A big river under a perfect sky, perfect temperature, calm water, gentle breeze, even the commercial locks devoid of traffic, open and waiting for us each time we arrived is a recipe for another day with nothing to write home about!
It would have been difficult to have been unhappy as we pottered up the Moselle towards Mr Perkins’ rendezvous with Duncan. I suppose if we had not been the only boat on the quay to have escaped the nasty graffiti tagger last night the edge may have been taken off our smiles, but we were unscathed, a little bemused perhaps as to why we were so insignificant that even a vandal did not think we were worthy of his “art”.
On the deserted river, our insignificance was driven home a few times as we travelled solo, like a tiny blue piece of flotsam through each of the commercial locks designed to hold a single ship of far greater dimension. But insignificance does not mean unimportant. The very concept of someone letting ten or twelve million litres of water go to let us into a lock then filling it again just so that we can take our little boat six or eight metres higher up the river is one that is a difficult one for those of us who have been raised on four minute showers to come to terms with, yet that is what happens, and on a day with little traffic the lock keepers seemed to be making an effort to ensure our wait was minimised.
If that graffiti guy could only see us in one of these, pretending to be one of the big boys in a lock with an exit not too far in front of the horizon, maybe he’d have rethink his view on our importance.
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