28th June - 4th July 2015

The first week of July is upon us heralding summer at it's finest, the sun is shining and the skies are big and bright blue, Indeed I've experienced some of the hottest weather I've seen in Burgundy so far, but no complaints from anyone over here, it might be scorching hot but when you've always got a fresh and extremely cool river next to the boat, it's certainly not so bad. Aside from all the paddling and diving into the water that seemed to be a recurrent theme of the week, everything was extremely calm on board.When it's this hot it seems the world moves in slow motion, the barge itself being an exception, as it always moves in slow motion, a relaxed pace we prefer to call it.

Otherwise it's been an extremely pleasant week, we were joined by 3 Americans, 5 Brits including long time visitors and friends of the Luciole, Leslie and Malcolm, as well as Julia, the sister of tour guide Anna, and the always charming French-Australian Antoine. This group melded with each other extremely quickly and spent all hours of the day together as one big family, sharing games of scrabble in the wonderfully cool air conditioned saloon, or sitting on deck in the shade of the parasol, creating water colours of all they could see. If not there then perhaps in some fascinating place being shown around by Anna, otherwise at the table together eating some fantastic creation of Chef Marcs and finishing off a good few bottles of wine. Either way it was all done with a smile on the faces of all and will keep a special place in everyone's memories as Burgundy truly at it's finest

 We get weather in Burgundy! The passengers plus our very own Penny line up on the deck after an unfortunate wind related incident with the parasol.

 Two very lovely pairs of sisters on the Luciole. From left to right: Leslie, Sue, Julia and our exceptional tour guide Anna.

Unfortunately not a very good picture, but it depicts host George successfully closing the gate of a lock, while student lock keeper Daniel sleeps peacefully in his chair. We managed to enter the lock, stop the boat and close the gates before he finally woke up. Quite an achievement nonetheless and certainly a first for everyone. The poor lad was definitely red faced when he awoke.