Etang de Thau to Lyon

 

Our troubles are not over yet! Nothing like!  

We had a good trip over the Etang du Thau arriving in Frontignan some two and a half hours after we set out.

A distant view of pretty villages on the Etang

We had, with some difficulty, managed to get our navigation aid ‘PC Navigo’ up and running the previous evening, but after two years of non-use, we had almost forgotten how to use it.  However, it gave us the correct course to follow across the Etang which takes away some of the concern over whether you can spot the next set of channel marker posts!  Binoculars essential.

While we were in Frontignan we took advantage of our friends' Richard and Julia's car for doing heavy shopping - several trips - and treated ourselves to an afternoon out in Sete - a five minute train ride away, where we had drinks sitting alongside the maritime canal near the commercial docks - in deck chairs!!

Day out over, at this point we were very much in need of fuel but, as it was the weekend with plenty of socialising on the cards, we decided to wait until Monday to start ringing round to get a camion to deliver the 500 litres we needed.

Come Monday, and we went straight to the Mairie to ask for their help in making the necessary phone calls, but the unwilling receptionist, when she eventually made an appearance at her desk some 15 minutes after we had arrived, made a couple of phone calls and informed us (we think) that they couldn’t deliver in the port for ecological reasons (in case of a spill, presumably). We took from this that it would be possible on the canal, out of the port, but she couldn’t help us further.

Right, we thought, Palavas-les-Flots would do and luckily for us, there was room on the mooring opposite the VNF depot. We chatted to the VNF staff but they were unable to help at all apart from suggesting the local Carrefour, which they said had a pump for boats on the Lez river, a short distance away. OK, yes, but only for petrol for all the little boats, of which there are thousands in this area.

A hirer on the same mooring as us, Mark (and Nina) when hearing of our plight, offered to make some calls for us with his fluent French. The fourth one of these seemed to bear fruit, in that they sent a form by email for us to fill in and return. Then we could have a delivery.  We filled in this form (most complicated and asking the most tricky questions) and returned it. We heard nothing for 2 days so after two further emails to them Mark gave them another call. ‘Oh, no, we can’t deliver to a boat in this area for ecological reasons’!!  So, basically, it seems that you can’t get a delivery at all between Agde and the Petit Rhone and we wonder how many plaisance bargees are aware of this.

However, the pontoon on the Lez at the back of Carrefour was close to the car fuel pumps so the decision was made to take the boat there, moor on the pontoon and use our 3 x 20 litre drums to hand-haul 60 litres at a time into the tank on RICCALL.

In the meantime, Alex took a short walk past the old mooring which we used 12 years ago but now festooned with little day boats, and on the way, he spotted 3 guys with vans saying ‘Climatisation’, the upshot being that one of the young guys agreed to fix our air con. This would make it the second repair in a month: the first one worked for a week and then failed. Let’s hope he gets it right!

Cori did indeed come to refill our air con and reckoned that one of the joints had a small leak, so tightened it up and refilled with gas. But when it came to payment he demanded €200!!! Well! We hadn’t asked how much he was going to charge, assuming that it would be about the same as the last guy (€80) so we just had to pay. He saw us coming of course – desperate and a captive audience. (He had seemed such a nice guy, it was a surprise to find he was a robber.)

We then took RICCALL up the Lez watching the depth closely and managed to moor up on the rather rickety pontoon at the pumps.

                               Alex ready for the off                            First three filled - only 21 to go

The next two hours were spent filling the three 20 litre drums, heaving them onto the boat and emptying them into the tank. All went surprisingly well and we spent the night on the pontoon absolutely exhausted – but with an extra 480 litres in the tank.

Our subsequent crossing of the Camargue meant some lovely moorings and sights to behold:

A couple of days later we were on the Petit Rhone, then the Rhone proper.  Now of course, we were against the current and in open water, so using more revs per minute than on the canals. Alex was sure the engine sounds noisier than it used to with a strange rattle which comes and goes.  Something else to worry about?  Or is he becoming paranoid?

