Toulouse to Moissac

We left Toulouse heading north for Montech and the Montech canal to Montauban. We spent a night at the marvellously named ‘Grisolles’ high quay, where we have stayed a couple of times before, then turned into the Montech Canal. Shortly before the first lock we moored on a good wooden, if rather shallow quay at Lacourt St Pierre, in front of a boat called ‘Careless Love’. We did think it a strange name for a boat. Did it mean making love without taking precautions? or perhaps loving somebody or something without caring for them? We didn’t like to ask the boaters themselves when they came over for drinks with us!! We had morning coffee with them the next day while we waited to see if the locks were going to operate that day, as there were no lock lights visible. As it turned out, there was an electricity outage so the locks were not operational until after lunch, but never mind, we set off down the flight at 2 o’clock passing the Rick Stein barge Rosa on her way up, and arrived in Montauban shortly after 4pm. We knew Aurigny was already there and had arranged for them to come to us for supper, so we moored up on the grassy bank just behind them.

Nicki and Peter and their daughter Laura came for a jolly supper during which, at one point, it rained so hard that we could barely hear each other speak above the noise of rain on the wheelhouse roof. France is not always sunny!

Aurigny left the next day and we moved forward onto the (only) quay mooring which they had vacated. Brian and Gill, with their daughter Sophie and her boyfriend Sandy were due to come for a day’s cruise in two days, so we did a whistle-stop tour of Montauban old town, noting as we crossed the bridge over the Tarn the level which the infamous 1930 inundation had reached. It had completely devastated the part of the town on the west bank which had had to be totally re-built, along with flood levees to prevent another such devastation. The River Tarn is now accessible here via a double lock down from the mooring basin and you can cruise for 7 kilometres up the river. But the round ring down through the 4 locks to Moissac is far from possible. The locks were abandoned years ago and need massive expenditure to bring them back into use, although this is said to be on the cards. It would make a magnificent cruising ring if it were to happen.

When we got back to the boat, we prepared for a quiet lunch and afternoon sitting on the back deck, only to see two enormous flat back trailers arrive loaded up with all the makings of what were clearly floating pontoons. (We had been told that this was going to happen ‘some day’ but clearly today was the day!) In fact they were about to install these precisely where we had moored the previous night. Had AURIGNY not left when she did, we would have had to breast up alongside her in order to give the workmen space to work.

So although we didn’t have the quiet afternoon we had planned, we did have a grandstand view of the whole operation of off-loading the trailers with a telescopic Manitou, then the lowering of the pontoons themselves into the basin and then the putting together of the whole set-up over the next day or two. Also while we were there a total of 15 Sapeurs Pompiers (firemen) arrived to conduct an exercise in the mooring basin – extracting an accident or illness ‘victim’ from a boat, complete with stretcher!

Gill and Brian et al arrived on Thursday morning and we set off up the flight of locks, stopping halfway for lunch. There was a space for us again at Lacourt St Pierre which was great as this was where Brian had parked their second car, and where we could get a good TV signal for Louise (and Alex) to watch the royal wedding the next day! After the wedding, we rode to Montech to warn the lock-keeper that we would be going down the Montech flight on the Garonne Canal towards Moissac the next day.

While in Montech we saw SOMEWHERE arrive, so we helped them moor up. Ken and Rhonda insisted we go aboard to celebrate the royal wedding and catch up on any other gossip, and sometime later we wobbled away on our bikes back to Riccall.

The next day we left our mooring just as SOMEWHERE arrived to take our place, and later moored up at a lovely little spot - also surprisingly vacant - at St Porquier. ANNA had been moored there when we travelled this way last month. While sitting on the back deck quietly reading in the afternoon sun, we suddenly became aware of a man cycling slowly past making a ‘Krrrroook, Krrrroook’ sound in a faintly pigeon-like voice! Alex did his pigeon imitation in reply to which he got a smile, but the guy carried on krrrooooking. Then out of the trees flew a pigeon which landed right on this man’s head! As he cycled on the pigeon flew off, then, when he called, it flew back to his head again, balancing as he cycled along. Bizarre!!

So, eventually, we arrived in Moissac and went straight down the two locks onto the River Tarn mooring which we love. We had promised ourselves a few days on this lovely mooring but as it turned out we were there for two weeks! SOMEWHERE joined us after a few days and we had lots of chats, drinks and the usual coffees etc both with them and with Dean and Karine, a Canadian and an American respectively who were working on a Dutch boat called THETIS. THETIS, it transpired, is owned and used by an American who employs Dean and Karine to prepare the boat each season before he and his guests arrive, then to winterise the boat at the end of the season. This year they are also going to take the boat back up north for the owner, then spend the winter at their own boat, moored in Leiden, living in their campervan while they continue to work on her.

Eric and Polly of AMAROK also joined us down on the Tarn, but sadly they were in the process of selling their boat to an American syndicate, so were rather busy negotiating with the potential buyers and then later removing all their goods and chattels. The good side is that the sale of their boat was relatively quick and straightforward: the downside is that they have loved boating and we have lost a couple of good friends from the canal network.

However while in Moissac there was the usual excellent twice-weekly market, a brocante on the quayside (car-boot or second-hand sale), a huge boules competition right beside the boat, which ran from 8am to 11.45pm for two days and a car rally which was a two-day affair using the area beside the quay for its set off and finish.

The mooring on the Tarn is just lovely, as the pictures show. Each year, all the boats have to vacate the mooring at the end of October and are not allowed back on the river until some time in April when the threat of flooding is over. When the floodwaters subside of course, the concrete quayside is left covered in mud. The local council are supposed to come down to re-fit the electric points and bring a water truck and power washing equipment to clean off all the mud, preferably before the boats come down again. This year, however, they did the re-fit of the electricity points but were delayed by some weeks with the washing. The boats had been down on the moorings for some time with the owners paddling along through the mud and then later the dust. Several boaters had taken matters into their own hands and washed the quay down or in one case, hoovered it to minimise the wind-blown dust! Having suffered a couple of days of being sand-blasted, and the whole boat covered in dust inside and out, we too did the decent thing and washed down our stretch of quay. By the time the washing truck came along – a week after we had left – pretty much the whole quay was already clean!!