Moissac to Castets-en-Dorthe and back to Buzet

Eventually, with much regret, we left Moissac and headed off further west again – our second time travelling west on this stretch of canal. We moored in Valance d’Agen on the quay which was vacant yet again. This time we had decided to explore the charming hilltop village of Auvillar which last time when we had been in the area had seemed a hill too far! So we offloaded the trusty bikes and set off. The hill up to the town was a bit of a push (far too steep to pedal – in fact much of it had slipped down the hillside some time during the winter and we had to creep past huge great machines working to stabilise the cliff!) but well worth the effort.

Ken and Rhonda had told us of a good restaurant 6kms further into the countryside and we thought that would be a good place for lunch. An hour later after riding up hill and down dale, we arrived sweaty and tired at the lovely little village of Bardigues. But it was worth it, as the restaurant lived up to every expectation and we even found a less hilly, if longer, road back to Auvillar.

Moving on towards Agen we passed POMME DE MER, who had stopped for lunch at a rather nice-looking canalside restaurant and Nick had a few words with us (between courses) and later that day arrived in Agen where much to Louise’s amazement, we were able to moor in the basin, on the opposite side from all the bustle of the traffic and the hire base. We expected POMME DE MER would join us later, but in the event they moored just before the bridge into the basin, on good bollards which we too had noticed on our way through.

That evening we were approached by a French lady who chatted with us for some time and told us that she was interested in our lifestyle. We invited her back for a longer chat and a drink the following evening.

In the meantime Alex took a trip to Aldi – far away over the aqueduct – chatting to Nick and Sally on the way back who were waiting for the locks. Then, in the afternoon, we both decided to take a trip to Lidl for other supplies (notably gin) and set off in the direction which we had looked up on Lidl’s internet site map.

We were welcomed with open arms by the manager in Lidl who was French, but had spent ten years working in Lidl in Glasgow, and was keen to show us how good his ‘English’ still was. So strange to hear English with a French/Scottish accent! Anyway, we had a good laugh with him, and then set off back to Riccall, hoping to find McDonalds for a wifi connection on the way. However, Louise got a puncture which would NOT stay reflated for more than a few minutes or yards. Alex hightailed it back to the boat for the puncture repair outfit which turned out to be in Louise’s saddle bag on her bike all along! Hey-Ho!

Eventually, after a quick repair, we got back to Riccall and had supper. ‘Elisabeth’ then appeared with her little French poodle ‘Mimi’ and her camera to ‘interview’ us, as it turned out, on our way of life. It appeared that she was running a sort of ‘get a life’ (Alex’s term) internet site where she was counselling people on how they could improve their lot.

She spent an hour or so with us chatting, and snapping and eventually sent us a link to her website where words like ‘relationship’, ‘romantic’ and ‘lifestyle’ were highlighted in the text of her description of us and our life on Riccall! We felt a bit non-plussed reading it!

The following day we pressed on and arrived back at Serignac, where we chatted with BODY AND SOUL’s owners Lucie and Malcolm who were already moored up. Nicky and Peter of AURIGNY had told us about Lucie and Malcolm, with whom they had spent much of the winter in their moorings at Meilhan and so we were pleased to meet them face to face at last. And of course they were great fun and we immediately clicked, as you do with some people you meet on the canals. Lucie is the most amazing cook and Malcolm plays a very competent piano (he has a keyboard installed on board their wide beam and plays regularly for private parties or for dinner and music cruises they hold from time to time).

After a couple of days, we regretfully moved on to Buzet where we were to spend a few days replenishing our stocks before the arrival of Richard and Robert.

However, on the day after we arrived ‘home’ Sara asked us to join everyone later for drinks at the restaurant. We later noticed a great deal of activity around the restaurant kitchen, involving Americans Walt and Gail and their visitors on LES VIEUX PAPILLONS. When we went to see what was going on we discovered that the evening ‘drinks’ to which Sara had invited us was actually going to be a full-blown Cajun feast which they were preparing as a surprise engagement/
early wedding party for Sara and Kevin, but that of course we were very welcome too. So we had a great evening together with all the other boaters plus several of Sara and Kevin’s friends from the locale and we got to try all sorts of unknown-to-us Cajun style dishes and somehow managed to come 2nd in the Louisiana-based quiz that Walt had devised. (I guess we knew as few of the answers as almost anyone else!)

Our journey to Meilhan was enlivened by two episodes of going hard aground while trying to moor up and it took 10-15 minutes in each case to extract ourselves. We also came across an established mooring where we had hoped to moor where the existing boats were so badly moored that the gap for us to get in was about 4m too small. This happens quite a lot on the canals and there is regularly much comment in our Dutch Barge Association magazine on ‘economy of mooring’. Either boat could have moved to let us in but neither captain was willing to trouble himself to do so. We hung about in Riccall for a good 5 minutes discussing the problem but to no avail and moved on towards Meilhan. We moored outside a canalside restaurant where we cycled into Marmande to book our rail tickets and finished off the evening with a nice meal.

