Fragnes and Chalon

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The mooring at Fragnes was lovely – electricity, showers, water and a really friendly and helpful young woman in the office. The wi-fi was really unreliable, but we set up camp for a few days so we could do some jobs and celebrate Mike's 30th.
The following day was Mike's 30th and I woke early to make him breakfast in bed, champagne and present him with his card and present. I'd managed to lose him for a while the previous day whilst I bought him something and had made his card ages before on a sunny day on the river – it was a map of france with our route so far and some of the highlights of the trip. I was very pleased with it and so was Mike … I'd even drawn on the rollercoaster at Disneyland, the big waves in the channel and Flamingoes we hoped to see further south. After breakfast, we got up to see Chris and Phil mooring up behind us. Our plan had been to ride into chalon sur Saone about 45 minutes away and spend the day there before finding a restaurant to eat in. Mike quite fancied frogs legs.
We popped over to chat to Chris and Phil and they invited us on board for a drink to celebrate Mike's birthday. That was at 11am. We said we'd saty for one, then another …. then we got the wine and beer from our boat and Chris and Phil opened a bottle of bubbly.
At 9.30pm, pretty well leathered and all hungry, we all changed and headed to the restaurant on the bank for dinner. Unfortunately they stopped serving at 9. We stumbled back towards the boat and I suddenly felt very light headed and sick. I hadn't had a drinking session like this since we left England. Yes, we had a drink most days, but not to this extent! I seemed to have lost my mojo when it came to marathon drinking. I never thought this day would come.
Chris offered to cook dinner as the restaurant was closed. I went back to our boat to get changed again, sat down and felt even worse. I am ashamed to say I never made it to dinner. Instead I slept off my drunkeness and awoke at 3am as Mike stumbled back onto the boat from Chris and Phils. He was pretty much hammered. When we spoke to Chris and Phil again, they said that he had drunk everything they had left on the boat and that they could not believe how much he'd put away.
Chris and Phil headed down to Chalon the next afternoon, but we had already paid up for a couple more nights so stayed put. We worked on the boat, cycled out to stock up on shopping and chilled for the rest of the day. As we left on our bikes another British boat had pulled in next to us. It was smoking and the guys on board said they were having problems with it. We wished them luck nad headed off on our way.
When we got back the guys were still there, having problems with the boat and seeming to have problems getting holds of someone. Mike had his tool kit out fixing my bike again and one of the guys spotted him.
“excuse me mate, you're not a mechanic are you?” he said “We're having problems with our engine.”
“I'm not a mechanic,” mike replied, “but I am an engineer.”
The guy grinned. “well, you can stop working on that bike for starters.”
The guy was called paul and he and two friends Brian and Peter were taking the boat, whichj Paul had bought in the UK, down to the Algarve where they all worked. They were a lovely bunch of blokes and invited us on board for drinks after Mike had fixed the engine. They paid him cash and offered him an outboard engine which they couldn't get running as payment for his work.
The bnoat was spacious inside and we sat with them and drank wine and John Smiths for a couple hours while we chatted about what we were all up to. I was impressed with the sheer volume of John smiths they had on board – they were taking it back home as they couldn't buy it in the algarve!
The next morning Mike and I both felt a bit delicate in the tummy – our bodies had been used to wine for the last few months and I'm not sure they knew how to deal with beer aagin, especially not the rich creamy stuff! Paul, Brian and Peter set off early that morning while we finished odfff the last couple of jobs on our boat. Mike wanted to get as much of the trim up as possible to make space for Fred and Becks. We also got all the spare tools and stuff stowed away so that we once again had 2 beds in the main cabin.
By the end of the day we'd finished and the following morning we headed off to Chalon. Paul had called twice over the radio, once to tell us the engine was working well, and again to tell us that they'd arrived in Chalon, they'd met Chris and Phil and there was another English boat with engine problems if Mike wanted to work. We did one big deep guillotine lock (the name of it didn't make me feel very easy about passin gthrough it) which gave us a little taste of the huge ones we would soon be negotiating on the Rhone. The water dropped with an eerie silence and the floating bollards made a strange squeaking as they dropped; not dissimilar to whale song. Once at the bottom, the water was still, the air chill and the metal walls seemed to loom over us. The gate lifted up on chains (hence the name 'guillotine') and water dripped down as we left underneath it. I hoped it didn't fail and drop on us!
Chalon is a lovely place. We arrived, tied up and paid, then saw Paul who took Mike to the boat in need of help. Mike fixed it whilst I relaxed with a book in the sunshine. That night I cooked for Paul, Brian and Peter and we had a couple wines before a reasonably early night.
The sun came back the next day and we made the most of it. We headed off to explore the town, parks and maison du vin, stopping to chat to Chris and Phil a few boats up and arranging to meet up later and go for dinner. The park and masison du vin were stunning. We walked around in the sun, looked at the aviary and it finches, the landscaped gardens, the ponds with the weird black and white swans with red faces, the tree carving and the wedding which was taking place in the grounds . After this we visited the masion du vin and sampled some wine. We bought a few bottles and headed back to the boat.
Chris and Phil came to us for pre-dinner drinks and we polished off the wine we'd bought that day before heading into a lovely cobbled street close by, full of cosy little restaurants. Being on holiday, we'd not realised it was saturday. Every restaurant we tried was fully booked, apart from a Chinese one so in we went: 4 brits in France, eating Chinese. The food was OK, lots of fried stuff, but the copany was great and the four of us laughed our way through dinner before going for a drink then heading back home for a nightcap.

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