The day started with me once again playing the role of Kenny, when we found that the toilet was again refusing to flush properly. Given my recent successes in this role, I thought I knew the problem, and proceeded to dismantle the toilet. But when I got to what I thought would be the problem area, nothing was to be found. So I had to put on my thinking hat for a while, and then sent a message to Phil.

I checked the moorings upstream and found that one of the bigger boats had now left, leaving a good gap for us to fill. So we cast off from the supermarket mooring, went through the ecluse and moored at the northern end of the moorings. We then brought the Scenic and Vanumbra up from the railway carpark and parked them near Kanumbra. All three were now together again for the very first time.

The reason for parking the van so close to the barge was that we had three jobs that needed to be done.   1. Take photos of the interior and exterior of the van for insurance purposes, to show any damage that had been done during the theft and to record the state in which we received the van afterwards   2. Take all the junk out of the van that had been left by the person who bought the stolen van   3. Give the van a thorough cleaning so that we could start to use it again.

The first task of taking the photos revealed a few things that we hadn't noticed when we took possession yesterday in Strasbourg. Firstly, the "buyer" had decided to install a string of LED lights around the inside top of the driving cabin, and for this purpose had drilled holes in the ceiling of the cabin so that they could run some wires to somewhere to get power for the lights (we haven't yet worked out where they were getting this power from). Secondly, there was damage to several of the concertina shades inside the skylights. Thirdly, and most urgently, when they caused the damage to the side-light they must have been driving over rough country, because the outlet pipe from the grey water tank was damaged, meaning that grey water escaped from the tank as soon as it was fed in (which sort of defeats the purpose of the grey water tank). As shown below, the tap was broken off the end of the PVC pipe and the pipe itself was broken halfway to the storage tank. This will need urgent repair before we can use the van again.

When we started clearing the junk out of the van, there were two items of reasonable value that had been left behind (even though the police had given the "buyer" opportunity to remove their possessions from the van). The first was a portable electric fridge (which was still full of food) and the second was a large expresso machine (still full of coffee beans). We kept these in case we find someone to whom they would be useful, as well as a camp chair and a camp bed. All the rest was destined for the rubbish containers around L'Isle sur le Doubs.

Then started the arduous task of cleaning the inside of the van. Since it was really a one-person job inside the tight confines of the van, Rita suggested I make myself useful elsewhere while she made a start with the cleaning. So I jumped in the Scenic and headed for the FeuVert store in Montbeliard where I saw they had steering wheel locks for sale. I figured we may as well make an early start with making the van more secure. After I got back and we had finished the cleaning, we made a trip to the local decheterie to get rid of some of the junk and also to get rid of the old batteries from the bowthusters. Because of their weight, we had been waiting for an opportunity to get the car close to the boat, so that I wouldn't have to carry the batteries too far. Even though we got the car to within 5 metres of the boat, it was still a struggle. When we got them to the decheterie, they were only too happy to receive them because old batteries still have a resale value. They even offered to take them out of the back of the car for us. But when the older of the workers tried to do so, he found out how heavy they were! So he called upon his young co-worker (who must have been into weight-lifting), and he lifted them out, one in each hand, and casually walked them to the storage shed!!  Everyone had a good laugh, and we were very glad to be rid of  them

In the evening, I followed the 2nd Semi-Final of the Speedway of Nations Team World Championship, which was won by Sweden, with 2021 Champions Great Britain scraping into the Final in third place.