It was sunday we left Sens, and the sun was once again shining brightly. We'd decided to get to Auxerre and the Nivernais canal in two hits – the first taking us to Joigny for the evening. We were lucky with locks and only had a long wait at the first one. Several were equipped with floating pontoons which meant less jumping off of the boat and doing rope work for me! The trip took a few hours, and during it we enjoyed the sun, chatted, sung along to show tunes and power ballads and sipped wine (naturally!). I tried my hand at driving the boat and found it quite enjoyable – until a boat came the other way... I had a little flap about what side I was meant to pass him on, passed him ... read more

The River Yonne We left our barge mooring at Avon early on Sunday morning, determined to get through as many locks as possible and onto the River Yonne. We passed St Mammes, which seemed to be in Festival mode - loads of huge péniches were decorated with bunting and flags and rows of stalls and stands were set up on the quayside. It was all very pretty! A little further on there was a strange miniature circus set up by the river - coloured tents, a truck but no sign of any people or animals - god knows what it was, we went closer to try to find out but had no luck! Within 3 hours we had gone through the last two big Seine locks smoothly and joined the River Yonne. Our pilot guides had ... read more

After a good nights’ sleep in a peaceful boatyard with visions of toons on a loop through my brain, we got up fairly early in a semi sunny day and decided to head off the Marne and back to the Seine. The Marne is a lovely river with lots of traditional guingettes alongside offering French cuisine, live music and tea dances. Unfortunately we were passing through late on a Wednesday morning in August and only one was open - which was packed! Undeterred we decided to make the most of the dry day (bad weather was forecast for the next few days) and get as far along as we could. We hit our record for locks successfully navigated that day, going through 6 in total before arriving at the newly built Draveil marina on the River ... read more

Our mooring at the Port de Plaisance was not free, as the one by Adrien and Benedicte had been, but it was beautifully still. We spent the first afternoon getting the boat tidy and homely looking again - there’d been little point when she was constantly thrown around on the Champs Elysee. Again we made the most of the bikes and explored off the map and every point we were interested in on it. We had a particularly memorable day going back the way had came and visiting the Eiffel Tower, Les I nvalides, Trocadero, Champs de Mars, Palais Challois, Pantheon, Jardins Du Luxembourg and Medici Fountain and cycling past Musee D’Orsay, Saint Severin and various other landmarks. The day started with an amazing lunch at ‘The Lounge’ on La Place De La Bastille. We both ... read more

We departed Asnieres in bright and beautiful morning sunshine and began trundling our way along toward Paris. I was far too excited to just relax or read and sat up looking around the whole time like an excited pup! At first I was disappointed by the grey urbanised and industrial views lining both banks of the Seine, but these soon gave way to more interesting sights, in particular odd little caravans mounted on floating platforms (now there’s a proper sea gypsy for you!) and shanty towns built into the foundations of the road bridges that ran alongside - seriously, each square cubicle beneath the bridges was filled with cupboards, beds, clothing plants and sofa’s - some didn’t look too bad! I f you’re going to be homeless you might as well make your place look nice ... read more