The upside of bad weather is that Liz and I don't feel guilty about not working on the boat. Sanding, scraping, priming and painting is on hold today as the weather once again turns as nasty as gangs of opposing football fans meeting head-on in Lille. (Don't you love it when the media provides new analogies almost daily?)

And so, with an unusual lightness in our hearts we headed to the supermarche, the bricolage, and the laverie, leaving Liberty languishing in the boatyard. (By way of explanation - although I'm sure you can tell what a supermarche is, despite the missing acute accent that OffExploring doesn't provide) - a bricolage is a DIY store, and as you probably guessed, a laverie is a laundromat)

As any seasoned boater will tell you, next to perhaps a bank with an ATM, or a McDonald's with free Wi-Fi, the lavarie is the most important building in any port or town you stop at. (Unless of course you're posh enough to have a washing machine on board, but that's certainly not us) Because eventually you run out of clean clothes, and your laundry bag overflows. Some boaters we met had a collapsible boat laundry bag which was labelled on the outside from the bottom up: One Week, Two Weeks, Naked. How we laughed. Or not.

We were however getting to the Naked stage, so the return of bad weather after a day of sunshine was timely. Liz is the expert when it comes to interpreting the instructions on French washing machines and driers, along with the machine that often swallows your Euros without giving anything in return. Perhaps this is how the laverie owner makes their real money, the equivalent to what whisky makers call the Angels' Share. It just disappears, giving a whole new meaning to the term money laundering.

But today the coin machine was in a generous mood and our washing tumbled around as it should. But here's a tip if you're going to use a French launderette: instead of wrestling with the soap powder dispenser (also programmed to make your Euros disappear) or trying to work out which compartment to put the powder in, simply buy a box of those squidgy washing capsules from the supermarket and throw one or two in with your washing. Easy. Remember where you heard it.

In France it's quite common for anyone already in the lavarie to greet you with a 'Bonjour Monsieur-Dame' as you walk in, and polite for you to return the greeting, but the woman who was in there today when we arrived was in no mood for pleasantries.

For one thing she had three young children - all under four years of age we guessed - and she was also on the phone. Well, when I say she was 'on the phone', what I mean is she had a mobile tucked into a pocket and earbuds with microphone dangling from her ears, allowing her to carry on a loud and earnest conversation with the other party while all the time filling a washing machine.

And when I say filling a washing machine, I mean jamming it, packing it, shoving the washing in as though it was the last passenger on a Tokyo subway train at rush hour. So tightly packed were the clothes they had no show of tumbling, and instead were forced to stay in a cylindrical lump, the soap powder unable to dissolve and penetrate all the important little places.

This could explain why two out of the four smaller machines were labelled 'panne', meaning out of order; if she was a regular, the washing machines would be put to the ultimate test on a weekly basis and obviously were not up to the job.

Through all this she loudly carried on her telephone conversation while the three kids, bored out of their trees, tried to entertain themselves, only to be told off every few minutes by Washer Woman, who didn't break stride in her phone call when shouting 'Non!' and other more indiscernible words of warning. The person on the other end of the phone must have thought they were getting a right telling off.

With our own washing now dry we scuttled out without so much as an au revoir, since she was still in deep conversation, the kids were reaching critical mass, and we could see she had a further two bulging laundry bags yet to go. In short, the ingredients for a perfect storm.

We got back to Liberty, and I began measuring up to see if we might fit a washing machine in somewhere.