Its been a few days since we've found wifi without hiking. The weather continues to be wonderful ... and the pool we found yesterday at St. Thibault was quite a treat. We were a bit disappointed with their shower facilities as we only got to rinse off and no shampoo. The most stressful part of our boat trip so far was arriving back after dinner and finding the stern peg had pulled out and the boat was floating perpendicular to the shore. The bow line was very loose and I shudder to think what would have happened if that one had come loose too. We spent about 30 minutes scraping the bottom of the canal with a pole where we thought the peg might have gone but to no avail. The canal is only about 1.8 metres deep and we were in about .5 to a 1 metre of rather muddy water near the edge. Across the canal was an industrial site with bollards so we moved there for the night. Without two pegs we will now have to find actual mooring spots with bollards rather than just stopping anywhere we'd like and pegging fore and aft.
Weds we woke up and got going before Alex was out of bed. She is enjoying not having to be up and dressed before we start out. Our plan was to go as far as we could today so that we can cross the bridge at Briare and then return to the base at Chatillon sur Loire on Thursday. This bridge crossing is suppose to be spectacular and a few of the other people we have talked to agree.
At Leres we stopped for lunch, filled up the water tank and went ashore for a free shower. I guess if you don't pay, then you shouldn't expect hot water. I didn't subject the girls to this experience so I assisted with a hair wash on the boat. Now that we all have clean hair we feel much more presentable.
At one of our last locks the lock keeper was selling wine from Sancerre at 7 € each - not the cheapest bottles we have purchased here but much better price than in Sancerre. Many of the keepers has legumes for sale but with our limited space we've had to pass. So we niw have a fume and a rose to add to our supply.
We ended up mooring in Beaulieu and relaxing with a much enjoyed cold beer. The nuclear power plant we passed by is now nicely blocked by a forest of trees. We headed in town for our dinner and had a selection of twio - the one with the chuldren's menu once again. Going at our dinner time (6;30) rather than with the French means that we have both the restaurant and the waitress to ourselves. Thats good since the majority of the words on this menu weren't in our dictionary. We did decipher there was lots of fish, rabbit and duck in the entrees but needed a bit of assistance with some of the salads. I has an escargot appetizer that was unbelievable - there must have been 24 or more escargot on a plat with a pastry in the middle covered in a mushroom sauce. I was quite annoyed I hadn't brought my camera. When the entrees arrived Mitch and I were once again surprised by the size of the meal (and there were still 2 more courses to come). The kids had the standard plate of fries with either a steak or cordon bleu along with a drink and ice cream. Another fantastic meal - its going to be a real shock next week when we go back to my cooking!
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