Joigny (and we’re off again)

Heading into Joigny with its vineyards on the surrounding hills

Well, that was a hectic week back in the UK; with so many children to catch up with we had no time for friends this time around.  It seemed to be even more hectic because we never stayed more than one night anywhere, and we travelled over 2,000 miles in the car.  We’ve certainly learnt that next time we will stay two nights in each place, but on the bright side we did the right thing by leaving Buddy with Sue & Paul on their boat down in Génelard.  It wouldn’t have been fair with all the travelling and he probably got spoilt rotten knowing Sue & Paul.

We did manage some down time and even got in a spot of butterflying with Sophie & Yanos on Yateley Common where we saw silver studded blues emerging. 

A torn right hind wing on a fresh silver studded blue

Yanos, with his eagle eyes, spotted a dark green fritillary emerging and we watched for several minutes while it finished drying its wings before setting off to find a mate.

Newly hatched dark green fritillary

Sophie & Yanos held a party near Oxford to celebrate Sophie’s 30^th birthday and their first wedding anniversary.  It was an opportunity for their friends and many relatives to celebrate their wedding with them as the actual event had been a relatively small affair.  It was really good to spend the afternoon and evening with most of our children and some of our relatives.

We had appointments around Leamington Spa which we combined with a trip to Yorkshire to see my Dad.  One of the appointments was to get our life jackets recertified which is an annual requirement in France.

We came back to Migennes on Wednesday and, although we had heard about the predicted hot weather in France, we were neither ready for it nor really expecting it.  The temperatures have been around 40 degrees centigrade since we’ve been back but are predicted to drop to the right side of 30 for the coming week.  The highest shade temperature was 41.5 on Thursday but thankfully (for us) we didn't hit the highs of the hottest parts of France.

Our mooring for the last week at Migennes at the far end, four boats out

It really has been too hot, especially on a small steel boat and I passed out three times during our first evening back and, honestly, I’d only been up to drinking water – no alcohol.  The final time (we were still sitting outside) I was suddenly aware of Karen calling for help as I had been out of it for some while.  Simon, who owns the boatyard came to her call and was really helpful.  He monitored my blood pressure and heartbeat every 15 minutes until it was back to normal.  Even though I had been drinking water we put it down to not drinking enough and overexertion carrying stuff from the car across three other boats to reach ours.

We pootled around on Thursday and Friday and decided to start on our journey to Paris on Saturday morning; the last of the forecast very hot days.  We caught up with people we had met in the boatyard including Ian & Lisette from Oz who set off on their annual cruising trip on the Thursday morning.

Ian & Lisette getting ready to leave

On both days we drove into Joigny for various reasons such as food and bricolage shopping.  On the first trip Karen spotted a British post box outside the town hall as we drove past; unfortunately, it wasn’t a good old VR box, just a modern Elizabethan one..

...strange to see it in France though

One of our bricolage trips was to buy mosquito netting and we spent a couple of happy hours following Karen's ingenious designs to fit our windows and hatches.  Most of the openings are rectangular and once cut to size and edged with flexible magnetic strip they fitted perfectly.  We didn't make all of them but enough for the bedroom so we could keep the windows out and the doors open all night.

I said ingenious, but she hadn't come up with a final plan for the portholes so I stepped in with a temporary solution.  I had kept the broken throttle cable and used lengths of this to expand to the circumference and thus hold the netting in place inside the porthole surround.  I know it doesn't look the part but we thought that was ingenious too, as a temporary solution.

Friday is normally Simon’s boat craning day and it was interesting watching him from the front of our boat as he craned in a large Dutch barge.  I say interesting as he only had one guy on the ground helping him and neither were kitted out in hard hats etc.

Siga Siga about to be dropped in

We planned a short trip for Saturday so we could get moored up before lunch but we underestimated what we had to do before setting off and realised we wouldn’t make the first lock by noon.  We ended up mooring up for lunch at Laroche where we had spent a few days at the end of March before our trip around Burgundy.

Our first lock for a while

The weirs by both of the day’s locks were of the needle dam type whereby metal poles or ‘needles’ are dropped into a retaining frame in the water until the barrage is complete.  Water flow is then controlled by removing or adding needles as required.

Needle dam outside Joigny

Some of the removed needles laying on top of the barrage

We had hoped that it would feel cooler cruising on the river but we couldn’t really tell the difference as there was no breeze, but we were glad we had bought the sunshade for the summer sun.

Cruising down the Yonne on our way to join the Seine in a few days

The locks on this part of the Yonne are half the size (100 metres long) of those we will encounter on the Seine (or indeed encountered on the Saône) but we still felt pretty small in them as we were the only occupants.  The locks seemed to empty quite slowly compared to those on other rivers but one éclusier kept us entertained by playing his guitar in the shade as he waited for the water to drain out.

Our busking éclusier

We were soon heading into Joigny and moored up for the day opposite a 2-star Michelin restaurant.  With starters starting at €68 we decided to give it a miss, even with air conditioning 😉

For once we managed to find a bit of shade by mooring up to some trees

Opposite the Côte St Jacques restaurant in Joigny

It has been so hot that Buddy hasn't wanted to walk far so later in the afternoon Karen went off on her own to find the local bricolage.  We needed a second sunshade as we have been finding that one sunshade is not enough to cover all three of us so.  She was successful and the plan seemed to work when we were sitting on the back deck.  We'll have to wait until Sunday to see if it works okay whilst cruising.

On Saturday we cruised nine kilometres down two locks.