Good times ahead! Crévic to Nancy

We didn't realise how much we count Nancy as yet another home home till we arrived and Stephane came out to greet us as though we'd been gone all winter, and the guy on the boat next to him whom we'd met in a lock sometime last year filled us in on everything he'd done, and then John turned up to make sure we were OK, and we suddenly felt that we'd cheated ourselves by deciding to stay but one night.

But we have a plan now.  Experience tells us that having a plan is a very very bad thing, although I suspect it makes for entertaining reading as one day after another we exactly fail to make successive destinations.

Georges will be waiting for us in Auxonne if we get there by month's end, and he's got a mate who knows someone who has a cousin who may be interested in peering into Mr Perkins inner most workings while we absent ourselves for a few weeks if we get there on time.  We didn't tell Mr P this, but somehow, call it engine's intuition, he already knows.   He's taken to smoking more than usual and spitting diesel all over his newly replaced injectors.

Hopefully I can stay ahead of him in the bolt tightening stakes, but it will be a race of attrition.

To make things worse, the sun came out this evening to taunt us all before the weather turns seriously terrible for the next week or so, or so the forecast would have it.

We are yet to meet anyone who has stayed in Europe over winter who isn't seriously despondent about the weather following an endless cold, wet winter, and now a spring which has thus far failed to materialise has done nothing to lift anyone's spirits.   But we can soldier on I'm sure, only one of us needs to be outside in the rain and the wind when we are working the locks, and with all the windows closed I'll hardly be able to hear her complaints.