to Aphrodite, so unloading the car was impractical. The state of Aphrodite was atrocious......deck completely green! And no better once on board - the aft deck was covered in cats' hair - we had the same last year but this year.......maybe more than one cat?? Every surface was covered in hair! Big groan!
Skip unloaded a few things (bed linen) so that Crew could get the bed made up (might need it sooner rather than later!) then, although the Capitainerie was closed, Jim called across and said we could move Aphrodite over so that we could unload properly - good man!
We got ourselves reasonably comfortable but Crews' culinary imagination had deserted her, so we had sausage sandwiches with a nice red, a film and bed.
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