The final instalment of photos from the cruise. Rhea took most of these pics, and I've just borrowed them since they're better than mine!The final photo shows the charter company's base at Pont-a-Bar on the Canal d'Ardennes.
We decided to get creative with our logistics for last couple of days. We had enough time to overshoot Pont-a-Bar and travel all the way up to Sedan for a day. We figured out that if we could somehow leave most of our luggage in Sedan, we could actually cycle from Pont-a-Bar to Sedan the next morning. So after a reconnaisance expedition to find the Chateau Fort and confirm that they would store our bags, we returned again in the afternoon with the suitcase and a crate full of surplus cooking supplies, leaving us with just a couple of small backpacks for the following day.
We then cruised back to the base at Pont-a-Bar, and enjoyed our final evening on the boat.
We settled the account the next morning, and Rhea made a great effort of negotiating in French to try and get them to cover the cost of the towels etc that were not on board. In the end, it worked out that the paperwork we had was from the booking agent, and was incorrect. We still need to chase the booking agent about that...
Anyway, it turned out that the fuel charge was less than stated on the booking agent's contract, so we ended up paying the amount we were trying to negotiate anyway!
And then we set off to Sedan, expecting to find a paved towpath along the river with no vehicular traffic. Unfortunately, the towpath for this particular section of the river is a grassy goat track, and not really suitable for a couple of heavily loaded road bikes. So we followed the main road into Sedan - about 9km from Pont-a-Bar - seriously hoping that we didn't wind up on a motorway with our bicycles!!!
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