Alan an English man, who we had met in Nancy, told us about a very good supermarket along the canal as you exit Nancy. He informed us that you could moor the boat alongside the supermarket and get your groceries. So as we motored along the canal, we noticed two boats tied up along the bank and then realised it was the Supermarket so we stopped.

Boat Moored at InterMarche

We went into InterMarche and stocked up on food, water and wine (all the heavy stuff). Then I noticed that there was a service station attached to the store selling diesel so I gave in and purchased 10 litre and 20 litres jerry cans (all they had). After bringing the provisions back to the boat, I went back to the filling station with the jerry cans in the trolley. It was an unmanned station so using my credit card I filled up the cans.

When you cannot get the delivery truck – you have to do it yourself

Three trips later I had 95 litres in the boat. It was very hot and heavy work so I eventually gave up. I still need another 650 litres to get us to Berlin and back to Nancy, so unless I can find an oil distributor who will deliver to the boat before I leave France, it will be back to the cans and another 20 trips with a shopping trolley!

Incidentally, this is not the first time we took the boat to the supermarket. When we in Epernay we visited a Carrefour supermarket. It was along the river. I went and inspected the mooring and decided it was safe to bring the boat there. So the next day when we were leaving Epernay, we stopped at Carrefour and again filled up the boat with the heavy items.

If we keep this up we will become experts at bringing the boat to the supermarkets!

Nuala loaded up with shopring at Carefour Epernary