Saturday 23rd June - Draveil to Nogent-sur-Marne

Just two more big locks on the Seine today before turning off onto the River Marne - then two small river locks and a tunnel to our destination.  We shared our first lock with a passenger boat and a commerce but left the passenger boat behind as he was travelling so slowly for our second.
Then onto the Marne and our first lock going up now was four metres deep and no sliding poles, so had to move the line up as we rose in a fairly turbulent lock!!  Not Crews’ favourite one!!
We arrived in Nogent at 12.45 and moored front in with the help of some very friendly French boaters.  As the wind and current were both going the same way we had difficulty in keeping the boat straight but we did our best and settled, if a bit askew!
The fact that Nogent is on the outskirts of Paris is fairly evident with all the buzz of a city suburb going on.  As we had passed a rowing club on the river, the rowers were in evidence too, along with fast speedboats instructing the rowers so it was a bit bumpy.....we also have the occasional commerce passing by too.  We find we both have a yen for a quiet country mooring!
We decided to have dinner out as Sundays and Mondays were often difficult to find restaurants, so Crew would cook dinner ‘Chez nous’ on those days!  Skip had booked a table in the garden of an old ‘ginguette’ (a kind of restaurant of the people, so to speak) called Le Verger.
Well......as fast as the service was the previous evening, so this was extremely slow!  By the time we had received our main meal we had almost gone off the idea!!  Also, we are paying Paris prices for average food really.

We arrived back at the boat only just in time to watch Bridget Jones the age of Reason with a digestif, then bed.

24 km. 4 locks. 3 3/4 hours