Rita and I must have been particularly alert last night at midnight, and so decided to call Pinch'n'Punch a draw for the month of November. There was heavy rain overnight, and the carpark this morning looked like a swimming pool. We have now learned not to park in this spot when rain is forecast.

We haven't used the dehumidifier in recent days, and on looking into the bilge from the hatch in the galley floor we saw that the condensation on the inside of the hull had given us another leek in the bilge!

Eventually the weather cleared and the sun appeared, so we decided to go for a walk around town. The autumn colours were now starting to appear in force in Auxonne.

On the way back around the port, we saw a crowd of people on the waterside, and realised they were looking at the port ragodin/coypu who was very friendly and willing to accept various food items from his admirers.

As we got back to Pontoon C, we saw that Phil and Kathy were making a display of French/Australian friendship with joint flags in their wheelhouse. Such a display has been necessitated by the recent Australian Government behaviour in arbitrarily cancelling a contract with France for the construction of new submarines. While they may think that it is just a little tiff between Governments, we have been surprised at how many normal French people have asked us what was going on. Viva la France!

Later in the day, Phil came down to ask us over to Effie for drinks tonight, and when we got there we found the wheelhouse decorated and an early birthday cake for Rita's big day tomorrow. Much appreciated and a great evening.

It's hard to believe that today is Rita's 60th birthday!  So we thought it appropraite to head over to Switzerland for the occasion. But on the way, we stopped at Poligny to have a restaurant lunch with Sarah and Albon.

But Albon had to get back to the farm to milk the cows that afternoon, and so we drove on to Bern and then on to our favourite little house in Biglen for dinner.

We had a disturbed night's sleep at Biglen, with the heating system making groaning and clicking noises as it warmed up and then cooled down with the thermostat, and then towards dawn the electricity meter started making weird noises. So we slept in a little longer to compensate.

Since we were in the Bernese Overland, we decided to have a very Swiss day by going to a mountain town to see how an Alphorn is made. So we drove south of Bern to Thun and then along the edge of Lake Thun until we reached Interlaken. We then headed up the hills until we reached the town of Habkern.

We then headed for the Bernatone Alphornbau in the middle of the village, where we met Heinz Tscheiemer, who makes alphorns for a living, using local trees grown and milled by his father. He was very gracious with his time and showed us around the workshop and explained how alphorns are made.

As he was explaining the process, we could hear alphorns being played in another room, and as we left the workshop we were lucky enough to be able to catch this snippet of a local lady learning to play the alphorn.

As we left the alphorn shop, we realised that the weather had changed since we went inside, and it was now quite misty.

And so we went into a local restaurant for lunch, and hoped that the weather would change again while we were inside, under the watchful gaze of a local resident.

The weather didn't get any better, but we still had an enjoyable few hours in Habkern, before we headed home to Biglen. But as we entered the town of Biglen, we saw an interesting shop that sold various local goods, including a wide array of meringues, big and small!

Just after we got back to the house, the neighbour let his goats out for a run and a feed, and they quickly headed for the nearby field, although one of them had his eye on our garden!

In the evening, we went for a walk around the neighbourhood, and got a nice shot of a soft sunset over the hills behind the Biglen house.

Given the relatively mild weather, I decided to go for a walk around the local neighbourhood to explore our surroundings. The nearby properties contain a range of traditional Swiss farmhouse chalets, including those that surround our little Biglen rental house.

Next to the chalet (above, left) I found a field that contained a Christmas Tree farm. Since I had been thinking about developing such a farm at our property back home in Taggerty, I had a good look at the size and spacing of the trees, and noticed that the farmer working there had left enough room in each direction to run a ride-on mower through the trees, thus reducing competition for nutrients from grass growing between the trees, at least until the trees were large enough to provide canopy cover to deprive the grass of the required sunlight.

In the afternoon, the sky cleared sufficiently to give a decent view of the Bernese Alps to the south-east of Bern.

In the late afternoon, the neighbour let his mini-goats out again for a run and feed in the fields. But they are very well-trained goats and after about 10-15 minutes the neighbour rang a bell and all the goats scampered back to their enclosure. He must give them some extra "goodies" when they come home!

That evening, we were treated to a multi-faceted sunset over the fields and hills, as a suitable end to the day.

