The canals are over, long live the rivers.

The Lock fest meant that we only had 16 more locks before Chagny. Very pleased with the old girl as she is coping well with the slow runs, all the locks and the mucky water. I have to check her strainer every day and gave her a 500 mile oil and filter change at Auxerre. 

Quite low maintenance for a girl!

Jumping on and off at locks mean her hull and topsides get mucky and need a brush down regularly. Caro has perfected the running around closing hatches when she sees me reaching for my hose. We don't want any wet beds again.

We finally reached Chagny at 17:20 on Saturday, we came round a corner and saw all brand new docks laid out.

But no other boats at all. It seemed a bit deserted. Poor old Hermy, all alone. Note the high security fence,or rather gate. Several young lads jumped across to the docks to go fishing during the evening.

We think we found out why it wasn't popular as we became aware of a phone type ringing in the back ground which seemed to be coming from the tile factory behind but it went on all night. Probably the roof tile help line.

Still Chagny was alive and kicking. It had a Sunday market so we went expecting the usual four or five stalls but it was fantastic, nearly all the town centre was taken up by stalls of all kinds and it was really busy.

A real French market with live chickens for sale.

My idea of a coup on the foredeck fell on stoney ground but we did however buy 2 huge tuna steaks for tea which were lovely.

Sunday afternoon and we decided to hit some locks to make our trip to Chalon Sur Soane easy. Nine automatic locks to Fragnes a small village 12 kilometres along the canal. 

We have to say that we started to take to the auto locks after our initial rant about them and we got to the stage where we didn't like lock keepers interfering with our process towards the end telling us which bollards to use, not letting us pull the string and releasing our lines before we were ready.

We arrived at Fragness early in the evening and it was throbbing. We felt we must have turned a corner and that France came alive the further South you went. In fact Fragnes was just closing down a Sunday fete and the lovely canal side restaurant was closed Sunday and Monday. Did they know we were coming?

The old girl with the er old girl!

Fragnes had a strange old thing in the centre of the village. A twix to any old engineer who can say what it is used for?

An early start (9:30 ish) on Monday takes us down the last part of the Canal Central and into the deepest lock so far.

A ten metre drop takes us to the link with the river Soane and a couple of miles down takes us into the pretty and thriving town of Chalon Sur Soane where we will leave Hermy for a week while we go home and do some home jobs. It's like going on holiday from your holiday!

 A return to wide rivers and the autohelm. Lovely. 

Chalon marks the end of the canal system after 800 nautical miles, so far, from Gillingham and 239 locks.