On the way to somewhere

We did finally set sail on Friday June 3rd.  The first day we made it to the village of Melay, which has a small but nice quai and a few campsights for the caravans (motor coaches) so popular here in Europe.

We're slowing down this year and spending at least a few nights in each spot, and its wonderful to be on slow time on the canals.

My back deck garden

After a hot, dry April, the weather has turned cooler and wetter, much more average for this time of year.  We spent 3 nights in Melay, then headed north up and out of the Canal de Roanne a Digoin.  We spent two nights on bollards off the grid outside of Digoin and turned onto the Canal Lateral a la Loire, where we are cruising our way northwest, perhaps to Paris this summer.  There is a drought in northern France now, and its possible that some of the canals will close to traffic in order to provide more irrigation water if necessary.  Here along the Lateral Loire, we may be asked to move through the locks in convoys.  So we'll see how far we go, but its been raining in this part of the country off and on for over 2 weeks now, so we're hoping that's a good sign.
Our first stop along the Lateral Loire was in the tiny town of Diou.  There is a nicely maintained bike path along the canal between Digoin and Diou, so we rode our bikes up and back the day before we moved the boat.  It was my first day out for a long bike ride - not long by our old century ride standards, but long enough for me to have sore buns and knees.  It was great to finally get on the bikes in the countryside and enjoy the scenery.  There are cherry trees all along the bike path, and some of those cherries made it home to the boat with us for dessert that night.
Diou is a pretty, small town typical of rural France.  The town provides a small quai, this one with water but no electricity, just off the main square, with a few shops within walking distance, including one of the best boulangeries we've found so far.  Diou is also near the spa town of Bourbon-Lancy, and our friends Andrew and Laurel on Affleur D'O picked us up in their car for a night out in Bourbon-Lancy.  I'll post some pictures of that beautiful spot separately.
We're now tied up along the quai near the village of Beaulon.  Just so you realize its not all fun and games on a barge, here are some pictures of Randy chipping paint.  There's always lots of maintenance work on a big steel barge, and we're taking advantage of a nice spot along the canal to both relax, and get some work done. 

Just in case you're concerned I'm a lounge lizard while Randy's working away, I spent the day yesterday sewing tiebacks for the draperies we had made for the boat in Tucson.  We're very disappointed with the workmanship of the draperies, which arrived late, hours before we left, and if we had the time to thoroughly inspect them before we left, we would never have accepted them.  But, here we are and we're making the best of it though they are so poorly sewn we will more than likely replace them this winter.  So I bought a second hand sewing machine and am dressing them up a bit.