At the first Rhone lock Alex opted to go for the mooring above the lock for the night as the lock was ready for us and another 4 boats were all milling around ready to use the lock. Oh dear! Louise was not happy – the lower pontoon was empty, but who knew if the upstream pontoon would also be empty. No – there were two boats already moored there. But hey! One of them is leaving to use the lock, so a polite request for the other boat to make a bit of room might be considered reasonable. This was met with a rather surly effort to move one metre so we tagged on the end of the pontoon, then discovered they were leaving in one hour (!) after which we had it all to ourselves.

But overnight no fewer than five hotel barges plied their way up and down between midnight and 5 o’clock in the morning: one of them sat for half an hour with his prop engaged waiting for the lock to be ready, causing us huge disturbance. But of course, in this context, might is right!!

We have to admit though that despite the occasional annoyance of these behemoths, they are amazing to watch.

The next day we put into Port 2, l’Ardroise, one of our favourite stops on the Rhone, to wait out the wind for a couple of days and give ourselves a break. Ariane, the harbour-mistress, was her usual cheerful self and came round for aperos with us and a QLR of RICCALL the next evening.

                                                                Louise and Ariane at Port 2

And outside Ariane's mobile home - a submerged 30m barge!!

                      RICCALL seen from the cliffside above                                                        Port 2, l'Ardoise

Moving on, we had a long day and finally moored on the lock mooring above Chateauneuf Ecluse. Moorings for our size of boat are almost non-existent on the Rhone, making it a pretty tricky voyage, so using the lock moorings is our only option and to be fair, no-one has ever queried or objected to this.  Chateauneuf Ecluse - one of the most beautiful moorings with a 360 degree vista of mountains never fails to lift the spirits with the Alps to the east and the Cevennes, the foothills of the Massif Central to the west.

Alex went for a stroll round to the lock and back and on the way spotted a very large tortoise! He said hello to it but it didn’t seem very friendly and drew its head under its shell. What on earth is a rather interestingly coloured tortoise doing wandering around a place like this? When Alex returned the next morning to take a photo of the tortoise, it was, of course, nowhere to be seen.

That night, as Alex was brushing his teeth, a small cruiser appeared at his very porthole asking if they could come alongside! Yes, of course!  So Alex quickly finished his teeth-brushing and went up and helped them moor at the front end of RICCALL. They had just missed the last locking down which would have got them to Port Viviers so were very grateful to be able to come alongside. Only a couple of hotel barges in the night to disturb us and our neighbours were up and off by 7.30 am.

The next night we had salmon steaks for supper but unfortunately, Louise’s portion seemed to come with added --ella!  As a result she was ‘ill’ in the night and suffered cramps for several days afterwards. Alex suffered no ill effects, so his bit must have been OK.

On another occasion, we had moored up downstream of the lock (having informed CNR of our intention) and settled down for the night. Then a German boat – ARTUR – appeared and we helped them moor up on us. The lock lights went green for entry and they set off. "Aren’t you coming too?" he asked. "No" we said, "We are spending the night here."  "But it is a mooring for waiting for lock operation only."  "Yes, well, we are waiting for lock operation - tomorrow morning."  "Oh, the typical English sense of humour" he laughed!  We had enjoyable encounters with them on a couple of further occasions.

When we finally reached Lyon’s Parc Nautic du Confluent – seven days after setting off from Saint Gilles) – we were met with a frantic and chaotic scene – it was boat carnival weekend!!

                                                       The scene which greeted us at Lyon!

We’d decided to spend a couple of nights there for more recovery time. It’s expensive, but then so are all the very few moorings in this area and it is a great spot. The port is fine and once the carnival had ended by 6pm, all was quiet and peaceful. The carnival included sail boats, canoes, swimmers, two sapeurs pompiers safety boats, and two dragon boats complete with drums and teams of amateur rowers.

