Wednesday 19th September - Seurre to Fragnes

We left port just after 10 a.m., again in beautiful sunshine under a cloudless blue sky - we are so lucky to be enjoying these warm autumn days.  The plan was to stop in Gergy as there is a restaurant there.  Having said that, we haven’t been very lucky to find it open in the past and indeed it was once again closed!  We tried to moor Aphrodite on the end of the pontoon but it was far from a comfortable berth, so we decided to move on.
We took the decision to cruise a few kilometres along the Canal du Centre to Fragnes, where we had stopped earlier in the year with our friends, Gary and Tina.  On that visit however we did not visit the restaurant on the quay as we had enjoyed a large lunch in Chalon-sur- Saône.
We had to wait a while for the very ancient guillotine lock to be ready and as there was already a boat  waiting in front of us ( the lock only took two boats) Henk had an even longer wait!  We followed the boat in front of us at a miserable speed of around 4 kph, made more miserable for us as we had taken our canopy down to accommodate the lower bridges on the canal and the heat was unrelenting at that speed!
  We were helped in by a very nice young lady Capitaine who had extremely good English and told us that the restaurant would be open at 7 p.m. which was good news.....too hot for galley work!!
Another very late lunch, then some rest before a cool shower.
After our usual aperitif on the deck we ambled over to the restaurant just before eight o’clock and enjoyed a good, if a little expensive, dinner.  An earlier night ensued after a digestif - it had reached 32c during the day and we all found the heat fairly draining!

44 km. 2 locks. 4 1/2 hours