St Valliers

 

 

 

 

 We travelled on our way fron Lyon quite quickly coming across our first Rhone lock. We waited for ages, about 30 minutes, for it to open and then once inside we waited another 25 minutes for the gates to shut!

 



This was one of the most shallow locks but to us stuck at the bottom of this great cavern it felt much deeper than its nine metres!

The scenery is really beginning to change and the buildings are definitely changing in style. It is becoming quite hilly, even mountainous in places and the air is beginning to smell more Meditteranean... That kind of warm air smell that hits you when you get off a plane after flying away on holiday from the UK!

 

 

We moored our first night away from Lyon at St Colomb, right by this tower. This 30 metre tower is all that remains from the 14th century fortifications built by King Philipe VI de Valois when he defeated St Colomb. The tower might be very old but it has a definite modern roof on it!

 

 

We both thought that this was a very pretty house although the picture doesn't really do it justice. the stonework had all been treated to look like marble, and the sculptured heads and metalwork made the exterior look really interesting.

 

 

 

 

After a night on the free moorings which were really good apart from the turbulence caused by an enormous commercial who ignored where he was supposed to be on the shipping lane and decided to go past us and through the wrong arch of the passerelle bridge we carried on our way.

 

 The French are very proud of this nuclear power station. The waters of the Rhone cool its two 1,300kW reactors and they produce 18 billion kW each year, 10 times the consumtion of of the city of Lyon!

The scenery is just stunning, I would just love to be living in this beautiful chateau and gardens.

 Although also some inevitable industrial stuff, such as this chemical works but it all adds to the scenery!

 

When we emerged from the 3rd lock, the weather began to get rather windy. The river opened out to large expanses of water with very choppy waves... it got windier and windier with waves breaking over the bows of the boat so I had to shut the front doors as the water was coming in! We had about 10 Km of this and we were both getting a bit anxious as we could not find suitable and available moorings! At last an empty pontoon at St Valliers came into sight and with difficulty in the strong wind we managed to tie up and secure the boat.

 

We have breathtaking scenery behind us!

 

We had a lovely night without much disturbance, we are so pleased that we found this pontoon which is just big enough for us. We decided to consult the weather before setting off, and very glad we had done this! We have stayed put today with the southerly wind gusting very strongly from time to time, and torrential downpours of rain. The forecast is for more of the same tomorrow so I suspect we will languish here for another day tomorrow.

 

This enormous commercial ship was very aptly named the 'Wasp'! and jolly annoying it was too with the speed it went past us causing great waves which dislodged our stuff inside the boat.