Any boat over 11 metres moors on the southern quay of the port, with the little boats on finger moorings tucked in close to the Capitainerie. Both ARTUR and OMEGA were moored up on the finger moorings when we arrived. We’d passed through several locks with one or other of them. The Swedish gentleman from OMEGA came round to chat on the second day and told us they had bought their boat, a cruiser, in Slovenia, made their way to the Med, cruised round Venice and the toe of Italy into the Petit Rhone and up to Lyon. Their onward journey was via the Doubs and the Rhine to Stockholm where they live. What a journey! Makes our little trip from Buzet to Belgium seem quite tame!

A few additional pictures to give a sense of where we have been and are.

                                   Bollene Ecluse - the deepest on the Rhone at 22 metres

Central nucleaire de Cruas - with lovely picture of child on the side

                                                              Lovely Rhone-side town.  

                                            Could be Voulte or Pouzin!  Answers on a postcard!

Buzet to Toulouse, back to Moissac and to Toulouse and on, and on and on!!

 

Well here we are again, trying not to bore you all with more rubbish about the trials and tribulations on RICCALL!

We promised ourselves that we would give up the blog altogether this year but somebody said they liked it. So, just for you Julia, here is the next instalment.

We have had nothing to say for the last two years, what with Covid and Brexit and what not, but last autumn (2021 we were informed by our winter mooring capitaine at Buzet that a tree had fallen onto the back of the boat!

The photos looked pretty horrific but when we arrived, in haste, a few days later, the Communauté de Communes (local council) had cleared the tree from the back of the barge and the damage sustained was one bent back rail and one smashed PV panel (and less importantly, two tarpaulins which had been covering the wheelhouse roof).

The council workers jacked the rail back into an approximate position and offered to pay for a new PV panel and tarps. Great! But we have yet to see the payment. Fingers crossed.

                                                      Three men on a boat!!!

 On the plus side, we spotted little

 Kevin Kingfisher on our deck!

In  early spring we went through the whole palaver of getting a six-month French visa for this year as, for various reasons, we had decided against getting a Carte Sejour when we could have done so before Brexit struck. (Louise says “Mea Culpa”.)

The effort and cost of the visa makes it questionable as to whether it’s all worth it! But this year as our plan is to travel north again up the Rhone we just can’t rely on being able to achieve that in 90 days.

So we set off from Buzet mid April, for a leisurely trip to Ramonville, Toulouse, for a couple of weeks in dry dock, which we had had booked for ages, this to renew our ESTRIN and replace the keel cooling pipes which we think now have a minor leak (not something to contemplate getting worse on the Rhone).

We were on the Garonne Lateral Canal for two years 12 years ago, and marked up all the bridges in our canal guide as to whether they were passable with roof ON or not - ROFF. We confirmed our notes again when passing through in 2019.

This spring though as we travelled towards Toulouse, we noticed that the water level was up a bit. Even so, as we approached Dieupentale bridge, which our book told us was tight, we thought if the height marker at the bow of RICCALL went though OK, the wheelhouse would, as normal.

The height marker did indeed go through OK but three-quarters of the way through there was a horrendous graunching as the roof struck the underside of the bridge and with 70 tons of inertia behind it RICCALL graunched along for a metre or so. The boat eventually came to a sickening halt.

We were stuck absolutely fast. As we tried to manoeuvre the barge left or right, forward or backward, we could hear the PV panels disintegrating!

We rang VNF and explained the situation as best we could. They said they would send help and be with us in 45 minutes.

The bief was 17 kms long and the usual practice of lowering the water level in the pound, would take forever, even if VNF had been prepared to do it, so we got on with it ourselves.

Alex sprang into action and retrieved our tirfor, which we have kept in deep, deep store since we went aground on the Marne. Having been rescued by a team using a tirfor on that occasion, our first action on getting home that year, was to buy a tirfor on ebay (£50) and have it on the boat.

