Cruas to Valence                                                                     10th August

Flat calm evening in the small boat harbour of the Cruas holiday park, we looked at the sky full of stars, a monster stood tall above us, red and white arms hunched in the darkness, it was a power pillion from the nuclear power station. With morning sunshine came a little wind to cool and refresh. Capitanery Maurice smiled, ‘what a pleasure to have your boat here for the night, I charge you 15m as that’s the biggest size we are aloud.’ Oopps, we were a little over, but Maurice was so kind to have let us stay.

Our first lock of the day was tine, a mere 13m rise, ‘is that small’ each of these locks appear to act as hydro plants, mixed with the nuclear power stations they sure do have some electricity here. Exiting Logis-Neuf  lock we put zero, all north on the autopilot, we have few days spare, we will collect T at Lyon on Friday, so a soft run today, a mere forty km to Valence. The plan remains to head East for the Rhine, avoid Parris with the shallow canal water and green algae bloom that is reported to stop many boats this summer. Watch and steering shifts had become one hour on, one hour off between Daddy & Morgause, hot as it maybe it was mugs of coffee between chilled water, splitting duties of yesterday’s T shirts in the washing bucket, harsh, there was no washing machine aboard! The Mailasail systems that had saved our families lives with communications in the Southern Ocean were running here on the Rhone, they had moved on and worked a treat, this morning it was possible to do a full zoom commercial meeting on the river. Working on holiday like you do.

La Voulte suspension bridge and town quay beckoned, sandy yellow town, may have been a smaller version of Marlow on the way to Henley but we were on a mission for river miles.

Jobs proper for Beauchastle lock, ’20 mins please’. We were a dab hand at this. Port side our preference, ‘mercy thank you goodbye’ and on we went. 13m took us to n even better view. The river was sitting banked and above the surrounding landscape, but trees still blocked our real view, enormous mountains were beginning to say hello with rock faces far on the starboard quarter, a mountain range proper. Talk of rain was steady in clear blue sky pushing forty degrees.

The river wide to a bright green bridge, green and red poles marked the turn and there to our starboard were motoryachts in the green trees. A narrow channel from the river, sign set at 1.6m, just enough then, turning the bank we could see a long pontoon, all empty and a fuel block. That will do nicely then. Three card attempts later the auto pump burst into life and we topped up 818 litres of diesel. Looking at about 3 litres a mile on the canal at 8kts.

A short walk to the Capitanery, lizards skipped about the gravel path, posh modern office, no one in, a buzzer, the lady capitanery said ‘hello, I speak English and German.’ She allocated us her last hammerhead pontoon on G. the local river boat folk looked across the marina to see how on earth this English boat was going to move in the wind. In reverse we get no throttle but Sunseeker said the rudders are unusually large for the size of this boat, use opposite forward to get kick. Great advice and we slid onto the hammerhead in the wind with perfection. 30 mins walk through the park to the City, lights of the city and the golden arches, it was time for a McDonalds, don’t knock it, this was French burgers with blue cheese.

Valence 44:54.64N 04:52.34E