31st August 2009 Monday St Julien-sur-Dheune C. du Centre.

4.3°C Cold night but getting much hotter later and sunny all day. The DB left around ten heading downhill. I gave Mike a hand to do the scumbling; I put the brown paint on and he did the scraping with the rubber “comb”. It looked quite good if a bit darker than we really wanted, more like oak planks than pine. I set to work on the bedroom ceiling. First I had to remove all the stored stuff off the shelves and cover everything else with plastic sheeting. I scraped the loose paint off and gave the bare bits of wood a coat of paint then made some lunch. After lunch Mike did the monthly check on the batteries and I painted the ceiling. We both sprawled out for a siesta in the heat. Around 5.00 p.m. I started putting all the stuff back in the bedroom as the six hour drying time for the paint had been more or less halved by the heat. Two boats arrived heading uphill, a third one carried straight on. Mike had a chat with the Australian crew on one of the cruisers. They lived on board and hadn’t been here before. The VNF had accompanied them up all the locks and made them wait over lunchtime until 2.00 p.m. – another boat overtook them and went on up the locks! They’d got engine problems and were off to Montchanin. Amazing, we’d decided to leave next day and there was more traffic in one day than we’d seen since we’d been there. Change of plan, shopping tomorrow and head uphill on Wednesday.