Sunny, hot and still very windy. It was cold, the sky filled with grey clouds as we set off at 6.20 a.m. At Montelimar there was a cruiser moored on the public quay by coaster Ace 1, registered in Kingston (may be a coincidence, the same ship was moored there in 2007 but maybe it lives there – then it’s a very big houseboat). Passed a downhill yacht at the end of the canal section. The wind really picked up as we went along the wide river section through Cruas.
Passed the nuclear power station and then the new mooring where Rosy got stuck in 2007, now there were little posts to mark the entrance to the basin and a pontoon had been added along the bank downstream of the basin - it had its resident Dutch Barge already. We arrived below Logis Neuf lock at 10.00 a.m. the wind and current from the hydro-electric plant alongside the lock reduced our already low speed by another 1 kph. Tied on the pontoon to wait for the lock as we had a red light. A small yacht and a cruiser came down and we went in on our own. Mike timed the locking. It took thirteen minutes for the guillotine gate to lower, but only nine minutes to fill the 13.75m deep lock. The top end gates were traditional mitre gates and they opened quickly. A big empty boat called Passaat was waiting above, 120m x 11.4m and capable of carrying 2,302 tonnes of gas for CFTGAZ. He didn’t get a green light to enter the chamber until we’d gone completely past him. A French fast cruiser was dashing to get to the lock, but the big boat went in and the cruiser got a red light. Probably the keeper wasn’t allowed to lock anything else with a gas boat. Turn around time for that lock was 44 minutes minimum, so the cruiser would have plenty of time to tie up on the pontoon and have a rest.
Eight kilometres of winding canal to the next river section and our intended stopping place until Monday. The quay at Le Pousin was empty. Well, it’s not much to write about, 3m high with one bent metal ladder, next to a dirt road leading to a factory. We tied to a big ring, the ladder and the Armco along the road, then sprayed the ropes to keep the huge black ants off the boat (we’d still got stragglers from Lacourt! I kept finding a few in the bin.) After lunch I gave Mike a hand to get the moped up the wall using our big plank and over the Armco (unbolted the upstream end section and lowered it) and see-sawed the bike over it on the big plank. He went to get the car from Roquemaure, expecting the start of the mass exodus holiday traffic to be bad and the journey to take longer than usual. Lots of pushtows and cruisers went up and down, but as the river was pretty wide the wash wasn’t a problem. At 5.30 p.m. a loaded gas boat went uphill. Two cruisers moored behind us on the quay and I never even heard them arrive!
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