Day 25: 08/07/17 Poses to Vernon (a pleasant diversion)

The plan for today was to get up early and try to get to Port L'ilon which is on an inshore lake behind the River Seine. It looked a nice place to stop for a couple of nights where the kids could pump up the SUP and canoe and have some fun. So at 6:20 we left Poses and enjoyed the quiet of the river where we could hear beautiful birdsong and admire the lovely scenery. I was a little disappointed that there appeared to be nowhere to stop near Giverny (Monet's Garden) but thought that perhaps we could get a taxi from Port L'ilon.

On passing through Vernon we admired the small sailing club which was too shallow for us to enter, and then went under the bridge. Over the other side of the river I saw a yacht tied up alongside the quay which was for riverboats. I pointed this out to Patrick and he said "that's Paul's boat!". Over we went and rafted up alongside, nobody home, but we decided to stop for lunch anyway. After about 20 minutes we heard some noise outside and I popped my head up to find a police boat in front of me. I practiced my best French to ascertain that we were fine to stay, at that minute a very worried looking Paul and Carol turned up. I explained there was no problem and then they told us that they were going on a tourist train to Monet's house in about 45 minutes so Esmé and I shovelled down our lunch and got ready. Patrick and AJ weren't interested so were going to do some boat jobs and if Esmé and I got back in time we could still get to Port L'ilon in the evening.

Esmé and I had a lovely afternoon in Monet's garden, and she recognised much of it from a story book I had bought to introduce artists to the kids. She enjoyed taking photos and admiring the flowers, as well as telling Carol which part of the book we were in "now".

On the way back I picked up some groceries while Carol and Paul to Esmé back to the boats. Patrick and I decided to stay the night here and move first thing in the morning as we were 50/50 on which option we preferred and the mooring here was free! Carol had said there were some water fountains for kids to play in so we took the kids the 5 minute walk to get there and I had a lazy hour watching the kids splash around. On our return it was still very hot so the kids played chess and bummed around the boat until it was time to cook dinner.

Once the kids were in bed (Esmé still awake though!) we went onto Paul and Carol's boat for a pleasant drink watching the sun go down and comparing plans for the next few days.