As a belated birthday celebration, Rita had two of her best Swiss friends (Sarah and Regina) over that night for dinner. The stories and laughter continued well into the night.

Rita had to head off today to another Music Therapy workshop in Munich, but before that she had to give a little concert for the old folk at Alenia, who had so much appreciated the event she put on in September in honour of her mum. So, while she was entertaining them again today, I took the opportunity to drive up to Dentenberg, the hills to the north of Alenia, which have got lots of great walking trails that the two Ritas had used so frequently in years gone by. From a lookout on the road up to Dentenberg, there is a great view of Alenai (the big rectangular building in the middle of the photo below) and the Bernese Oberland behind.

As I wandered along the paths criss-crossing Dentenberg, I stumbled across another Christmas Tree farm.

The name on the label reminded me of a Christmas song that Rita and I recorded with a bunch of local friends (The Saturday Singers) in and around Taggerty last year. Good memories.

After Rita had finished her Alenia performance, I picked her up and drove her to Gumligen rail station, where she caught a local train into Bern and then the main train up to Munich. I then returned to the house at Biglen, and spent the evening finishing another novel by Michael Connelly (Black Ice).

A foggy morning over the Biglen fields greeted me this morning, so I turned over and got some more sleep after a late night of reading. After Australia's poor showing against England in the T20 World Cup a couple of weeks ago, they improved in their last two games with good wins against Bangladesh and the West Indies to finish second in their group behind England, and hence qualify for the semi-finals.

As the fog cleared and the sun appeared, I decided to go for a drive to see some of the local Autumn sites. I started by driving across to Belpberg. The autumn colours around the base of the mountain were coming into all their glory.

I then decided to drive up and over the mountain itself, as I remembered doing that many years ago, and enjoyed the solitude of the villages up there. On the way back down, I saw many examples of autumn colours, but this was perhaps one of the best.

I continued further south to Thun, and headed for the north side of the lake (since we had done the south side a couple of times on our recent trip to Hapkern). The combination of the autumn colours, the blue lake water and the Alps in the background gave some spellbinding scenery, and I stopped several times to admire the views (while not having to pay attention to the winding lakeside road).

As I continued driving, I approached the southern extremity of the Niederhorn Range as it sank into the Thunersee. Here the melding of the rocks of Niederhorn, the autumn trees and the chalet gave a very Swiss atmosphere.

Getting close to the end of autumn, today was perhaps one of the last warmish days (10deg C), so the sailors made the most of the day in the shadows of the Alps.

I kept driving along the Thunersee until reaching Interlaken, and then turned left to go up the road to Hapkern, since I intended to go through there and continue up to more villages located above Hapkern. But as I was driving, I saw a sign to Beatenberg and decided to go there instead, since Rita had described it to me many times in the past. As I drove up this winding road, I came to a lookout with a great view over Interlaken, and the paragliders who had jumped off the top of Niederhorn and who were gliding down towards the golf course for a landing near Interlaken.

I continued up to Beatenberg, which is a long narrow town stretched out along the ridge of the mountain. I parked the car and wandered through the town as the sun slowly set in the west. Because the town is on a high ridge above the Thunersee, the afternoon fog filled the valley, leaving just the Alps on the southern side and the town on the northern side of the lake.

As the sky slowly darkened, I returned to the car for the trip down the hill. As I drove along the road from the north to the south of Interlaken, the pink-tinged view of Eiger, Monck and Jungfrau was a sight to behold.

I drove home along the southern edge of the Thunersee in the darkening sky, at the end of a very satisfying day.

As a sign that winter was well and truly on its way, today I woke to very frosty fields outside the bedroom window.

But by mid-morning the frost had cleared, and the crisp clear day produced our best views of the Alps this year.

So I decided to go for a walk around a circuit that went down to the village of Reid and back. As I climbed the hill at the back of the house, I realised that the higher I climbed, the better was the view of the Alps. So I kept climbing until I got the best view of the surrounding countryside, starting from the little hamlet containing our house.

I continued on, eventually coming to a house that was built across the path, forcing a detour around their fences. But this had an unexpected bonus when I found that they had a couple of mini-goats, which for some reason are very popular with Swiss households. WARNING: Cuteness overload!

Further on, as I started to descend toward the village of Reid, I encountered several groups of horseriders, starting out for a day of riding in the forests.