It’s a heavy old thing and by the time Alex had set it up, worked out again how it worked, tied ropes to bollards on the barge and some fence posts on the shore and given it a couple of pulls on the lever he was knackered!

But lo and behold, at that moment a young man on a bicycle turned up and offered his help. “Oh thanks, Are you sure? That would be great”.

It turned out he was a volunteer rowing instructor and thus very suited to generating a backwards and forwards leverage motion using the tirfor. Being young and strong and taking turns with Alex, after two hours overall, we eventually scraped our way back out of the bridge hole.

We have to give heartfelt thanks to Nicolas without whom we might still be under the bridge. (Of course, VNF never did make an appearance!)

When we reached Grisolles, our overnight stop, we easily discovered Nicolas in his rowing club adjacent to the canal and invited him for aperos. He was very good company, spoke English extremely well, but was preparing his team for an away competition, so could only spend a short time with us.

We finally got to Toulouse but on the journey up through the locks (ROFF for this section, no question) the alternator decided to stop working! So now we are waiting to go into dry dock together with our friends Julia and Richard on ETTIE, during which time Alex hopes to replace two of the PV panels which, although damaged, are still giving some output, get the alternator working properly, mend the leak in the overhead skylight in the kitchen, get the leak on the cooling pipes fixed and refix the rear bollards which were originally seated on wood and which is now rotten - and so it goes on!

After some carry-on with wooden blocks on the crossbeams to accommodate our keel and keel cooling pipes we were eventually in the dry dock and high and dry.

Once we got a closer look, the cooling pipes themselves were still on good shape: the problem was that we had touched something pretty hard at some point which had caused an indentation in one of the pipes, right up to and including the screw fitting into which it was connected.

This is where the slight leak was, and because the screw fitting had been so distorted it would be impossible to unscrew the pipe. So the welder did his best but the proximity of the keel and the underside of the boat meant it was impossible for him to weld the top of the joint (no room, no vision) so a very minor leak still exists.

The rest of the boat has been high pressure washed and sprayed to the water line. The ESTRIN surveyor Willem has been and given the barge a largely clean bill of health and at the same time given Louise and Alex a hefty dose of COVID which we kindly and unwittingly passed on to Richard (ETTIE) who came to supper the following night while Julia was back in the UK.

So we entered our second week in dry dock feeling weak with Covid, but it’s dry dock after all and you have to do what you have to do while you’re there, regardless of how you feel.

In terms of Covid Alex had nearly the worst sore throat he can remember while Louise had a continuous streaming nose: strange – the same disease and two totally different presentations.

When questioned, our surveyor agreed it was probably he who had infected us, didn’t apologise but hoped it had not been too bad!

It was our fault as well, of course, as we always wear masks when shopping but failed to ask Willem to take a test before coming to us, we didn't wear masks while he was with us and we didn't give significance to the occasional coughing fit he had. We let our guard down. Idiots!

We sent off for a replacement alternator from the company which had originally reconditioned ours and at huge expense it was delivered on our second Thursday in dock. At first the output was too high and the Sterling control system went into overdrive to shut it off. Then after a couple of other minor tweaks it decided to die completely, like our existing alternator. So it appears that maybe the standard regulator is somehow taking the alternators out.

We were told of an alternator expert near Villeneuve sur Lot, so we limped back to the free mooring at Escatalens where we plugged in and took the original alternator and control box up to the guys at Villeneuve sur Lot on Monday.

They had some hiccup and didn’t get to look at it till Friday, so the new diodes were supposed to arrive on Tuesday but they then said it would be Monday (6 days later than promised). And we can’t test the regulator until we have got the alternator fixed so to save time and uncertainty we have ordered a new regulator from the UK.

