Tuesday 4th September - Langres to Piepape

We left at 9.30 with Henk just fifteen minutes or so behind us.  We have the difficult part of our cruise back to St. Jean de Losne now, with long days and lots of locks, although after the last two ‘up’  locks today, it’s downhill all the way!  We were to take our time getting back to our home base but due to a dear friends’ funeral on 13th September, we had decided to go back to England for a couple of days, to pay our respects.  This means we need to cruise every day, so long days ahead for us!
After our last two uphill locks we had a 5 km tunnel to negotiate!  Unfortunately we chose the wrong time to start the day and ended up having to wait three and a half hours to pass through the tunnel!  Two cruisers left an hour before us, going our way and then a commerce was passing through the tunnel the other way......c’est la vie!!  The tunnels are not difficult to navigate but the concentration required to hold a steady course in such a long tunnel is immense, since we have less than a metre each side of the boat to play with!  Skip earned himself a gold medal - not even touching the fenders once!!
Once through the tunnel a 3 km run saw us approach a chain of eight locks, at over 5 metres each.  It sounds daunting but the locks were very fast and smooth and we took just under an hour and a half to navigate them.  Then three more less deep locks saw us moor on the bank in Piepape around 5 p.m....a long day!
None of us had eaten so far and as, once again, Crew was in no shape to take to the galley, we had our usual lunchtime selection of cheeses, pate, ham, etc. and indeed, we even cracked open a tin of corned beef around 7 p.m.  Having slaked our thirsts with a beer or two, we enjoyed some red wine with our ‘feast’.  Then early to bed as the next few days will be arduous!

21 km. 13 locks. 7 1/2 hours 1 tunnel