Sunday
Passage again through some beautiful villages and countryside for 27 miles. Being a Sunday we saw only 4 barges and these presented no problems. What did however was the lock at Notre-Dame-de-la-Garenne, where the water level rose so violently we managed to loose our tie up to a bollard and ended up motoring in the lock against the current to recapture a free bollard. Fortunately it was a large lock and we were the only boat in it. The issue being that the bollards are so far apart that the best we can do is lasso a bollard at the bow and catch on to a ladder rung at the stern with the boathook. Anyway we survived undamaged and found a very picturesque and free mooring opposite Vernon, next to Vernonnet medieval watermill.
(A note about distances, so far we have referred to distances travelled in miles. These are of course nautical miles which are about 15% longer than a normal mile, so 27 nautical miles above is approx 31 miles. However, being in France, all distances on canal and river charts are given in km, so from now on, we’ll probably use km as our distance unit)
