Only a short day today, so we left our mooring at 10 a.m. on a bright sunny morning. Unfortunately the forecast doesn’t bode too well with rain for this afternoon. But as usual, forecasts can be wrong and the storms that we have quite often pass over very quickly.
We had problems with the first two locks and had to call the VNF man each time.....but our last lock was fine. A very pleasant 6 km run into Digoin followed.
We remembered the port in Digoin - last time we were here we had to move on as there was no room for us. This time we dared to moor on the hire boat side of the port. We were just getting ourselves organised when a nice young Frenchman appeared asking questions about the boat - it appeared he worked in a nearby boatyard and was interested in internal layout. He very politely asked if he could come back some time and have a look over Aphrodite.....we said of course he could and arranged for him to come over around 6 o’clock when he finished work.
The two men went off to the station to find out about trains for Gary and Tinas’ departure the next day and while the girls were chatting, a very angry Frenchman came along grumbling loudly and making explosive noises. With that he viciously unplugged our power cable! Crew tried to reason with him but he was having none of it - he was extremely agitated. Crew tried to explain that we only had the fridge working but he just wouldn’t listen. A little while later, the men arrived back and after we related the sorry story, Skip went to plug us back in but Crew advised against it and suggested we wait until we could find a Capitaine to ask what the problem was. The man came from his boat and started ranting again and this time pulled the plug on one of the motor homes parked nearby. The caravanner came rushing out shouting and promptly re- attached himself. A little while later a man from Canalous (a hire boat company) walked up with the angry Frenchman to his boat and as he walked back Crew asked what the problem was......he said it was another boat further along causing the problem - neither an apology or even an apologetic look was forthcoming from Mr. Angry!
After a fairly quick lunch the men went over again to find out where to pay for our berth and were directed to the other side of the canal to the Capitainerie......the only place they found was a nursing home. However, using their wily resources, they sussed out a very nice space for us to move to right outside the real Capitainerie. On returning to the hire base they caused great hilarity on recounting the nursing home story! We moved across and plugged in - safely this time and got comfortable again.
Not very far from the port was a hotel with a restaurant which looked to be pretty good and whilst in town the boys booked a table for dinner. We had said around 6 p.m. for Matthieu (the young Frenchman) to come over but as we had moved, it was considerably later when he finally found us and by then we were getting ready for dinner. So another arrangement was made for the next day.
Another delicious meal was enjoyed, followed by drinks and cards.
12 km. 3 locks. 2 1/4 hours
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