The next disappointment is that with the heat really warming up we thought we would get the recently installed air con working to cool the bedroom. On, no we won’t!! Over the two years or so since we installed it it has run out of cooling gas, so its not working either. So far we are onto our second air con engineer who might agree to fix it. It just needs a re-charge even if there is a small leak. It would last long enough for this summer!

We have moved form Escatalens where they switched off the water and electricity without warning (yes, I know it was all free) to Castelsarrasin. But the spot where we are moored is booked for ROSA the hotel barge next week and we need the continuity of stable mooring so we are now moving to Moissac where we are promised a mooring for as long as it takes.

This is doubly good because Alex has just succumbed to a medical problem in the nether regions which he has had before and hopefully the doctors in Moissac can sort it out again as has been the case in the UK on the last two occasions.

Who said boating was a gentle and relaxed pastime?!

Actually, it turned out over the next few days that the medical problem might actually have been just bruising from the bicycle seat when Alex rode over some rather rough ground. Well there’s a plus!

We collected the car from Escatalens with the kind help of Dee from Zeelandia, who gave us a lift there. When we got to Moissac we caught the train back to Castelsarrasin for the car, but in all this as the weather gets hotter we noticed that the air con in the car was not as cool as it should be, so that’s another thing that needs sorting out!

Having trawled the internet for local garages we did a drive round and hit on one which offered to replenish the car cooling agent the following day for the princely sun of €64. We no longer care now, we will pay anything to get all these jobs done. Unfortunately, air con engineers don't want to know when ‘boat’ is mentioned. So we learned from this and trawled on line again and made a short drive in the car to suss-out a place on the outskirts of Moissac and bingo! The lovely Christine rang her partner and he was prepared to come to the boat, the very next morning, to do the re-charge.

Pascale did indeed come to the boat (another €80 but so what?!). We also heard from the alternator repair guys to say the new regulator had been delivered and everything was ready for pick up.

So after the air-con recharge on the car had been fixed we set off for the 100kms drive to pick up said alternator.

Next day, with some trepidation, Alex re-installed the alternator and new regulator and gave it a go. NO OUTPUT!

To cut a long story short, after two days struggling to find out what was wrong, Alex eventually discovered an earth connection he had made which was incorrect and should not have been made (actually it was a tachometer output for the alternator not an earth as he had thought).

Once that was discovered, everything seemed OK until he reconnected the Sterling microprocessor controller when everything went haywire again. So - disconnect that and just run it on the standard regulator and all seems well.

At last we're off!

Buzet to Montauban and back

 

Well here we are back in France for the scintillating 2021 season!

We finally managed to get to the barge, still at Buzet-sur-Baïse, on July 7^th. There had been several power outages which should not have been a problem but we also had had a problem with out PV panel controller which had tried to overcharge the batteries (causing the Victron to shut down) and also a poor connection in the system had overheated and caught fire!

God! But it could have been a lot worse. The PV panels had disconnected themselves at the overheating connection and burned a small amount of curtain. 

The sad remains of the curtain

The fridge-freezer had melted everything in it then restarted (we could tell by the frozen pool of mixed meat juice and ice cream in the bottom!) but apart from that we got off very lightly.

The PV controller was still in guarantee but getting the replacement to us took 10 days due to the new Brexit export/import paraphernalia.

In the meantime as we were waiting for the part to arrive, Alex was sitting on the back deck minding his own business when he heard a loud crack. On looking up he was just in time to see the weeping willow at the rear of the barge on which we were moored – Lily Ann – split in two at its fork some 20 feet above the ground. One half fell onto the back of Lily Ann, while the other half fell the other way onto Dominic’s BMW and very nearly onto our own car. It missed our car by about two inches but wrecked the BMW’s rear window and boot lid.

Andy's bimini smashed by the willow tree

The weeping willow split in half

Lily Ann with half a ton of willow on top!

