Because Rita had jumped the gun yesterday, I got a "free hit" at Pinch'n'Punch this morning, and took my time to savour the moment. This morning was decidedly colder, so rather than staying on the boat, we invited Phil and Cathy to join us for a trip to Saline Royale, the old saltworks on the other side of Dole. Rita and I had been there once before, and enjoyed it so much that we wanted to share what we had seen and find other things that we didn't discover last time.

But first we had to pick up the car from Auxonne, so we walked up to the Dijon Gare to catch the train to Auxonne. When we got there, we had about 10 minutes to buy our tickets. Since the queue at the ticket counter was long, we decided to use the ticket machine to buy the tickets. Howver, it was an old-fashioned machine and took forever to enter all the required information, and then refused to give us any tickets. So Rita made some enquiries with station staff and found that the ticket queue was long because everyone else knew the ticket machines didn't work reliably! By now we had two minutes before our train was due to leave, so we decided to take a chance and board the train for the short trip to Auxonne without any tickets. But as fate would have it, our carriage was the one selected for a ticket check today! We waited for the inspector to approach, and then Rita (being the only fluent French speaker) pleaded our case. She must have been a good pleader, because the inspector decided to fine just her (and not the other three of us). The fine came to just more that the cost of four tickets, if we had bought them.

When we got to Auxonne, we walked along the river from the station to Port Royal, where the car was parked. We then headed off to Saline Royale at Arc et Selens. Along the way, we stopped at a motorway stop BP service station for diesel and I suggested we grab some lunch (as Rita and I often do when we are travelling). I suspect the others had other plans for lunch as they didn't seem all that excited about the selection of triangle sandwiches available, especially when we then found that all the picnic tables outside were out of use due to Covid restrictions! Oh well, it gave me a good story to tell for whenever we all travel in the car again.

We arrived at Saline Royale and Phil and Kathy were as impressed as we were when we first visited a couple of years ago.

A new addition to the exhibits since we were last there was a Spiegeltent, virtually identical to the one that has been used in Melbourne for many years (and which nearly became a feature of Marysville after the 2009 bushfires). It brought back fond memories.

The gardens out the back of several buildings had been significantly remodelled, since each year sees a new group of landscape gardening students using these areas for class assignments. One area that hadn't changed too much (but had matured a bit) was the Tree Circle. The trees have grown, while the interior garden design had been modified and a new walkway incorporated. It gave me some new ideas for how the tree circle that my daughter Emma is creating on her property might develop over the coming years.

Something we hadn't seen last year was a series of exhibits featuring the use of garden screens using willow branches as the structural elements. There were many types of fences and tunnels using this method, and a pergola built with the same materials. One of the nice things about these screens is that the branches are live when they are planted into the ground, and over time they send out roots and then grow new smaller branches and leaves to create shaded areas under the screens. In winter, the leaves fall to create "sunrooms" during the cooler months.

After a few hours wandering around (we could have done much more), we adjourned to a local cafe for a drink, and then headed back to Dijon (so that we would have the car at hand for the rest of our stay in Dijon). I offered to stop at the BP service station again for dinner, but no one was interested.

In the evening, I watched the first leg of the Polish Speedway Grand Prix on YouTube, to see Artem Laguta win and establish a useful points lead on second-placed Bartosz Zmarzlik, with just one race to go tomorrow.