Chauny

Our plan today was to get to Pont L'Eveque at the start of the Canal du Nord. (This is our revised plan - originally we planned to use the older, quieter, but much more heavily locked Canal Saint-Quentin, but sadly we don't have time).

Somewhere around lunchtime I re-read the entry for the Pont L'Eveque halt in the Almanac Fluviale and discovered that it only takes boats up to 8m long (ours is 10m). So we cut short our day and diverted slightly to Chauny, the first place we've been with wifi for around two weeks. It's nice to have a short day, time to shop (especially for loo rolls), make a few checks and repairs, and to read my emails. I have 51 and there's almost nothing interesting in there at all.

This is a mini marina with finger pontoons, showers, power etc, and even a nice Dane for Sam to blether to (although listening to the conversation right now I think Sam is doing less blethering and more listening...)

According to my calculations we have 250km and 29 locks to do if we want to reach Calais in the next five days, which seems feasible if nothing goes wrong.