Over the past few weeks, we have become accustomed to working the weather windows, so that we were barging in mostly fine weather, and holing up when it became too hot, wet or windy. But most of the next week in Montbeliard has been forecast to be wet, so we have decided to skip town and go down to Moissac to visit friends and take care of some business. So today it was out of bed relatively early to walk to the Montbeliard Gare to catch the 0936h train to Auxonne.

We very much enjoyed the train trip, especially the part to Besançon, where we changed trains, which followed the Doubs where we had been barging just the week before. It was interesting to see it from a different perspective.

We were met at Auxonne Gare by Phil, where we loaded our luggage and Rita's bike into the Scenic and headed for Moissac, while Phil decided to walk back to his barge at Port Royal. We headed diagonally to Moissac, via Vichy, and got there about 7 hours later. Along the way we passed through the town of Lapalisse, which had a very striking public building.

As the train pulled out of Montbeliard, we got a good view of the two towers of the Chateau Montbeliard.

When we got to Moissac, we found that the house now had another cat to keep Ginger company. As we were settling into the house (the tenants were away on holidays in Mexico), we heard a "hello" from next door, and met up with Andre and Francoise, who were again in town visiting her parents (Mr & Mrs Gisbert). They were only there for one more night, since tomorrow they were heading south-east for a real holiday at Frontignan. So we had drinks and nibbles with them in the belvedere, then went for a walk into town along the river and then back along the canal. It was great that the timing of our trip allowed us to meet with them for at least one evening. Next year we hope (water levels permitting) to take the barge up to meet with them in their home town on the Canal de Sambre near Lille.