Up before 6am to get Theresa to the early train from Montauban to Lyon, and thence to Bern. Clear skies to greet the new day. We are moored in front of Moet Chandon and this morning we saw that John and Irene Plunkett had returned to the boat, and were busy cleaning and doing other work. Had a chat to them later and found they had just returned from a few weeks in Scotland. In contrast to the weather we have had here for the past month, they reported that it had been 24degrees and sunny for most of the time they were there.

Received a phone call from Direct Insurance, following up on a conversation Rita had with them last week. They now tell us that we will have to get French drivers licences before they will finalise the insurance – I take back what I said a while ago about it being simple to get car insurance over here. Will need to do a bit of Googling to see what is involved in getting a French drivers licence e.g. will I need to be able to read French in order to understand road signs, warning messages etc.; will Rita need to learn how to drive a manual gearbox car? After some Googling, it sounds like we can either exchange our Australian licences for a French licence, or sit the theory and practice exams and get a new French licence. Not too sure about the exchange, if that means surrendering the Australian licence to them – what do we do when we go home in a few months time? However, that might be better than trying to get a new licence in France. I would rather explain it all (in English) to VicRoads when I get home, and then if necessary sit for a new Australian licence, while keeping the French licence as well. We will go up to the Mairie in the next couple of days to find out what is involved.

Met up with Gail and Barry, a couple of Australians from Cairns, who have recently bought a 20% share in a barge and who were doing their training with Iain and Kaz today. They were interested in learning about visas and mobile phone plans, so they came over to the barge at night for a yack. Barry talked lots about other things, and finally we had a short talk about visas and phones.