As I walked through Reid, I noticed a Swiss tradition that I had always found interesting, where new parents put up signs or structures signifying the birth of their new baby. Indeed, when I got back to the house, I noticed that our neighbours also had such a sign, and had sent a postcard to the house announcing the recent birth of their son.

When I got home, I decided I had done enough exercise for the day, and settled down to some reading (more Michael Connelly) while I followed online the Rugby game between Scotland and Australia, which Scotland narrowly won 15-13. In the evening, I watched the Mexico GP, won by Max Verstappen ahead of Lewis Hamilton, extending his lead in the 2021 GP Championship. One of the highlights of the Mexico GP is the section of track contained within and going through an ampitheatre of grandstands. Always an impressive sight!

Today was my last day in the Biglen house, so I had to make sure I gave it a good clean, ready for the next guests. Then I was off on Route 10 for my trip to Bregenz to meet Rita at her cousin's house. I skirted around the edge of Lucerne, and then headed for Rapperswil-Jona where I crossed from the southern edge of Lake Zurich to the northern edge. I then continued along the shoreline until I got to Schmerikon, which is at the eastern extremity of Lake Zurich.

After looking at the boats in the Schmerikon marina for a while, I realised that I was still running ahead of time for meeting Rita in Bregenz. So I decided to take a detour to check out Glarus; a mountain town I had often heard about, but never visited. I headed south along route 17, veering right near the western end of the Walensee, and arrived in Glarus about 30 minutes later (nothing in Switzerland is very far away!). As I approached Glarus, I realised I was entering the classical photographer's dilemma. The mountains on each side were so high, and the valley through which I was travelling was so narrow, that I could not get far enough away to capture the scale of the mountains in one photo. I therefore kept driving, hoping to get to the perfect spot for a photo, but soon realised I was now driving away from Glarus and into the real mountains further south.

While I would love to have continued driving and exploring more, I realised that if I did I would have real trouble getting to Bregenz on schedule. So I pulled over into a restaurant parking lot and took a photo of the mountain behind it, just to record one image of the scale of the mountains.

I then turned around and headed back through Glarus, after putting it on the list of places to visit again in the future. I headed back north on route 17, then turned right onto route 3 to pass along the southern side of the Walensee. After passing Walenstadt near sunset, I saw a range of sawtooth ridges which looked spectacular in the setting sun.

As I drove along the border between Switzerland and Lichtenstein, I realised that I might have a problem when I got to the Austrian border, which I needed to cross to get to Bregenz. I had now been in Europe for more than 3 months (the Schengen limit without requiring a long-stay visa), and while I was happy to stay in France (because I had applied for a Carte des Sejour) and somewhat happy to be in Switzerland (where Rita could explain my situation), I was now crossing a border between two Schengen countries, neither of which was France! I just had to hope for the best. As I approached the border, however, I saw a relatively small side road off the motorway, which had a sign to Austria. So I took that road and arrived at a very small border crossing, which had no staff in attendance. So I just drove through, and breathed a big sigh of relief.

With the aid of Google Maps, I was then able to easily find my way to cousin Judith's apartment, where we had dinner with her and her two grown-up sons and her Chihuahua dog Fridolin (very similar to my childhood dog Pedro), and then got a good nights sleep.

The day started with brilliant sunshine in Bregenz, but it was so hard getting Rita and Judith to stop chatting that we made a later than expected departure for the trip back to Auxonne, given that we had a couple of appointments along the way. Rita is always on the lookout for interesting musical experiences, especially since she started doing her Music Therapy studies. So today, we planned to make two stops on the way back to Auxonne.

The first stop was in the town of Wangen, on the southern side of Lake Zurich, just to the east of the Rapperswil-Jona bridge. Rita had heard of a guy named Julius Nötzli who came to fame after an appearance on "Switzerland's Got Talent" as a player of Chlefele (Swiss Castenets). He now performs under the name of "Dä Nötzli mit dä Chlötzli". After Rita explained her music background to him and explained why we had come to see him, he gave a little performance to show us what it was all about. The video below is just a sample of what he performed.

He then gave each of us a pair of Chlefele, to follow him and play a simple rhythm. I was hopeless at it, but Rita seemed to pick it up pretty quickly (at least to a limited extent).