Robert and Richard duly arrived at Meilhan in their hire car from Bordeaux airport and we set off for Castets-en-Dorthe. Rob steered for a while and then Richard but as we approached one of the bridges Alex took over to guide Riccall through, then as we got closer and closer doubts suddenly appeared in his mind. This one is lower than the rest! Full reverse and we pulled up with 6” to spare before the wheelhouse roof would have hit the bridge. Not another ROFF? Ah well – by the time we got to Castets an hour or so later, every single bridge on the Canal des Deux Mers (Midi and Garonne) had been noted as a ROFF (roof off) or a RON (roof on) so no more surprises we hope on the way back next year.

Castets-en-Dorthe is a rather grand name for a tired little village whose only claim to fame seems to be its position at the junction of the Canal Lateral a la Garonne and the river Garonne itself which at this point some 50kms inland is still tidal. The Garonne just now is very low after months of near drought as in the UK and all the farmers extracting water along its banks, but in the winter the level can come up dangerously high. In fact in the most famous flood of 1875 the waters came up as high as 11.75m - to the second floor of the lock house, and as recently as 1930 and 1950 over 10m was recorded! We had taken heed of the advice of several boaters to give the rather dull 5 hours down to Bordeaux on the river a miss (even though we are quite used to tidal work on the Trent and Ouse in the UK) and will visit Bordeaux by train or car later.

The hotel boat St Louis had preceded us to Castets and was already moored up on the first bit of available quay when we arrived so we had to go forward onto the next section. We knew that the pontoons were being replaced/extended as the port has been acquired by Veolia, a huge water and waterways enterprise in France, and we had seen a work boat operating as we arrived constructing further stretches of wooden quay. Another boater told us that though the work boat moored up on this bit of quay at the end of the day he thought we had left plenty of room for it to moor. The operator didn’t agree however, and made us move 20 metres right out of ‘his’ space. In fact he had us move so far and then only needed 3 extra metres. (The French, the French!!). The plus side though was that because the quays were still being worked on, mooring was ‘gratuit’ - one of the few words of French we have been glad to learn! (Normally €25 for one night, which is a bit steep by anyone’s standards).

We got back to Meilhan with Rob and Richard for their 6am start the next morning back to the airport. Sadly, the weather for the whole of their visit was very iffy, though it didn’t actually rain until the last day, and then, did it rain?!! We had managed to have a good barbeque in the sun the night we were in Castets though, so all was not lost.

The ST LOUIS moored the next day and Alex was able to commend Alistair on an excellent back-in moor-up – pretty difficult with a 30m boat, no bow thruster, and 6 guests all eating supper on deck! Alex had a chat with one of the crew members Lucinda, who runs wine tastings from her home base in Cahors and is one level below that of a ‘Grand Master of Wine’.

Unfortunately, we blotted our copybook that night when a group of us, including the two crew from the ST LOUIS congregated on BODY AND SOUL for after dinner drinks, and we had a hilarious evening until midnight when we all retired. On their return poor Lucinda and Cheryl got into terrible trouble for making too much noise! We felt a bit bad about that because we had all had a hand in it!!

On our way back to Buzet from Meilhan we stopped on the mooring at Mas d’Agenais and were helped to moor up by one of the boat captains already moored there. We thanked him and off he went, only to return shortly with an invitation to drinks a little later. We accepted gratefully and at the appointed hour wandered along. As we reached his boat we realised that this was one of the boats which hadn’t moved to make space for us several days previously. Oh dear! As we climbed on board the husband said to his wife, “Oh these are the people who were complaining about how we had moored without leaving enough space for them to get in”! Ah! So they had been within earshot, and had known that we wanted to moor and had done nothing about it! Some people are like that at the moorings. We just have to get used to it, take a deep breath and smile!

In fact, Bob of LA CHOUETTE was telling us that when he had tried recently to moor at Serignac and politely asked a cruiser if he could move along the quay a bit to allow him to get in the owner had been extremely rude, ‘f’ing and blinding about the size of LA CHOUETTE (30m). What he obviously failed to grasp is that the bigger the boat, the more we pay for our licence, therefore the more we contribute to VNF to keep the canals alive. But, fortunately, boaters as nasty as this are relatively rare.

We had an excellent meal for lunch on our final day back to Buzet at a new restaurant at Lock 42 – La Chope et Le Pichet (the tankard and the jug) – which we have passed a couple of times so far during its renovation. It had only just opened and mine hosts (Belgian) were very hospitable and the meal was excellent.

Back in Buzet after a few days it was Friday night, and Friday night is fish, chips and quiz night ‘a l’Anglais’ at the little restaurant in the port, run by the port capitaines Kevin and Sara. Twenty people in all and ten of us in our party – Ken and Rhonda from SOMEWHERE, Sam and Claire from NOORDSTER, Bob and Bobbie from LA CHOUETTE, Terry and Sandra from FELIX and ourselves. Well done to Kevin and Sara for a very nice meal, but we only managed third in the quiz this time!