Our restful night at Dampierre came to an abrupt halt at 0800h the next morning, to the sounds of lawnmowers and whipper-snippers in the small adjacent parkland. It was nice to see them taking care of the area, but do they have to do it so early and so loudly? We let them go on, until they started whipper-snipping the edge of the gravel pathway and flinging stones everywhere. Fearing a broken window on the boat, Rita had a word to them in French, and then they took a little bit more care.

I spent most of my morning researching rope fenders on the internet and then trying to follow the instructions to make my own. The professional ones are on the left below, and mine is on the right. Can hardly tell the difference!

As I was doodling away on my fender, a couple of large Dutch Tjalks (actually from the Netherlands) came through Dampierre on their way to Montbeliard. They were a wonderful sight to behold, especially with their wooden lee-boards on both sides. Unfortunately they snuck up on me and I didn't get anything but a photo of one of their sterns, but I think you get the feeling of what they looked like. I was surprised, as I was posting this photo, to see that while I was busy taking a photo of them, two of them were busy taking a photo of Kanumbra. Mutual compliments!

In the late morning, we noticed that the VNF were busy clearing weed in this area as well, with a weed-muncher cruising around the canal and then going through the lock to deposit the catch in a weed gatherer which dumped it into a tray that would later be hauled away on the back of a truck. All very professional (and much appreciated).

As Rita and I were sitting in the wheelhouse having some lunch, we both heard a strange popping noise in the wheelhouse. We both looked at each other, puzzled by what it could be. It sounded to me like something electronic, and so we started looking for likely culprits. When Rita looked at, and then smelt, the charger for the ecluse Zapper, we had found our man! It had a distinct smell of burnt plastic or a blown fuse. So we called the VNF and within five minutes a VNF van had appeared alongside us, and we had a new Zapper and charger - now that's what I call service! The VNF guy explained that he was also the controller of the lifting bridge between Dampierre and Montbeliard, and that it was best to arrive there before 1100h to avoid disrupting the midday lunch traffic wanting to use the bridge. So we took his advice on board.

After lunch, we jumped on our bikes and headed to Montbeliard to check out the mooring siutation there. Along the way, we saw Haflinger horses on a farm that we had also seen in 2019. The young foal has grown a bit since then.

When we got to Montbeliard, we had a talk with the Capitainerie people from the Tourism Office and confirmed that the mooring next to the quai was available for us to use tomorrow. We then met up with Rob and Anna on Vintage Cru and had a drink at the port cafe, and then dinner with them on their boat. As the evening approached, we took our leave as we still had to ride back to Dampierre on our bikes, and that was best done in daylight rather than in the dark. When we got back to the boat, we found that the toilet was not flushing properly (the bane of every bargee's life). But we resolved to attend to that in the morning when we had daylight to help us see what we were doing.