While Besançon is one of our favourite cities, we were only staying one night this time, because of the urgency to get back to Auxonne. While having breakfast I checked emails, and saw one from Kim Croxford, who had attended our Master TreeGrowers Course back in March-May of this year. It seems she is trying to organise a Community Forum related to the transition away from native forest logging, with the aim of promoting the role of farm forestry in the transition. Since we were also promoting that option, she asked if we would be willing to participate in the Forum. I expressed our interest, but noted that her proposed date for the Forum would be before we returned from France, and so asked about her timing flexibility for the Forum. We'll see.

We prepared for departure around 1030h, and were actually in the middle of doing a u-turn to leave our mooring and head for the tunnel when one of the tourist boats appeared around the bend. Since they have priority in using the tunnel, we waiting for them to pass us before we completed our u-turn before slowly heading for the entrance to the tunnel. We then hovered midstream for about 30 minutes while the tourist boat cleared the lock at the other end of  the tunnel, and then another boat came up the lock and through the tunnel. Given the windy conditions, it was difficult keeping the boat in position as we hovered.

But finally we got a green light, and were on our way through the tunnel. When we got to other end, we were met by a squadron of soldiers who were on an exercise in the city (you often see them moving around the city), and who had stopped near the end of the tunnel for a break and drinks/snacks. They were conversing among themselves, and not understanding much of what they were saying, I thought they might be discussing military issues related to their exercise. However, afterwards, Rita told me they were discussing food, and their favourite restaurants and recipes!

On exiting the tunnel, we turned left and proceeded through the lock that brought us undone on our upsteam journey. This time we had no issues, perhaps due to the fact that our bowthrusters were now working with the help of the C7 charger keeping them topped up. We cruised downstream and reached Rancenay, where many older/larger boats were moored on a semi-permanent basis. These boats included Nomadisch, which is where the young student, that we met after our grounding incident, lived while she was doing her Masters Degree in Besançon. The boat looked like an ideal place to study, as Rita has discovered while doing lots of work on her project/thesis while onboard this year.

We continued on until we reached our wild mooring site at the barrage at La Maroc, where we stopped for lunch. However, because of our tight timetable and the very windy conditions, we decided to move on after lunch. We were planning to get to the waiting pontoon at Roset, where we had moored several times previously, but as we approached Ecluse 58 at Routelle (and just after we had twisted the twister to enter the lock), we noticed some bollards in the grass on the left bank just before the ecluse. So given the time of day and the pleasant rural surroundings, we decided to moor here for the night rather than press on to Roset.

This mooring was quite idyllic, with slow-paced rural activities in the fields, neighbours walking up the towpath to say hello to the old lady who lived in the eclusier's house, friendly fisherman going down to the nearby Doubs for a evening of fishing, capped by a golden sunset down the end of the canal.

But the highlight of the evening was yet to come. As we were watching the sunset to the west, we heard an increasing sound of birds gathering behind us. And when we turned around, this is what we saw. Holy murmuration!