Spring Cruise: Buzet – Toulouse

Spring Cruise: Buzet – Toulouse

We are now back on Riccall at last for the new season. As usual we have changed our plans radically several times but the final version now appears to be fairly well set. We had been going to return across the Midi and back up the Rhone this year, leaving the boat at Avignon during July while we returned to the UK for friend and family weddings.

But, we have decided that while we have our ‘home’ here in the south of France, we should make use of it as a base from which to explore the region by car. So we will return to Riccall in the car after the weddings.

While we were in the UK we took up the present which Alex had given to Louise for her special birthday in October 2010 - two tickets for an early morning hot air balloon flight with Virgin Balloons. Louise has long held an ambition to go up in a balloon so this was a great excitement. Luckily for us, our very first booking went ahead: many of the other people were on their third or fourth booking, the previous ones having been cancelled because of poor weather conditions.

We left home in Newton Aycliffe at 5 am and flew at 7 from Ripley Castle, just north of Harrogate, in good weather, and the wind took us perfectly between Harrogate and Knaresborough, so we knew the local area well as we flew over it. The other 14 passengers had arrived from all round the country, Wigan, Hull, York etc and must have got a bit pissed off as we pointed out all the landmarks to each other as we flew over them!

We had a good landing, despite clipping the top of a dead tree as we came down near Wetherby, and were all treated to a glass of bubbly after we had helped pack away the balloon. Back in Harrogate by 9 am for coffee and croissants!! Well it was a (late) birthday day out, after all!

But now the cruising season has begun and we are about to leave for a trip to Toulouse where we hope to suss out the VNF (Voies Navigables de France - France’s equivalent of our British Waterways) dry dock and hopefully book a place for spring 2012. We hope that Ken and Rhonda of ‘SOMEWHERE’ are going to be still in the dry dock when we get there, which will mean we can have a close look at arrangements for docking though we have a niggling feeling that Riccall may be too deep for this dock, but everyone we ask has a different view!

In the meantime, we have had a short cruise with our friends Mike and Jean who are keen narrowboaters in the UK. They also very kindly brought some boxes of UK goods with them when they drove down here. We enjoyed two days and nights in beautiful weather and good company before they returned home.

We set off from Buzet a couple of days later and saw that AURIGNY was already at our first proposed mooring at Sérignac. We completed our mooring behind them before Nicci, who was reading or computing in the wheelhouse, realised we were there! Half an hour later, New Zealand friends of Peter and Nicci turned up in their shared cruiser PAPRIKA and we all had a jolly tea party on the quay.

A short time later a small French yacht turned up trying to find a mooring space. Alex took pity on them, assuming they had a deep keel and couldn’t just wild moor at the edge of the canal, and said they could moor on Riccall which they gratefully did. (It did transpire later however, that their depth was in fact only about one metre!) Just after our supper the French crew appeared with half a bottle of sweet white wine by way of thanks. They said they had drunk the other half at lunchtime and it had been very good. As the wine really needed a pudding to go with it, this inspired Louise to knock up her famous Eton Mess pudding and we took pudding and wine along to Aurigny to share with the others before the convivial evening’s drinking and chat.

A night’s mooring in both Agen and Moissac and then we stopped in Castelsarrasin and had coffee with Claude and Rose-Marie of GERMINAL whom we had last seen on the Petit Rhone in August. Then when we stopped for the night we saw ANNA up ahead and Mark and Annie came for drinks in the evening sun! It sometimes seems as if we have as many friends down here in the south of France as we have in England! And very nice it is too!

We eventually arrived on the outskirts of Toulouse and moored in the ‘Embouchure’ port. This wide port area some 4 kms out of the centre of the city, used to be a gathering area for barges waiting to go down onto, or just arrived from, the Garonne river, in the days when the river was the only way to travel between Toulouse and Bordeaux, i.e. before the Canal Lateral a la Garonne was constructed. Now it houses only a trip boat and a boat we had noticed last September when we passed through - a peniche called Sanctanox. Then, having clearly been a restaurant boat, it was undergoing lots of work, which as it turned out was to convert it into an advertising company’s offices.

One of the employees, Camilla, was clearly interested in us and came along to chat during one of her many ‘cigarette breaks’! We were painting our handrails at the time but she asked us if we would like to look around the peniche/office. We accepted readily but we said we would need to finish the painting first if that was OK. As it turned out, they all four left for an extended lunch break shortly after that and a little later, we took in a delivery of stationery for them while they were away. When they returned (at 3 o’clock!) we handed over the delivery and then went for a coffee and a look round the ‘office’, which was very typically modern: all black and silver and minimalistic – very impressive. Of course, we invited them back for a look round Riccall and they were pretty amazed at the accommodation we have and very complimentary, saying it is just like an English house.

The Embouchure port has, in fact three bridges out of it leading to three separate canals. The first is to/from the Canal du Midi which starts its 240 kilometres and 65 locks here in Toulouse. The second bridge is onto the Canal de Brienne which forms a short 1 km connection between the Garonne River and the Embouchure port. The third entrance/exit from the port is the Canal Lateral de la Garonne. Between the Midi and the Brienne is a world-famous bas relief in marble which depicts the Atlantic and Mediterranean seas. The two bridges which take the road over these two canals are known as the Ponts Jumeaux – the twin bridges. One early evening as we were sitting in the wheelhouse, a young couple arrived: she dressed in a long black coat and carrying a case of some kind. In the event they turned out to be a photographer and his ‘model’ come to the bas-relief to take some sort of publicity photos. She produced a violin and he a camera and they proceeded to spend the next hour or so taking pictures of her - with violin at rest, playing said violin, resting against the sculpture, with short skirt, with long skirt etc etc. Whether she actually WAS the violinist who knows? but Alex was certainly interested in the changes of costume!!

The next day and despite ferocious winds, we cycled to visit Ken and Rhonda in dry dock and spoke to Serge the boat engineer, who confirmed that we are indeed too deep-drafted for the VNF dry dock but he was able to offer an alternative where he could still do any work we needed, and booked us into the Ramonville dry dock for April 2012, also in Toulouse but a little further south. Serge comes with great recommendations from many people who have employed him to do work on their barges so we feel in safe hands – and he speaks good English: so important when trying to discuss technical matters.

The very next day Mike and Sally of ‘AILSA’ came for a coffee at 11 o’clock, having noticed us moored in the Embouchure as they travelled past in the navette from the airport. By the time we had finished we had had lunch and it was 5.30 in the evening! They invited us for dinner the following day and mentioned that there was a good bus service between our mooring and theirs in the central port St Saveur. So, as it was still very, very windy we caught the No 16 instead of cycling as we normally do, which got us to them in good time. But when we came to leave at 10.30 the last bus had already left at 9pm! The walk back took an hour and a half but, Hey! What the hell - it was a lovely warm and now windless evening.

Earlier in the day we had also been to see Ken and Rhonda again (to pick up the camera we had inadvertently left behind on our first visit) and we also took a trip on the trip boat from the Garonne River down through the lock onto the Brienne Canal to the Embouchure port and back again. This was the only way for us to do this short canal section as it is closed to private boats. The Garonne is said to be far too dangerous for ‘plaisanciers’. Wot! Worse than the Trent? I think not: we have travelled that many times.

Anyway, the staff of Sanctanox saw us get back from our day and as we had already told them of our intention to leave the next day, they popped across to say goodbye and give us a bottle of wine, as they were closing for the long Easter weekend. How nice!