I was up early to watch the Hawks find a new way to lose this morning when, after being 30 points up at three-quarter time, they managed to lose to Richmond by 1 point in the last minute! The Melbourne Storm managed to compound my misery later in the morning by losing 26-18 to Newcastle. So it would be fair to say that I was not in the best of moods as I sat down to a late breakfast. But my mood improved somewhat when we were joined for breakfast by mum swan and her two youngsters. How could they not lift your mood?

Sat 22 July - Hawks, Storm, swans, cricket rain, recycling, Chantes, Mark, night ride

Later in the morning, I sat down to watch the 4th day of the 4th Ashes Test Match, only to find that it was raining at Old Trafford, and that the start of play had been postponed. They lost some time to rain today, but also got some play in. Watching the weather might be the most intresting part of the final day tomorrow. While waiting for the cricket to start, I kept working on this blog, while Rita took advantage of the fine weather to do some laundry. Today we hung the laundry on a clothesline strung around the mast on the front deck, and it looked more like a bazaar tent than a clothesline.

In the afternoon, we heard a knock on the wheelhouse door, and said hello to a worker from the local Mairie, who was distributing a poster to all the moored boats entitled "Here we sort" with the message "During your stay, retain your good behaviour". The poster was urging boaters to sort their rubbish before they deposit it into the multi-coloured bin system that the Mairie had recently introduced. Rita was very pleased because she is always looking for specific rubbish bins, especially compost bins for food waste etc.

That evening, we rode up the river to the next town of Chantes, where we had heard that a night market and fireworks display was to take place. It was an easy ride on the high quality Euro-6 towpath, and we arrived to find a large crowd already enjoying themselves with food, drink, chatter and music. We lined up to get a drink from the kiosk, and as we started to move away with our drinks, we heard a voice "G'day, are you Australians?". We then struck up a conversation with a young bloke called Mark, who was a miner from Western Australia. He was in Chantes because he had recently married his girlfriend there, given that nearby Traves was her home town, even though they had met in Asutralia, He was now renovating a building on her parents' farm in Traves which is to become his northern summer home, while he returns to WA in the southern summer to earn enough money for the year. We had a great chat talking about the differences between the Australian and French way of life. It was obvious from all the locals, young and old, saying hello to him as we spoke, that he was well and truly accepted as part of the local community. We totally enjoyed our chat with him; indeed, we lost track of the time until we realised that it was starting to get dark, and we had to still ride home along the river. So we swapped contact details, just in case, and jumped on our bikes to head home to Soing. Luckily we had already ridden in the reverse direction so we knew what to expect. We we got back to Soing, we stopped to appreciate the crescent moon rising over the river.