Friday 2nd June - Montbeliard to Montreux -Chateau

We left the port at 9.30 a.m., both feeling a bit liverish after last nights' dinner. The first three locks went swimmingly but on approaching the fourth, the zapper failed to work and of course, no landing stage.  Some mediocre lassoing by Crew and heroic leaping by Skip allowed him ashore to call the VNF.  A man was with us in a matter minutes and locked us through.  The next two locks were also attended by a lock keeper, whereupon we started a chain of five locks, also manned, to our destination. We were instructed by the lockkeeper to tie up further along until lunch time was over - 1.30, which we did, partaking of a bite to eat ourselves.  We ascended the five locks together with a three man French crew ahead of us and it went very quickly.  We arrived in Montreux-Chateau at 3 p.m., later than expected  due to the lunch stop.  We whiled away the afternoon, Skip making two business calls in between trying to book a table in the La Peniche restaurant, moored a few boats from us......neither of which was successful I believe! Of course, as it is Friday and then Le Weekend, the restaurant was 'complet' (full) which doesn't mean full just that the chef can't cope with any more bookings!  That went for both tonight and tomorrow night.  So a cobbled together cold chicken salad for us with a taramasalata and pitta bread starter for us.......too late for cooking as Crew had got herself dressed and ready to dine out!!  That's always very frustrating! After our 'feast' Crew decided to go and throw herself on the mercy of the restaurant staff and a few trips were made to the chef who, unfortunately proved to be immovable!  The ironic thing was that there were rather a lot of tables free, both on the top deck and below......c'est La France!!  The best hope was that if a cancellation occurred the waitress would come to the boat to let us know, either for lunch or dinner tomorrow - not holding my breath though!! Internet and TV both bad here so another DVD and bed.

22 km. 11 locks 5 1/2 hours