Phew! What a scorcher... We were expecting some periods of bad weather during our summer cruise, but day after day of persistently hot weather has left us running for cover. At 35°C in the shade the only place where it is not unbearably hot is on the move - so at 4pm on a bank holiday we set off upriver, knowing we had at least 10km of breeze before we were stopped by the next lock. The moorings are few and far between in this stretch and as we begun to cruise through Paris suburbs we wondered if our plan had been such a good idea . The Port Van Gogh moorings, although full of promise in the Navicarte, are almost totally full with houseboats and the occupants studiously ignored us as we took a slow cruise past. Further upstream we spied a beautifully maintained pontoon, unoccupied and complete with electricity. It had to be too good to be true though and we were warned by the locals taking cover from the sun that the water bus stopped here and we would not be welcome!

Our fallback plan was the commercial waiting quay just downstream of Suresnes lock - no barges were using it, but judging by the weeds and the lack of mooring rings or bollards, no one had used it for quite some time. However, a solitary bollard on the adjacent slipway/flood overflow, combined with some nifty ropes around walls and bushes, made a passable mooring place for the night.

As we had approached the mooring, we had noticed fireworks being set up in the park opposite, and later that evening we were rewarded with a ringside view of the area's bastille day display.

Cruising Statistics

Distance: 14 nm

Total to date: 1606 nm

Avg Speed: 5 knots

Duration: 3 hours

Diesel: 40 litres (est)

Mooring: Free

Electricity: N/A

Bridges

Viaduc Autoroute A14

Pt rails de Carrieres

Pt rails des Anglais

Pt de Bezons

Pt Aqueduc de Colombes

Pt d'Argenteuil

Pt rails d'Argenteuil

Pt de l'autoroute A15

Pt rails d'Epinay

Pt d'Epinay

Pt de l'Ile St Denis

Pt de l'autoroute A86

Pt de St Ouen

Pt SNCF

Pt de Gennevilliers

Pt de Clichy

Pt d'Asnieres

Pt rails d'Asnieres

Pt de Levallois-Perret

Pt de Courbevoie

Pt de la Gde Jatte

Pt de Neuilly

Pt de Puteaux

Locks

None

Min headroom: 6.9m

Min draught: 3.5m

Charts

Navicarte 1