Our own Skoda - amazingly unmarked

Lily Ann’s bimini was completely flattened and the whole rear deck invisible under a canopy of leaves and branches. By some miracle Andy himself wasn’t sitting on his back deck under the bimini as per normal but down below so he was unharmed.

When Sara and Kevin finally got to the scene Sara did a great job of getting some local tree surgeons to clear Andy’s barge and our car from branches but as it was a Friday night, the rest would have to wait until Monday. By that time, when the VNF workers arrived to completely clear the debris the tree had settled further over the weekend making poor Dominic’s BMW a write-off – the roof light was broken, the front windscreen smashed and the roof itself was badly dented.

Poor Dominic's BMW being unearthed by the VNF team

As soon as this excitement had died down and we had finally received said PV controller we installed it and set off on what we had planned would be a trip north to at least St Jean de Losne, near Dijon.

However after three days and nights of hard work and intolerable heat we were both knackered and started to have a re-think. After the third night where our mooring (the only one available) was opposite a busy road and railway, together with a particularly determined mosquito we had had hardly a wink’s sleep.

Subsequently when we learned that there was a shortage of water in the Canal du Midi and too much in the Rhone, we decided to take things easy again and leave the whole going north business until next year when not only would we be starting at a better time in the year, but 1) we would have a 6 month visa instead of a paltry 90 days in 180 and would have plenty of time to meander as we normally do and 2) we would be doing the Canal du Midi in low season, not in the heat of August.

So, we spent the next four days recovering from our dash so far, at the super new moorings at Escatalens where although the depth was not so good the water, electricity and mooring were free, with some shade in the afternoons and the surrounding area free from unendurable noise. So peaceful!!

Good free mooring at Escatalens - even if we did have to leap for shore

We moved on to Montauban – a lovely 8-lock descent from our night’s mooring at Lacourt St Pièrre. Bruce (Australia) and Rodney (British French resident) currently moving barge MATILDA from Montauban to Moissac stopped by for a chat and so we knew that the quay in Montauban was currently empty and that the Tarn mooring was thoroughly recommended. When we reached Montauban we asked if we could descend the double locks onto the river Tarn for a night. ‘Pas de problem’.

So from the double locks we went on up the Tarn as far as the first pontoon where we moored at the end away from the fishermen which promised shade in an hour or so.

Unfortunately, as the shade came, so did les jeunes, complete with loud taped rap and a penchant for loud talk and splashing in the river. In the end, we decided enough was enough and we moved upriver to the next and final mooring.

As we approached the mooring, the river got more and more shallow and Alex, with memories of the Marne grounding some years ago, slowed RICCALL to a crawl. But eventually the depth increased and we got to the pontoon and there was plenty of room to moor up with the other boat there already.

Peace at last - no youngsters, no railway, no roads. Only later did we discover frogs, croak, croak, on and off all night! Ah well, you can’t have everything (and after all, we are in the land of frogs!).

So, back to Montauban and a mooring once again on the quay with water and electricity for €14 a night for a couple of nights. Alex has an abiding love of all things relating to industrial heritage: locks, factories, water mills, pumping stations etc. - the more derelict the better, so it was no surprise that he decided on our last morning in Montauban to set off to investigate the two derelict locks on the Tarn within a short distance.

The first one was close and easy enough to access, but the second required a bike ride up hill and down dale! When it seemed clear that there was a lot more up hill and down kms to do, Louise decided enough was enough and a peek at the old town was more up her street.

The remains of 'Alex's' lock! . . .

. . . and the weir it once by-passed

Alex did manage to find his second lock, after much searching, but it was completely inaccessible, meanwhile Louise had her little look at the city centre. Our previous visit was 10 years ago and not a jot remained in the memory! The lovely city square was, unfortunately, being dug up and resurfaced, and although there were ‘high end’ shops a-plenty in the ancient streets, there were many shuttered frontages, ‘de-stockage’ (sales) signs everywhere and a general look of economic gloom – no surprise of course during COVID.

