Thursday 9th August
We managed to leave Chalons-en Champagne and have reached Soulanges. The engine is working fine back to starting first time (thanks to Lenny). The same cannot be said for the locks! The lock at Soulanges would not respond when we turned the pole. We noticed a commercial barge upstream of the lock and thought we would have to wait till they came through. After a few minutes we realised nothing was happening. We moored up and I walked up to the lock. The phone was out of order. I spoke to the commercial skipper who said this lock is always breaking down and they had already called the VNF who arrived soon afterwards. We moored up just above the lock. There was not quite enough room for us but a small French cruiser was occupying a lot of space. I upset the skipper by asking him to move down one bollard while he was eating his lunch. The lock continued to cause trouble for other vessels and we became very friendly with the VNF man who returned several times to fix it.

Friday 10th August
 We turned east at Vitry-le-Francois onto the canal de la Marne au Rhin. But we will not be going as far as the Rhin, this time. It is a smaller canal with very little traffic and passes through picturesque countryside. We realised there were few places to moor and unusually there was no mooring either side of the locks. This was a problem when, true to form, one of the locks malfunctioned (the gate only half opened) and we had to hang in the middle of the canal for 20mins waiting for the VNF man to arrive. Our first planned stopping place was occupied by a hotel barge and we travelled a further 5km to Pargny sur Saulx. This is a lovely spot with views over the fields and town, water and electricity for 4.5 euro per night, good shops that open everyday and satellite reception for the Olympics and Archers (previously it was Archers and Olympics but Louisa has become a sports fan and even watched the Boxing!).  We think we might stay a while.

Pargny sur Saulx

View from the porthole 

Monday 13th August
Still in Pargny sur Saulx. We went for a cycle ride yesterday and had lunch in the local canal side restaurant today, to put back the calories we had burnt up. 3 course menu de jour with wine  for12 euros.
We used up all our credit on the dongle last week and were unable to recharge online or by telephone. We eventually got past the recorded messages and spoke to a human being at SNF today, apparently we can only use French credit cards online or over the phone. We managed to buy a SNF credit token at the local tabac and are now back online.
David has spent the evening fishing, the local bread makes good bait, he is catching more than tiddlers and the landing net was put to use!
We are moving back towards Chalons-en-Champagne tomorrow to meet some friends who are joining us for the weekend.
It is still very warm.

You should have seen the one that got away.