Hot and sunny. Up at 8.00 a.m. moving by 8.50 a.m. A bloke was fishing from the stern of a hire boat that had moored 200m behind us - he’d been fishing there when Mike set the gennie up the night before. We paused on the water point at Marseillette while Mike went in search of bread. There was a flea market in progress under the trees all along the canal bank from the bridge so I stayed on the back to keep an eye on all the valuables (camera, GPS, binos) as there were a few dubious looking characters about. Mike came back breadless as there was no boulangerie in the village and the local resto, which was a depot de pain, had run out. He said there were campervans nose to tail driving through the village. A hotel boat was moored upstream of the water point and two dead Dutch Barges downstream of it. Set off again at 9.45 a.m. Winifred (France Fluvial hireboat, formerly based at Moissac) was moored by the lock, crew on the top deck eating breakfast (didn’t speak). A hireboat had just gone down Marseillette lock and the keeper refilled it for us. I made a cuppa on the 3kms run to Fonfile three-rise. A hireboat, a LeBoat called Magnifique crewed by Danes, was waiting above the lock. A hireboat cleared the three-rise and we went down with the LeBoat (none of them spoke either). A British cruiser from the Norfolk Broads was waiting below. Just around the first bend we passed two more hireboats, a LeBoat and a Canalous. The keeper had just closed the gates behind the British cruiser and we wondered how long they would have to wait before he locked them through. The LeBoat we were following was the slowest hireboat we’d ever seen, we crawled along behind it on the 1.2 kms to St Martin two-rise. Again we had to wait. Two LeBoats came up then we went down. The Danes swapped sides so I had to change fenders and ropes over to go on the left. I think I missed throwing the rope around every bollard on that side. A young lady worked the lock from a control panel by the centre gates, but she spent most of the time in the lock office in the shade!
Followed the hireboat 1.8 kms to Aiguille, another two-rise, where we had another wait as there were two hireboats coming up and they were photographing one another posing by the wooden figures on the left hand side of the lock chamber. The keeper, who had lots of wooden sculptures for sale, was sitting under a parasol on an inflatable seat in the form of a black hand with a finger pointing uphill to work the controls by the centre gate. He seemed to work the lock more slowly than usual and we left the bottom chamber just a few minutes before 12.30 p.m. 
Lunchtime. The gates shut right behind us. There were three hireboats getting ropes back on board to enter the lock. I said it’s lunchtime, l’heure à manger, but got blank looks; pointed to my wrist (imaginary watch), still blank. One bloke shouted something across to the others in German and I think they got the idea that boats have to stop while lock keepers eat lunch. The Danes stopped for lunch a few metres beyond the last of the Germans. We carried on to Puicheric, about a kilometre. In that short distance we passed three more boats to add to the queue waiting below Aiguille; a small French cruiser, a Danish yacht and another Canalous. We tied to the stumps before the road bridge and made sure we could get satellite TV between the trees before any other boats decided to moor next to us.
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