The morning dawned cool, and since we planned to leave Besançon today, Rita took to opportunity to do some shopping to stock up on essentials we would need on the trip back to Auxonne. While she was out I vacuumed the boat, as instructed before she left. I also ran some tests on the pump after making some adjustments to the accumulator. Phil had mentioned to me that before using the bike pump to get the required pressure within the accumulator, you have to empty the accumulator of water; otherwise you're trying to compress water (which is pretty incompessible) rather than air. So I turned the water pump off, and opened a tap and let it run until no more water flowed (this was the water that was in the accululator). I then used the bike pump to get the accumulator pressure up to about 1.5 bar. I then turned the water pump back on again, and got the system running. I then found that, after opening the tap, about 500ml of water came out of the accumulator before the pump started. When the pump was running, it was running at about 12 litres/minute. After the tap was closed, the pump ran for 15-20 seconds. This was all a bit more like what I was expecting.

After we'd done all our preparatory work on the boat, we headed out of port around 1100h, and cruised up to the tunnel entrance, where a red light was showing. We hovered for just a little while, before the light turned green.

We then lined ourselves up and entered the tunnel, with the other end clearly visible to the right of my bike (the circular light above my handlebar is not the tunnel entrance at the far end; it is a reflection in my bike's rear view mirror!)

Once in the tunnel, and my eyes had adjusted to the lower light level, I began to appreciate the amount of work required to have manually carved this tunnel out of solid rock hundreds of years ago.

We soon left the tunnel and turned hard left to go down the lock, and back to the River Doubs. We slowly cruised down river (we really didn't want to leave) and passed the mooring in front of the VNF office where Henriette had moored. When we got to the first lock, another boat was coming upstream, so we tied up to the bollard on the mooring near the barrage and just enjoyed our final view of the Citadel on the hill.

After a couple of hours, we approached the Thoraise Tunnel, and this time we snuck up on it so that we could get a photo of the waterfall at the entrance, before it realised we were there.

Indeed, we never quite worked out whether it knew we were there or not because, after we used the zapper to signal our arrival, the waterfall turned off, but the light stayed red. Eventually, I edged forward far enough to be able to look through the tunnel, and saw that nothing was approaching from the other direction, so even though the light was still red, we figured it was safe to proceed. We intended asking the eclusier at the next lock what we should have done, but unlike the up-river trip, there was no eclusier at the lock this time. So we continued a little way further and around 1500h we reached our intended destination for the day, the barrage at le Maroc, where we were greeted by one of our favourite herons.

As we cruised down the river, I noticed lots of reed grass that was turning a deep red colour with the beginning of Autumn. So as we hovered at one of the locks, I grabbed a piece as a reminder of the trip.

That afternoon, as we sat in the wheelhouse working on various things, I heard another boat appoaching from the south. As it came through the flood gates, it turned towards the mooring, then turned away again. As it got closer, however, it turned back to the mooring again, and so I went outside to help them with their ropes. As I stood there waiting for them, I noticed that the woman on the bow getting ready to throw a rope to me was smiling, and I thought that it was good that she appreciated my help. Then I looked closer and thought I recognised her, and eventually the penny dropped that it was Amanda, on Le Piglet, and when I looked at the skipper I recognised him, from a recent photo Rita had shown me, as Peter Canney. We last saw them in Moissac in 2014 as they left town just before the first of the Barge Festivals we organised. It was great to see them. again.

It didn't take long for them to invite us aboard for a drink (the Canney's have always been good at that!), where they introduced us to two American friends of theirs. After a couple of hours of drinks and chat, Peter announced that he had food on the stove and invited us to stay for dinner; so we accepted his offer and the chat, and lots of laughter, continued. Eventually as the sun set, and the air got cooler, we moved inside and continued the evening. But we learnt that they had had an early start that morning, so we left before anyone fell asleep. But not before Peter had done his usual caricature drawing of me (with glass of red in hand!)..