31 May, 2015

Sunny and cool this morning.  We have a day ahead of us which will be spent on the tow path alongside the Canal du Centre.  We have said goodbye to the Loire now for this trip.  The next few days will be spent travelling along canals until we reach the next great river that we will follow, the Rhine.  It should be an easy day.

Actually, it is an easy day which is good because we have to do an extra long run before we find accommodation.  We literally spend the whole day at the side of the canal, the morning is slightly harder work than after lunch because we are going uphill each time we reach a lock.  It doesn’t sound like much and we really hadn’t appreciated how much extra effort it required until in the afternoon, when the locks started to run downhill in our favour and we absolutely flew along.  It was a totally unremarkable day and, like the last couple of days, feels like the interim part of the tour between the more interesting bits.

We have a choice of camping or a hotel when we reach Chagny and decide to treat ourselves to a night in a hotel.  Tomorrow we should be travelling through the more interesting wine producing region of Burgundy, although vines are usually grown on hills, which is not so good.  Mountains are fine but hills are just annoying.