Grey clouds, but patches of blue sky between them. Dry and chilly when we set off at 6.30 a.m. we reversed out of the arm and winded under the motorway. Carried on upriver with fleeces on as the outside temperature was still only 13.6°C. At Loire-sur-Rhône, KP21.5, we passed Jumbo and Odysseus (both empty) moored just upstream of the fuel barge. Several pans were moored in the port basin, Loire/St Romain. Holiday traffic both North and South on the motorway was looking busy, southbound traffic was slowing to look at our boat - we could see them pick up speed again as they had gone past us! The first signs of life on the river were a group of fishermen in an open speed boat moored at KP21. A fast cruiser, registered at Sète, overtook us as we went under the bridge at Givors. It put water on our port gunwale. Nice, he’d no way of knowing if there was any downhill traffic around the long right hand bend.
The new halte fluvial at Givors was full. There were four small cruisers and five speed boats, all of which looked permanent moorers, and the first two bays between the finger pontoons (which could have been used by four more boats) were blocked off with lengths of red and white tape. A little further upstream was a pontoon between two dolphins with a sign saying “No mooring without authorisation” and another that said “Halte fluvial 200m” and an arrow. Very welcoming I’m sure. The sun came out at 8.15 a.m. - the gaps between the clouds were getting bigger. The flow rate of the river began to increase below the TGV bridge. Three egrets and three herons were fishing in a pool of slack water created by piles of rocks along the left bank. A French péniche called Alanma was waiting at a sand quay for loading at KP17. A medium sized Luxemotor went past heading downriver, on its roof there was a car and a speed boat, plus a wind generator whizzing round on its back deck. At 9.00 a.m. we entered the last long canal section at KP15. The speed along the canal varied from 4.2kph travelling up the middle to 6 kph in places when travelling along the edge, with revs on for 8 kph. We slowed dramatically at the motorway bridge 2 kms below Pierre-Bénite lock, when the flow rate went up to 6.5 kph and our speed was reduced to less than 2 kph in places. The lock was ready, empty with a green light. As Mike said to me, all we had to do was get there! We arrived at 11.15 a.m. Our notes said the lock blows the boat off the right hand wall - use the left, so we did and it did exactly the same thing again. The stern went out from the wall and I had to slack the rope around the floater as we started to list. Mike brought the stern end back against the wall with the motor. It did that twice as we rose 11.80m. It’s the only one of the twelve locks that does that. Next time (if there ever is one) we’ll try using fore and aft lines on the lower bollards. Maybe that will stop it listing. Another strange effect was noted when the lock was full; the flag on the stern was blowing towards the bows and the flags on the mast at the bows were blowing towards the stern - how’d it do dat? Weird lock. Left the top at 11.35 a.m. The keeper was leaning out of the cabin window so we shouted our mercis and au’voirs. Back on the river it was warm in the sunshine and the wind was making small wavelets on the wide expanse of open water. Camaël, loaded with containers, was in the port de Lyon; another large vessel was moored further into the basin. A small dayboat was buzzing about. Mike went under the canopy that sheltered the unloading quay at KDI, a stockist of tubes. Next was a CNR container base. Tug Vaillant had attached to a pan full of containers and was ready to leave, he backed out from under the crane as we passed. A little further along the CNR inspection launch Le Rhône was moored and beyond it was a VNF yard where a tiny VNF pusher tug called Arar was moored. At the slipway the Police Nationale were slipping a police boat. It overtook us as Mike was doing a “farewell to the mighty Rhône” circle in the river. The Police went to watch water skiers turning at the first bridge over the Rhône, Point Pasteur, beyond the junction with the Saône. We could see a long line of houseboats stretched up the left bank of the Rhône to the railway bridge where there were lots of small dayboats moored, probably for hire. A tripper had just come down the Rhône and turned into the Saône. We passed the former lock at La Mulatière on the left hand bank and entered the Saône at midday. There were loads more houseboats along the Saône, mainly on our right but a few on our left too. We paused opposite the VNF offices (closed, otherwise Mike would have gone in to ask for a new VNF flag to replace ours which had been shredded by the recent Mistral) and we refilled our water tank. (There is a water tap behind a metal plate half way up the wall. Ed). I made lunch while Mike kept an eye on the tank as the tap was a fast one. There were three cruisers and two yachts moored on the quay upstream of the VNF office where we’d stopped previously. Unfortunately there is no satellite TV access from that side of the river so we decided we’d clear the city and find an alternative mooring.
Set off again at 1.00 p.m. eating our lunch on the way upriver through the city. No boats moving and only a few pedestrians to wave and wish us "bon appetit!" A very small cruiser with a red ensign went past heading downriver. A man was steering and two women sat on the bows, it looked a bit cramped for three! Saw nothing else moving until a Spanish yacht that had been moored by the VNF overtook us as we were going through Vaise. There was a line of houseboats on the left bank above the bridge at Vaise. An empty péniche called Porthos went past heading downhill as we were passing Ile Barbe and the site of another former lock which is now a mooring for yachts and cruisers.
We stopped at 2.45 p.m. and moored next to a 10m long pontoon slung between two dolphins with a sign at the top of a steep bank that proclaimed it to be the Halte Fluvial de Collonges-en-Mont-D’Or. Fine, if a bit precarious. Mike took photos and checked the parking by the slipway downstream of the pontoon. OK. He decided to go and collect the car from St Romain. At 3.15 p.m. tug Bachus went past heading uphill pushing an empty pan to test our mooring. The pontoon (which we were only tied to by long lines from bow and stern, our main lines were attached to the bollards on the dolphins) flapped up and down like a flag in a strong breeze, so we were glad we weren’t relying on being attached to it!
Immediately the uphill boat had gone past another came downhill, Nina 1 - a loaded low profile coaster registered in Kingstown (I looked that up and it’s in the Windward Islands in the Caribbean) which went past with hardly a ripple! I gave Mike a hand to get the moped off the roof as some people arrived to slip a speed boat down the ramp just downstream of our stern. Mike had decided to follow the road which runs alongside the river through Lyon and all the way back downriver to St Romain and try coming back the same way in the car. He left at 4.00 p.m. When he returned he told me he’d spent a lot of time following one way systems as he couldn’t just take the west bank of the river all the way
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