Barge Holiday on Le Cher France Day Seven 3/7/15

We left our mooring in the lock and headed down to Montrichard passing under the multi arch bridge before mooring alongside the town quay. From here we visited the town market, if only the UK had markets like this.

We then wandered around the town for a bit before being picked up by Leigh in the

Minibus to take us to our next venue, another wine tasting, this time at Saint-Julien-de-Chédon which is only a few hundred yards from the river but lower down than we were able to travel. This time the building was on the front of a traditional cave.  

Back to the boat and we were off downstream, This time Alain was alone, Leigh taking the minibus ahead, so Alain enlisted the help of some willing locals to work the lock. I think they earned their cans of Coke.

Just after leaving the lock we were aground, the same place as coming up, but this time we were carrying a bit more water in the tanks so were a little deeper. It probably took ¾ hour to get free.

The reasons our cruise had not started in the right place was low water levels in the river between some of the Barrages (see blog on Barrages) due to them not holding water. While we had been travelling upstream the canal company had been draining a couple of section to repair one of the barrages and the river was still refilling. For this reason we had to stop in Chisseaux as there was insufficient water to go any further. You can see from these ladies and also how the water tumbles over the end of the weir just how shallow the river is so we had to stay in the lock for the evening.

  The lock keeper was concerned how slowly the next section of river was making up so he pulled a selection of fingers to speed things up a bit. They can be seen lying on the walkway. As it was our last night onboard it was the Captains Dinner and a large table was set up in what would often be the wheel house, but of course on this boat its just a seating area. After dinner the level in the river had risen sufficiently for us to continue so we boated on under a full moon passing under the illuminated Château de Chenonceau to return to the same moorings as we had started the week.

To read about our last day click HERE