Toul back to Epinal, and onwards.

End days of August,, Weather holding so our way to the start of the Canal des Vosges and stayed at Richardmenil.  Making our way back along the route we did with Sam and Wok.

Here we met Peter and Barbara who we had met previously in St Jean de Losne when they had their boat…..Syanarah ( new wide beam UK style barge)  up on the hard with us. He’s SA but they live in Dublin. (so a bit of lively rugby chatter)

Sunset,,   hopefully we will have good weather for the next day.

As we have said you see many sights, boats of many different shapes and designs…The next day we pass the owners of the caravan and boat of the last blog, and see the split.     What looks like this breaks down to that!!!!!

Through Charmes for a night (had stayed there with Wok and Sam) .. And its camper city still, but a quiet night.  Off again through locks that look like our own infinity pools….

Will our trusty stick monitor on the front of the boat measure correctly??  Its set up to measure when we have DROPPED the canopy to its lower level. (hopefully about 3.3m) If it goes under the bridge then we shouldn’t rip our canopy !!!!    And of course it does also depend also on the water levels… WELL. 4-5inches to spare,, phew!!!!

The sadder part of life, large disused old brick or other factories, and the commercial side.

EPINAL.. This time we can come up the 3.350km Embranchement d’Epinal  as there is enough water ( didn’t manage it with Wok and Sam, so we cycled instead.)

Epinal a lovely harbour..

These young men are serious fisher people.. they walk up and down the canal, fly fishing all the way.. This lot looked a bit like the Blues Brothers.

 

 

 

 

Views along the way.

Max, having a long run in to a lock. We are 4m, this is about 5.5m wide.

We saw this guy in Toul earlier in the year about 6 weeks ago, and here we meet him coming back up river about 100kms from Toul..  Now this is a small boat. Not big enough for visiters , me thinks….

Lucy doesn’t have the prettiest ankles but the bloody horse flies don’t help…plus they itch like mad.

 

 

 

 

Glorious misty mornings, after heavy dew and cooler nights, but then the sun comes out and its back to clear skies and 26-28 degrees. The French September sun is lovely and hot, but not burning to the skin.

The Gnome lock.