One of the advantages of a rural mooring is that there are no external lights, and hence the darkness promotes a good sleep. We woke late and eventually left the mooring about 1000h. This was not just laziness, but designed to have us arriving at our next port Mantoche around noon, after many hire boats from last night had left and before many of them arrive looking for a mooring for the next night. Just as we were about to re-enter the River Saone proper, we spied another Piper barge approaching, and as we got closer we realised it was Rangali. As we passed, they told us that Drumsara was up ahead.

As we travelled upstream, we passed an empty Port de Saint Pierre, and realised that Rangali must have moored there last night. A little north of Saint Pierre, we saw a couple of swans enjoying a morning sleep at a place where we had tried tieing up for lunch in 2019. The swans were much more comfortable than we had been at the time.

After having a long chat with the Patmores, and having a relaxed lunch, we realised that we should take advanatage of the large grassed area of the port, and clean the mould that had accumulated on the inside of our protective tarp over the past two years. So it was buckets, brooms and bare feet at the ready and we got going on the cleaning process. Luckily it was  mild weather, so it was not too onerous a task between the two of us.

However, having finished the cleaning process, we now had to rinse all the dirty water off the tarp and try to get it a bit dryer, so that we could fold it and put it back on board. This was the hard part of the job, especially since the grass had recently been mowed and all the grass clippings stuck to the underside of the tarp. As the day wore on, and time of opening of the bar at the local epicerie approached, we left the tarp on the lawn (under the eye of a Swiss family who had arrived during the afternoon) while we went up to the bar with Greg and Bridget for an interesting couple of hours of conversation (and a couple of drinks).

After we returned to the boat, and placed the roughly-folded tarp back on board, Rita got a message from her brother Frank, saying that her mum had been admitted to hospital with water on the lungs. After a return phone call to Frank, we decided to change our plans for the next week, and head back to St Jean de Losne in the morning, so that we could drive to Bern as soon as possible.

As planned, we arrived at Mantoche at noon, but as we were heading for the sole empty space ahead of Drumsara we saw that a hire boat coming from upstream was also intending to moor there. Since we figured that they would have to turn in order to moor going upstream,we continued to head for the space, and slid gracefully into the space with the help of Greg and Bridget Patmore ashore. We then backed up to the bow of Drumsara and tied up in exactly the same place as in 2019, and then helped the hire boat to moor in the space ahead of us. In the end, we both fitted with ease.