Day 64: 15/08/17 Rest day in Auxonne

Patrick wasn't feeling so well this morning so he had bread and marmalade for breakfast while we had crepes with chocolate spread and bananas. We had half a plan for a day out at Dole but it very soon became clear that we all needed rest.

I started school with the kids, maths went pretty well but my experiment of a 5 minute free write brought meltdowns from AJ and a list of rhyming words from Esmé which wasn't really the point.... will have to reconsider that one! John the Captainaire came over and took Patrick to the cheaper petrol station at the other end of town.

Once school was done I spent some time tidying the boat and doing hand washing while we have water and the kids had a bit of chill out time. We briefly considered still going to Dole but then it clouded over and started to rain so we decided to stay put.

We poked our heads above deck and saw numerous boats arrive including a motor cruiser from Maldon with grandkids on board. John was putting out a reserved sign next to their boat as he said a big boat was arriving called "rainbow" in French.

Patrick and AJ chilled out on the boat but Esmé wanted to take the beads down to the Captainaire's floating office and make necklaces. As we were getting ready I saw a big boat come through the entrance and guessed it was the one John was talking about so we pointed out their berth and helped them in.

Beads and books to swap in hand we wandered down to the empty office and made a necklace for Georgie, Johns wife. As we noticed the office wasn't officially manned until 5pm we wandered back to the boat.

More boats arrived and we eventually delivered thank you beer to John and the necklace to Georgie. Georgie was making prints and offered to show Esmé how she made them, giving a delighted Esmé the one we made together. John and Georgie have been amazingly kind to us during our stay and are largely the reason why we stayed an extra night. We will be recommending here on the basis of their hospitality.

On our return we spotted the girls from Maldon and they invited Esmé to play on their boat, their mum, Beth, and I got chatting and all 4 kids ended up going out on the inflatables while we chatted. It was lovely to have a girlie chat for an hour, enjoying the kids playing.

As I was cooking dinner the lady off the big boat brought us Toblerone for helping them in. Patrick and AJ spent some time looking at the Atlas finding all the countries of the people we have met so far. All in all we met some lovely people over the last day or so and we will be sad to leave.