Encouraged by her ability to pick up the basics, we thought it would be a good idea to buy a couple of sets of Chlefele, since one of our steelband members (Doug Walter) was very good at playing the spoons, and we thought he might also be able to play the Chlefele. After an hour of so with Julius, we thanked him for his generosity with his time, and headed off on the rest of our journey. As we stopped for lunch, we got an eMessage from Phil, saying that their holiday in Spain had been interrupted by him having to attend hospital for some medical tests. We hoped that he would be OK and able to return to Auxonne on schedule.

We were now well behind schedule, but rang ahead and confirmed that our second appointment (with Thomas Eichenberger in St. Erhard) was still possible. We arrived in mid-afternoon and were warmly welcomed. We learned here that while the "standard" F-sharp alphorn was 3.4m long, other sizes were available in different keys - the shorter the alphorn, the higher the key. Thomas demonstrated the difference between a 3.4m alphorn and a 3.0m alphorn.

After we had finished with musical instruments for the day, we started on the final leg of the trip to Auxonne. We headed up to the main highway between Bern and Zurich then branched off near Solothun to go through the Jura Mountains, via Moutier and Delemont, to arrive in somewhat familiar territory near Montbeliard (when we got to by barge in 2019). This was all new territory for both of us, and the scenery was fabulous, especially around sunset. We marked it down as a place to explore further in a more leisurely fashion.

The morning in Auxonne was foggy and cold, so (having borrowed another electic heater from Phil) we turned up the heat and settled in for a quite day on board. As I sat in the wheelhouse reading, I started thinking about the idea of double glazing the wheelhouse windows with clear acrylic sheets, much as I had done in the house back home. And this got me thinking about the use of thermal imaging cameras to detect the current sources of air-leaks in the wheelhouse, and to monitor the effectiveness of any double glazing we might do. So I started to Google the subject and found a number of attachments for an iPhone which enable it to function as a low-cost thermal imaging camera which would be accurate enough for my needs. The most promising of these seemed to be the Flir One Pro, which I will investigate further after getting back to Australia. It is a small unit which simply plugs into the Lightning connector at the bottom of the iPhone. One of the nice features is that it overlays the thermal image on the visual image obtained from the normal camera, thus easily pinpointing sources of heat/cold. And all this for just a few hundred dollars, rather than a few thousand dollars for a specialist thermal camera.

Despite our wishful thinking, the fog never lifted all day. So at one stage, Rita and I both found ourselves sitting in the wheelhouse together, and started thinking about the future (Covid has been pretty good at getting lots of people to think about their futures!). Since neither of us now has a regular income, we rely on savings, superannuation and investments in assets to provide for our daily needs. Luckily my last ten years of employment were pretty good at providing for the future, and we now have four major assets; our house and treefarm back home, and our barge and Moissac house over here in France. So we played a make-believe game of which of those assets we would sell first in order to provide for ongoing daily expenditures. Not surprisingly, we didn't agree on our orders of sale, but the game was very useful for thinking about the advantages and disadvantages of each option, in each of our minds. Luckily, neither of us identified the barge as the first prioity for sale!

This morning was foggy again with little sign of relief. So we stayed on-board and caught up with emails, Facebook, reading, blogging etc. In the late morning, Rita ventured into town to shop for some essentials, and a little while later she rang to remind me that it was Armistice Day and that a community ceremony was taking place in the park on the ringroad. So I scurried up there and was lucky to attend their Armistice Day memorial ceremony. Although we don't often go to such events, we both thought it was our duty to stand together with our French friends, given the recent animosity created by our government when they unilaterally cancelled a major contract with France to build our next fleet of submarines. Although no one knew we were Australians at the event, we felt proud to be there to continue the close associations between our peoples over the past 100 years.

During the afternoon, Rita went walking in search of some sun, with no success. The fog remained until night came. But there was one little ray of sunshine today, when Australia played Pakistan in the semi-final of the T20 Cricket World Cup. Pakistan had been undefeated so far on their side of the draw, and batted first here to get a very respectable score of 176. Australia were doing OK when they batted, but were lagging behind until Matthew Wade came to the crease and belted a Man-of-the-Match 41 in only 17 balls, for Australia to get to 177 in 19 overs. So, with NZ having also beaten England yesterday with 6 balls to spare, it's going to be a totally-Antipodean final in a few days time.

