Friday 24th May - De Luz to Baumes les Dames

After another slight contretemps about our departure time, we left De Luz at 9.30 on a lovely sunny morning.  Our first obstacle was an ecluse de garde - a lock that is open unless the waterway is in flood.  This one, however, had a red light and the gates were closed.  We vaguely remembered this one before so we followed the normal procedure and operated the lock, expecting to enter and hover until the top gate automatically opened.  Good theory........but the gate didn’t open!  So we called the VNF - the man arrived about 15 minutes later and got us through.  Not a great start to the day but, to be fair, it was our first problem so far.
The rest of the locks went smoothly and we enjoyed cruising in such beautiful surroundings with the sun warming us to the extent that both Skip and Crew were in shorts and t-shirts.
We arrived just before 1 p.m. and got organised.  Henk was about an hour behind us so lunch was slightly earlier than usual.
Henk over- wintered in Baume les Dames two years ago and made some French friends with whom he enjoyed many an apero on board their boat, so he knows the town very well.  We therefore decided to go for dinner at his favourite restaurant, Le Charleston - he tried to call to reserve a table but without luck, so we thought we should go a little earlier than usual and met for our apero at 6.30, then made our way to the restaurant just after 7 p.m., arriving around 7.30 (it’s about a 25 minute walk).
We were successful in getting a table, which was lucky because, as time wore on the restaurant filled up.  Skip went for the four course €28 menu du jour and Henk and Crew shared a starter and chose a main course - the food was delicious, as expected, and the wine very good and reasonably priced at €8 for a 50cl carafe.
We decided on a taxi back to the port - lazy lot!!  As it had been a fairly long, warm day, we went our separate ways for a reasonably early night.

17 km 7 locks 3 1/2 hours