Moving on relentlessly - Toul to Void

We are nothing at the moment, if not determined to get through the tunnel at the top of the hill, from which it will be a gentle run through the Champagne region, to Paris.  With that in mind we actually rose in time to buy the day's baguettes, had Mr P clearing the port of all flying insect pests and were ready to leave on the stroke of nine this morning.

However, a few strokes before then, the nice Danish man in the yacht in the next mooring wandered over to the lock gates to wait for the light to change to green.   It's no fun sharing a chain of locks in an uphill direction with a yacht whose shape is distinctly not parallel to the sides of the wall, they tend to bang and flail and their mast stowed overhanging the hull can get quite threatening to anyone else trying to sit quietly in the washing machine with them, so we thought we'd wait a bit.    An hour actually, we decided we'd wait an hour.

Which as it turns out, is exactly how long it took for the monster barge to arrive as it did, just as we were about to leave.   This for those who don't know, meant a fairly lengthy wait at each of the next ten locks, in winds increasing to the point where the "fun" flags were definitely coming down, but like the old sea dogs we aren't, we persevered, wondering how many people in the world right now had the opportunity to visit a new waterfall every thirty minutes or so.   

Berthed tonight after four days of serious travel, we are trying to gain some perspective on the hectic pace of our journey thus far.  In four days we have passed thirty-eight villages, towns and settlements,  we have negotiated thirty-six locks and we have travelled a total of one hundred and seven kilometres.

That's the bit we really find hard to put into perspective.

In four days travelling at what we consider to be a completely uncivilised pace, we have managed to travel exactly eight kilometres more than the distance from our house at Dicky Beach to the Brisbane International Airport.  If we were on our way to visit our kids south of Brisbane, we'd be there by Tuesday.