7th - 13th June 2015

The Luciole season commences with another wonderful week cruising through Burgundy, it's been sunny and beautiful all week with one rather magnificent thunderstorm in the middle of the night, typically Burgundian and always welcome, fingers crossed the summer stays this way. It's looking good from where I'm sat, especially the ever increasing tans of all the crew, even if it's impossible to compete with Chilean Captain Francisco.

We are always very fortunate with our guests on the barge, we seem to only attract extremely nice, courteous and friendly people, and this week was no exception, big personalities all around and plenty of activity going on all week. People have been out and about since day one, "the Boys" Bob and Ben on their bicycles, cycling to every tour location and meeting the bus with the rest of the group, their beautiful 89 year old mother Jessie helping me all week by looking after the flowers and refusing any assistance beyond a pair of scissors. We had our first swimmers of the season with lovely Australians Diana and Diane, and our first big game of Petanque along the water front at Vincelles, such professionals no one even lost a ball! We were also fortunate to be joined midweek by Stephane, the brother of Chantelle, and yet another first as the only French guests of the year so far, putting my completely inadequate French to the test, it's always fun to give it a go though.

I have two final special mentions to make. I'd like to wish a very happy 20th anniversary to Donald and Linda, we hope you had a lovely day, and a shout out to the extremely nice Diane, the first guest I've met who confesses to reading this blog! So thank you Diane, it's very nice to know I don't write this just for my own pleasure.

 Diane our first swimmer takes a leap.

Closely followed by Diana's magnificent dive.

Auxerre's passerail basking in the evening sun.