Farewell dear herb garden Tonnerre to Tanlay

Cruising time means thunderstorm time apparently.  

We'd planned a rather arduous eight kilometres of travel today, and with the forecast and the sky both telling us that thunderstorms were probable, it seemed prudent to delay our departure by exactly the time it takes to scrub the boat inside and out, walk to the far away shops and back, and by now it should go without saying; have lunch.

Having a squeaky clean and newly shiny boat guaranteed that it would end up covered in leaves and bits of broken tree after the storm, so when we eventually left port we left in a vessel which to a casual observer may have resembled a typical pile of debris in a gutter awaiting kerbside collection.

In the process of clearing the vegetation, we looked despairingly at our sad little planter box, and having at first mistaken its contents for something that had blown in on the storm concluded that if we had not made a successful garden in three years, it was probably not going to happen ever.   So with heavy hearts, we said goodbye to all those heady dreams we had had, of ever looking like a "proper" canal cruiser like the ones we see skipping daintily down the rivers laden under blossom like a float at the Carnival of Flowers.

There are plenty of flowers to see on the way we tell ourselves, there are after all still some locks with beautifully tended gardens, and there are wildflowers aplenty for now at least, and bits of green on every stone wall.