Therefore, notes made at the time are all that appear.

Dommerian to la Villeneuve sur Vingeanne. Canal de la Marne a la Saône.

Lovely weather - lovely run - bitter cold wind - wag the wok.

(Afterwards - I think that this note refers to our habit of waving the kitchen wok at  the old fashioned bulbous grey automatic lock radars to ensure they saw us)

la Villeneuve sur Vingeanne to jetty just below Oisilly. Canal de la Marne a la Saône.

"Heavy" frost - i.e. frost on roof of boat, but not nearly as body bitingly cold as yesterday.

Cloudless all day - mild and beautiful.

Moored to tiny jetty - front half of boat only - remainder dangled. Devil’s own job doing a safe tie up - bollards geometrically opposite end of jetty. Silly place to moor, but end of day!

Lovely run

Oisilly via junction with R. Saone to sand jetty at Heuilley-sur-Saône. Canal de la Marne a la Saône and River Saône.

Another perfect day.

Very sad to leave Canal de la Marne a la Saône - this last week has been among the best we have ever spent on the French waterways, and is a fitting end to an adventuresome year.

The canal - Canal de la Marne a la Saône - is generally quoted by boaters as being "difficult" or "remote" or full of commercial traffic. Yes, there is more commercial traffic than on some other canals, it has it’s problems with entrenched attitudes amongst it’s staff , and although pays heavy lip service to "tourism" - they effectively discourage tourists, BUT it is not remote, and is not hard work, and we would advise boaters to explore it, remembering that it is a French canal, owned and run by Frenchman, and quite honestly we have little or no right to moan and groan when things are not done "our" way, and anyway they are no "worse" than other parts of the system, and the commercial traffic in no way (except in the tunnel) disturbed us.

All in all, this canal is a gem - USE IT!

However - when you come to the traffic lights at the very end of the canal - about 50 metres up from the tee junction with the River Saone , and they are red - STOP! Yes it is all very overgrown, and abandoned looking, but the L.K. just down the river has CCTV in his cabin, and a red light means crossways traffic on the river.

We sat for 10 minutes discussing whether the red light was a forgotten mistake, or not (we hadn’t seen the TV cameral at that stage) then did a very cautious nose poke through under the bridge. Suddenly the river came alive with more boats than we had seen in a week, 2 boats going up, and one down, across our bows. We reversed hurriedly back under the bridge, and awaited a green.

Then out onto the river, and upstream to the jetty at Heuilly-sur-Soane for painting sides.

Doing as we did last year on this same jetty - rubbing, tidying and painting topsides. This jetty is ideal, being very low, and solid.

Repainted side that received dusting of sand during dust devil, just after painting.

Pulled out at mid-day, with both sides respectable again - not that they were that bad this year - we have been following a policy of patch as you go, whenever the weather was dry enough.

Moored up on river bank - ideal spot - right height, length, and depth of water.

Gentle run down river - fun but uneventful - dull mild weather.

We’ve moored up here several times before, but don’t know why - the mooring places are not that good, and the Auto Route is only about 300 metres away across the field, but we always seem to come back!

Half day’s run to end of "adventure 2002"  - or almost.

Fun coming back to St J. de L. and seeing all the people, boats, and what has changed since we left 6 moths ago.

Had the river front jetty totally to ourselves at mid-day when we arrived - but joined first be Pauline and Derek in Compain - then a plethora of hire boats, and a couple of yachts on their way north to Holland (Dada) and Sweden respectively (sorry, can’t remember Swedish boat’s name, but think crew were Monica and Mart!)

They were both phased by closure of the Rhone a Rhine (River Doubs) along which they were proposing to navigate down the Rhine to Germany, Holland, etc. Sooner them than us. They both had depth problems - deep keels and shallow canals, and the Swedish chappy - (Mart ??) - impressed us by leaping into the river - ostensibly to "clean the mud off his echo-sounder".

They spent the evening running around look at charts and maps with everyone they could find, but the must have sorted something out - they were gone when we got up next morning.