10th June Off up country

We were ready to leave Honfleur at 8.30am our Dutch neighbours waved us off and we met Jenny and Ian on Solent Clipper who had spent the night against the wall in the outer basin. We entered the lock alongside 3 fishing boats. The water dropped about 4 metres, we left the lock without any problems, luckily the weather wasn't as bad as yesterday and the water was relatively calm, it was about half an hour before low water. The trip up the Seine between Honfleur and Rouen is not particularly pretty. Of course there are some chateaus and little villages, some with cottages of thatch which made them look very English. Many of the thatches had grass growing on top a bit like wispy baby hair or the wispy bits of hair on a bald man's head. Clearly this was a feature that seemed to be 'de rigour' for the area, no idea why? Although the guide books said there were some boat stop offs we didn't really see any suitable other than possibly Caudebec so we pushed on to Rouen. A number of large barges and ships passed us going both up and down river. The wash wasn't too bad for us but when the first one passed Ian and Jenny they had a bit a problem with their mast, which needed further securing, so we slowed down whilst they sorted that and they we were on our way again.

Disappointingly as we got further up river the rain arrived and by the time we got to the docks at Rouen it was chucking it down, so donning waterproofs we checked out the first marina, which although we had been given to understand looked near the town centre is seemed to us not to be and also the area was very industrial. We moved on to the next marina which was nearly opposite the Cathedral so much better. We had to raft up which we did against Hugo and Renee's boat 'Fantastico'. We'd met them at Le Harve, they had left a week earlier than us but they had been held up due to waiting for some post from their home in Belgium. So we all tied up about 5pm soaking wet by the time we had finished. After visiting the office we popped onto 'Solent Clipper' for a cup of tea, which naturally turned into a couple of glasses of wine!! Then back to our boat to have dinner, still raining! Looking forward to going into town tomorrow so hoping is stops by then.