While we retired early last night, we certainly awoke this morning with a bang, of thunder and lightning, at 0200h. It woke both of us instantaneously, and we were quickly up and running around the boat closing windows and the dogbox roof. We don't know how long it continued, because once we had battened down the hatches we fell into a deep sleep again and didn't wake until after 0800h, where we found it still raining heavily, but without the thunder and lightning. Later in the morning I went up to the car to collect something, and found we had had a lucky escape when I fould tree branches in the next parking space (don't know what happened to the car that was there last night!). They weren't huge branches but they probably would have broken the windscreen if they had landed on the Renault, and then the torrential rain would have created havoc inside the car. We are back in the land of the wild thunderstorms!

In the late morning we heard from Sarah and Albon that they were returning to Besain from near Paris today, and would be passing near St Jean de Losne, so we arranged for them to drop in for lunch (which was convenient since they were taking lots of food home from their family reunion near Paris). So around 1330h, they arrived in pouring rain. The two boys wasted no time and ran down to the boat and were trying on our sailors hats well before the rain stopped and Sarah and Albon appeared. We then had a nice hour or so eating all the yummy food, before Albon reminded us that he had to get home before 1700h for the evening milking of the cows - ah, the life of a real farmer! But we promised to catch up again soon, as wet (non-barging) weather was forecast for most of the next week.

Around 1800h, the rain disappeared and the sun arrived. So we thought we would go for a walk into town. And as we were walking, we thought we might stop for a drink, which turned into dinner even though our favourite restaurant on the River Saone was booked out for the evening (they always manage to find another table!). So after two delicious (and huge) salads (yes, it must have been good because I was eating salad as a main course!), plus desserts and wine and coffee (for less the 60euro), we happily wandered back to the boat.

Along the way, we dropped into Blanquart's marina, because we thought we had seen the boat of good friends Peter Vizzard and Judy Lynne, which has been moored for nigh on 2 years at Blanquarts, like many other Australians' boats. Their boat looked in good shape, but just a bit lonely.