Friday 22nd June - Chartrettes to Draveil

Since we had four locks today, we left at 9 a.m. and snuck in behind a very long double barge.....he only just fitted in the lock length wise!  On exiting the lock the barge was very slow and it took a while for us to be able to overtake him.  In the event it made no difference as we had to wait for him at the next lock but he spoke to Skip and said we could exit the lock first......nice man!  Thus we avoided sharing our third lock with him.
The Seine is very wide with plenty to look at.......some very lovely houses on the river front.  Although it was a lovely sunny day, there was a cold northerly wind blowing - the speed at which we were travelling added to the wind chill factor!  Most of these big locks involved a wait of some kind but all in all - not too bad!  So we arrived in the Port aux Cerises (the port of cherries!) around two o’clock.  We had called ahead and had a berth allocated which we found without too much trouble and got ourselves settled in.
After some lunch, Skip did his usual recce, looking for a restaurant......the Capitaine had said that the nearest one, Le Gibraltar, was good so we settled on that.
We walked over just before eight o’clock and settled on a table on the terrace overlooking the river.  Although the food was of a reasonable quality, the service was much too fast and we struggled to keep up with the wine consumption at the appropriate time........yes, we really did!!  They asked us three times if we had finished our main course which, in my opinion is not good hospitality!
Back to the boat for a bit of TV and a digestif.

45 km. 4 locks. 5 hours