Valence to Viviers

After a day's break, we leave Valence towards Viviers. The route to Avignon would be 11 hours including the locks. The locks are never completely predictable, today we experienced that for the first time as well.

Right after leaving the port, we could still see a freighter in sight. That is a rare sight. So we decided to slow down a bit. This way, the freighter can take the lock in Bourg Les Valence on its own.

Arriving there, the large lock gates had already swallowed it and we were looking forward to the next journey. My radio officer made contact and came back with the message, I didn't quite understand it, but we should moor at the observation point. Shortly afterwards, a pusher convoy came from behind, as it passed us, we could see that it is about 200 meters long, it doesn't want us with it.

So we waited for the next round, which we were then allowed to take together with an Englishman.

Compared to the last few days, we had significantly more traffic on the way today. We were on the road for 6 and a half hours and had a total of 4 encounters with freighters, not counting the three pleasure boats.

Then shortly after the lock, planes appear on the horizon. They fly in loose formation, turn off and on again, then head towards the Rhône, almost directly towards our Gustav. It looks like in a Vietnamese war movie, where a squadron of fighter jets flies an attack on our Gustav. The search for anti-aircraft defense was quickly abandoned, we didn't have any. However, the somewhat aging flight objects approached more and more threateningly. They lowered their altitude further until they finally made contact with the water surface. My hope, please no wave now, if they overturn, there'll be nothing left of Gustav. Then suddenly they take off again, what now? Have we won? As they climbed, they opened the hatches and emptied the water they had just taken in. Ah, a fire-fighting squadron on a training flight. In the meantime, I managed to convince my first officer to film everything. You are welcome to request the film from us, but it ends without credits. After the last plane then flew towards Heike with its wet cargo, she ran away and preferred to hide in the supposedly safe cabin.

The navigable part of the Rhône largely runs in the canal, and the actual Rhône forms various islands together with the canal. The places along the route are mostly hidden behind the riverbank. Here and there, an industrial area is built directly up to the river or canal. We pass the Cruas nuclear power plant, various quarries are located on the slopes towards the Massif Central. The left bank is accompanied at some distance by the Alps.

In Viviers, we come across a small but beautiful port. We are immediately greeted by one of the boats, a short exchange of words, French, me, English, in the end it turns out that German is the best way for us all to communicate, seems to be the mother tongue of all of us.