.Still waiting Montureux-lés-Baulay

The river is closed to navigation for several hundred kilometres.  So closed is it that the lock a few kilometres downstream doesn't even have the requisite two red lights showing.  The lights are out, and everyone has gone home, presumably in disgust, to have another try next summer.   (The water looks calm because it is in a little dead end as the river roars by.)

There is a school of thought aboard which subscribes to the view that had we not simply raced past Epinal, or had we spent time wandering through Bains-les-Bains, or not stopped only for long enough to sample the delights of the bakery in Fontenoy les Chateau, we may well have not quite made it to Corre yet and would therefore not be trapped here on our little landing.

The other school of thought is that had we taken advantage of all those things, we would actually have been just as house-bound due to the constraints of weather and holidays, and we would certainly not have become the village experts on how much change there has been in the height of the river this hour.

We have our regular visitors from the village now, walking their dogs, stopping to stare at the level of the water and ask if it's gone up or down.   I tell them that since last night that it's dropped only a centimetre and then they remind us that they've never seen it stay flooded like this and this isn't summer and want to be reassured that we are warm enough.  

It's as if they associate boats as barbecue accessories, like beach balls and beer and we have just landed on their little picnic area from outer space at exactly the time there is no picnic happening, but they point out their houses and tell us to knock if we find we need something.

If we stay much longer we might be forced to adopt them.