Falling in love with Valence

Hello and welcome to the latest blog from The Olivia Rose Diaries on 29^th June 2025.

There are times when I arrive somewhere new, whether a town, village or even just a mooring, and I fall in love with it.

There is an instant connection, a gut feeling that I could be happy here, even if it is only for one night. If you asked me why I felt that way, nine times out of ten I would struggle to explain it, but that is the way with instinct. It just is, and words aren’t necessary.

We arrived in Valence three days ago and I have fallen in love with both this gracious town and the landscape around it.

There is only one thing that detracts from the experience.

We’ve arrived in what the weather authorities are describing as an ‘historic heatwave’, which is not necessarily the terminology I would use. After three weeks of unremitting heat,consistently around the mid thirties, we are shortly expecting to reach 39 degrees or more. Heat like this changes all your routines. If anything needs to be done it’s best finished before 11am, sometimes earlier. They are predicting that it will be 32 in the morning on Monday. As the heat moves to its peak all you can do is hunt for shade (an elusive commodity on a boat), drink literally gallons of water and lie down. No exploring, no cycling. No energy.

We are on the Rhône now and with strong currents it is often not safe for swimming, unless we can find some shallows. As an alternative we resort to filling buckets of water from the tap and throwing them over ourselves, fully clothed, in a desperate bid to keep our core temperature down.

As a result my brain doesn’t work as well as it should so this blog will be short on words, longer on pictures. Thank god, they cry! Enjoy. And, wherever you are, I hope you are not as hot as we are.

If I survive this next heatwave I’ll see you before too long.

MJ