Day 10 : Cercy-la-Tour to Decize

Tuesday 17th July 2007

Day's Progress : I seem to have lost count (!) but the Total is 208kms : 122 locks

It was another easy trip today – not that many locks and we only did about 3 hours traveling in total.

The countryside continues to be lovely with lots of fat cows and hay bales in the fields. There are enormous trucks on the roads carting hay bales around.

Decize is a big town and this is the point at which we start heading north. There are a couple of rivers that join together and it was a bit disconcerting coming out of a small canal into this huge river system – and no sign posts that we could see. We eventually figured out where we needed to head for and off the main river way we found our mooring at the Connoisseur base.

The staff at the base were super and very helpful. The one loo wasn’t working properly – water keep coming back into it. They managed to sort it out a bit but said this was a general problem. They also converted the bigger, forward cabin into a double berth and Steve and I moved in there and set the second cabin up as a dressing room.

Decize is a very old town. There are remains of old battlements and castles. We didn’t look around all that much – Steve needed to change money so it was important that we found a bank. We battled to find one that did change money and by then had walked most of the business section of the town. We had lunch at a restaurant that looked a little like a chain food type place – the food was OK and we were hungry.

The young people at the restaurant and walking around had very spiky short hair, tattoos and quite a bit of body piercing – girls and boys.

Some observations:
§ There are not many banks, even in the big centers, that change travelers’ cheques.
§ France really does close down at lunch time – the only things open are the bars and restaurants.
§ Decize is our most southern point.
§ The architecture is much like the landscape – it changes subtly. The stone houses are a bit different now and have terra cotta tiled roofs.
§ Another thing about the loo paper – they seem to take delight in putting the loo paper in inaccessible places. You need to be a contortionist to reach it – so locate it before you sit down.
§ Men and womens loos are usually pretty close together – usually share the same basin. The room has 2 stalls – one for the ladies and one for guys. Some of the rooms even have a urinal next to the basin – am not sure what I will do if I come out of the stall and there is a guy using the urinal.