Wednesday 14th September - Tournus to Gigny

We left at 10.15 hoping to moor in the little Marina at Gigny which is, in fact, a disused lock, otherwise we would have to press on to Chalon sur Saone.  Before we got to our only lock of the day, we noticed a commercial barge behind us which, of course meant that we would have to wait for him to enter the lock first.  In fact a second 'commerce' soon appeared which meant a 20 minute wait for us! The two barges went to the front of the lock, side by side and we went in behind them along with another cruiser.  The rise of water was only 2.6 metres but it took a while as it was a big lock.  There was plenty of space at Gigny - even so, it took about twenty minutes to finally tie off, thanks to the fussy German lady in charge......Crew was getting a little annoyed with her, to say the least!  The big disappointment, however was the fact that the little restaurant in the lock no longer existed - we think it had been sold off to the German couple who were busy turning the old lock house into a home!  So the lady told us that there was a restaurant just 10 minutes walk in a castle on a camp site - sounds unlikely but she kindly booked us a table for 8 o'clock.  The weather forecast was not good, however and looking at Henks' weather radar app it looked very much as if a storm was heading our way, after at least four weeks of wonderful dry, sunny weather.  We set off for the restaurant a bit before 8 p.m., not quite knowing where we were aiming for.  After a lot of guess work and a few looks at Henks' Google map we arrived at the restaurant half an hour later in the rain!!  The chateau in which the restaurant was situated was very nice, if a little grand and basically catered for the 'campers' who seemed to be mostly elderly Brits.  The camp site was made up of a few mobile homes, chalets of varying quality and some gites in the chateau.......more like 'glamping' I guess!  Sad to say, although the quality of the meat was probably quite good, it was well overdone - our half an hour trek was not rewarded!!  We just had one course and a bottle of wine then after paying, left disappointed.  We decided on a different route back which indeed, seemed shorter although we didn't hang around as it was still raining fairly hard, with thunder rumbling and flashes of lightening.  We all got onto Aphrodites' aft deck just before the real rain came - blowing a gale and dropping a months' worth of water on us.  Luckily Skip had shut everything up before leaving although we later found that some windows had been forgotten, resulting in a few mini floods!!  Henk went to check his boat and find some dry clothes, then we chatted, enjoying a digestif or two whilst the storm raged around us.  We had to move below in the end as the rain was so hard that it was permeating the canopy and wetting
everything.  An interesting evening!!

11 km 1 lock 1 3/4 hours