Saturday 29th July - Pagny-sur-Meuse to Not Quite sure Where!

A long day today so we left at 9 a.m. - a bit cool and cloudy but with a promise of some sunshine later.  As we had a run of 14 km before our first lock Crew was able to just untie then retreat below to  get organised.  We are travelling through the Meuse valley....very pretty with gentle wooded hills.  No agriculture - just a few cows!  The brief today - just 13 locks and a 5 kilometre tunnel!  So far, so good....the locks all went to plan as once we had been through the first, all the rest were set to green and we were able to go straight in.  We had reckoned on the tunnel taking an hour but we managed it in about 50 minutes - an experience but a lot of concentration on Skips' part!  Our plan was to moor for the night on a pontoon just after the next lock but as we approached it was evident that there was not enough water for us.....we grounded and had to power ourselves out of it.  It was (literally) all downhill from there!  We frantically consulted the charts for an alternative mooring but the next possible looked to be another 11 locks and as we had already been on the move for  almost 8 hours that was not a good prospect.  We decided to find the first available spot on the bank but this proved to be more difficult than we imagined as the sides were sloping and made of concrete......not a good friend to steel boats!!  We got to our last lock of the day and we're about to exit the lock when the gates stopped opening......the pernicious weed had arrested them!  So Skip had to climb the weed infested ladder to call the VNF.  He arrived fairly pronto and opened the gate but we requested to talk to him and ask where we could moor for the night.  The usual Gallic shrug and a head scratch - the best he could come up with was against the wall just after the lock because he said that there was less water further on.......this is getting quite worrying!  Anyway, the long and the short of it was that we took his advice and moored with stakes - front in and back sticking out into the Canal!  Certainly not ideal but we were both so tired by then that we just had to stop somewhere!
After a couple of drinks and a shower each we were feeling almost normal although very tired!  So a corned beef salad was all we could muster for our supper.  A bit of TV and bed.

37.5 km. 19 locks. 9 hours