Lovely Montauban central square - a building site

Montauban scene

When we went to pay for our moorings the capitaine, Sebastien, handed Alex the ‘Rules of the Road’ for boaters on the Tarn which he should have given us before our descent. They were only available in French so Alex volunteered Louise to do a translation. We spent the rest of the day struggling to grapple with the nuances of French and make it into sensible English. Job done, we discovered that our printer had run out of ink! But email is a wonderful thing!

Back up the 8 locks and we spent the night at a lock mooring close to the little lock house once lived in by the owner/operators of the hotel barge ST LOUIS, Alisdair and Barbara. We’d known them from our previous time on the Garonne, 11 years ago. We wondered if they would still be in business but no, they had sold their business and moved back to Scotland. The new owners now operate the barge and live in the lovely little lock house.

We returned to Escatalens taking in a tour of the Pente d’Eau of Montech which at last has been thoroughly renovated. BUT it is now a ‘theme park’, the mechanism painted in multiple primary colours and open to the public for free tours. It was a very interesting display, if a bit ‘Disney’!

At Escatalens we met Malcolm and Debbie of JANNA II and spent some time with them. They live aboard and are slowly turning their huge 30m barge into a home, but as we know, it’s a long slog. They have come to know someone from the Mairie and have managed to arrange  to spend the winter there – a lovely spot. Good for them!

JANNA II - Malcolm and Debbie's barge

Finally we got back to Buzet where we had rearranged to moor for another winter, the only problem being lack of space as we had become a very late booking. Eventually, it was agreed that the far downstream corner, amongst the banana trees would be the ‘best’ i.e. only spot. So, after a night moored on Mike and Bev’s barge SPES, we set out to reverse into said location – not easy with no bow thruster but with skill, determination and a great deal of luck we made it into a very tight spot without hitting another boat. Amazing!! (Louise says – don’t be modest, excellent boat handling by Alex.)

They DO provide shade!

So then it was a case of cutting a gap through the middle of the banana plants so we could get off the barge and also manufacturing and installing a decent mooring pin to the rear of the barge (a length of scrap 3” steel tube cut to length with a cap welded to the top and the whole thing hammered 3 ft into the ground seemed appropriate).

Alex thought the same at the front would also be a good idea rather than relying on, the rather low stump of the weeping willow left by the VNF, and that has now been installed.

Having established RICCALL in this rather difficult mooring we decided to spend the remaining few weeks we have left here (of our 90 days!) visiting friends in the area by car.

The first trip was east to Aigues-Mortes via lunch with friends Terry and Carole at their favourite restaurant and a night with them at their house at Cazouls-lès-Béziers. We then spent two lovely nights with Jim and Jehan on LES VIEUX PAPILLONS then headed back towards Buzet. It was a very long trip from A-M to Buzet and the traffic had been so bad on the péage on the way over that we decided to book at night in a hotel at Castelnaudary on the return and use the N roads, visiting several of the major ports on the Canal du Midi on the way.

Terry and Carole

Splendid lunchtime view

At one port we met a British couple who after a happy chat from the shore invited us aboard for a coffee. In the course of the subsequent conversation, to our consternation they divulged the fact that they were anti-vaxers (and Trump supporters)! We left as soon as politely possible. We didn't think anybody outside America had any truck with Trump but supposedly there has to be one or two. And as for anti vax.....Well !!

A few minutes later we met another British couple outside their beautiful house on the quay in the same port, who were equally horrified by our encounter and restored our confidence in the vast majority of the population who understand that maximum vaccination is the only way forward to return to some sort of normality.

Once back at Buzet of course work never stops.  Alex’s latest idea is to finally get the fore-deck re-painted. Louise thinks he feels it is now let down by all the work she has done in re-painting all the hand rails!   (And besides all that, we have at last repainted the whole wheelhouse roof. PV panels off as well while we were at Escatalens)

WOW!