Last night was our last night for sleeping on the barge for the year, since we will be moving up to the house today in preparation for Nico and Miyu arriving from Japan, and the beginning of our serious discussions about the renovation of the house. This morning we continued cleaning and moving stuff off the barge, then filled up with water and diesel (338L for about 100 hours of barging during the year).

Today we saw EasyVie under power for the first time. For the past few years, she has been moored in port but this year Tom Hollows has been doing a lot of work to bring her back up to scratch so that he can operate her as a hotel barge again. For the past few days, she has been down on the Tarn, but this morning she came back up to the canal in readiness for her first cruise of the season. She still needs a bit more paintwork done, but it was good to see her moving instead of stationary.

Having varnished the wheelhouse timber earlier in the year, I realised this week that the dogbox and mast also needed to be varnished. So since today was almost sunny (or at least it was dry), I decided to get that varnishing done before the end of the season. The dog box will need more work next year, but this should keep it in reasonable shape over winter.

Over the past few weeks, the house that we looked at last year near the port has been undergoing further renovations, and today we noticed a new addition at 4 Bassin – the Lion certainly makes it unique, but we don't think we will follow suit at our house.

In the afternoon, we picked up the dry-cleaned blankets, and then finished moving stuff into the house. That evening we had our first dinner at the house alone, and then started making a list of stuff we still needed in the house.