This morning was foggy again with little sign of relief (yes, I know that is the same first sentence as yesterday!). Our central heating was on the blink again, so instead of just hanging around the boat and waiting for the fog to lift, we decided to go search for the sun by taking a drive up to the Jura (where Sarah had told us the days had been sunny). As we left the A39 motorway and started to head up the hills to the Jura, the fog continued and we started to wonder whether this drive had been a waste.

We continued past Chateau-Chalon until we got to the turnoff to the Belvedere du Cirque de Ladoye, where we saw some Haflinger horses in a field near the Belvedere (lookout). Rita made friends with one of them while I took the pictures.

We then walked across the road to the Belvedere itself, and watched as the fog rose up along both sides of the Cirque from the valley below.

It was still foggy in this area, but we thought we glimpsed a patch of blue sky further to the east, so we continued on, and after passing over a crest, the sky cleared and blue appeared everywhere above a mini-avenue of trees.

We continued onwards until we reached Lac de Chalain, where Rita and Sarah had often gone swimming. But it was too cold for swimming today, and instead we intended to go for a walk along the lakeshore. But first, Rita took me up to a nearby village to show me a tree that was planted in 1651, to celebrate the end of the 30 year religious wars in the region. The tree is still in good condition, and a good example of long-term carbon sequestration in trees!

After asking for some directions from local walkers, we found our way down to the path along the lake. It was a very enjoyable walk along the lakeside through the glorious autumn colours.

After about an hour, we got to the eastern end of the lake, where we found a very large camping area. We could only imagine how busy it would have been in the middle of summer. But it was starting to get towards the end of the daylight hours, as indicated by the sun starting to hide behind the hills on the other side of the lake.

So we turned around and started the walk back along the lake. And even as the sun continued to sink lower in the sky, it still stayed just above the ridgeline as the height of the hills fell as we headed back. Eventually we got back to the beach near the park entrance, when Rita and Sarah often went swimming. We sat on the shore and watched as the moon rose in the east and the sun set in the west.

We got back to the car as darkness started to fall, and then drove back to Auxonne. Later that evening, I picked up Phil and Kathy at Auxonne Station after their return from Spain. Given our departures next week, I spent some time tonight trying to fill in my Australian Travel Declaration online. But each time I tried, it fell over, so I gave up and went to bed and will try again tomorrow. It seems that lots of the online apps from the Australian Government are pretty buggy.

After we woke, I gave Rita half an hour to say something before I wished her Happy 22nd Wedding Anniversary. This makes it 21 times out of 22 that she has forgotten it! We had a good laugh about it, then got up for breakfast. Later in the morning we went into town for me to get my PCR Covid test, which I needed within 72 hours of boarding my flight in Paris. We then went along the street to the Cactus Cafe/Bar for a morning coffee and croissant. It seemed to be a favourite place for many locals, and we loved the atmosphere. We'll keep it in mind for next year.

We then went back to the boat to do some preparatory work before departing, including changing over the cruising mooring ropes for the winter mooring ropes, and removing the bimini and tying it across the back doors, as we have done for the past couple of years. This removes the possibility of the bimini being lifted off the wheelhouse roof by the strong winter winds, and also protects the rear doors from the winter weather.

Overnight showers lingered into the morning, but eventually gave way to weak sunshine. We contined with some final tasks and packing, and I also set up the Bosch battery charger for the generator so that it would keep the battery topped up from shore power while we were away, rather than having it totally discharge and die, as it has done previously on several occasions. Given the problems with the central heating, we decided to get H2O to do the winterising again this year, so that the boat could survive the winter without any assistance from the central heating. This way, they would shoulder the responsibility if anything went wrong. We also asked them to do a full service on the main engine and the generator, so that next year we could start cruising as soon as we arrived in Auxonne (fingers crossed).

In the afternoon, I followed the Final of the T20 Cricket World Cup from Dubai, between Australia and New Zealand. NZ batted first and made a very respectable 4/172, but Australia ran down that total with 7 balls to spare with 2/173, with Mitch Marsh making 77 and David Warner 53. This was a pretty unexpected result. They were unheralded before the tournament began, and looked out of it when they were thrashed by England. But they recovered after that, and played their best in the Semi-Final and Final to win their first T20 World Title.

I was therefore in a pretty good mood when we joined Phil and Kathy onboard Effie for our final dinner of the season.