Monday 23rd June 2008 Fenouillet to Toulouse

Hot and sunny, clear blue skies, nice cooling breeze. Thunderstorms promised later. It was 9.00 a.m. as I turned the pole then hopped off at the wooden landing below Lacourtensort lock 2 and walked up to the lock to press the green button. There was a beautiful garden in front of the lock house with rockery and roses in a gravel bed. The man from the house was out working already watering his plants and trees. At Lalande, lock 1, I went up the ladder. A large cruiser (ex-Connoisseur hire boat called Idefix) passed us just before the bridge inhabited by winos living in boxes. We passed the row of houseboats at the end of the Canal de Garonne and turned left in the basin on to the canal du Midi at 10.35 a.m. There were more dropouts living in tents under the trees along the top of the canal bank all the way into the city. The lady keeper came out to see that we’d moored OK in lock 1 Bearnais. Mike put a stern rope on the large bollard by the bottom end gates and Bill dropped a rope on our stern. She asked if we were OK like that. Yup! And up we went to the sound of hooters going off for each manoeuvre. (Health and safety is starting to go mad here too!) A short pound to lock 2, Minimes. We had a hold up while the VNF were doing something by the top end gates; there were three men, one van and a scooter. Then we rose sedately under CCTV camera surveillance (operated by Madame at lock 1, we wondered?) Two cruisers were coming down as we left, but they closed the lock gates behind us and made the cruisers wait while the men did some more work. One of them was flying a Swiss flag, but had Veghel in the Netherlands as its home port? On up to Bayard lock 3, the deep one. The camera below the lock swivelled round to watch us as we entered the empty chamber. They had added a much needed mooring pole halfway along the lock chamber. I put a fore end rope around a very rusty metal tube and Mike tied to a floater at the stern, we collected Rosy alongside and then the gates closed and the lock filled very gently. I rang the VNF offices in Toulouse and asked if they could open the bridge into the basin for us, the guy asked when and I said 15 minutes? He said “No, it would have to be after lunch at 1.30 p.m.” OK. We stooged on past the moored boats in the port (no sign of Paul’s Liberty) and moored across the entrance to the basin, much to the annoyance of the fishermen who kept looking at the no mooring signs. At 1.30 p.m. the VNF chef came to move the bridge (the same guy who had told Mike earlier, when he arrived with our car, that he couldn’t leave it in the VNF compound – which is like a small isolated village, an oasis in the city). There were no barriers so the chap who had come with him had to flag down a group of cyclists. I said no, no let them carry on let’s see them swim the gap! Must have just amused him ‘cos our VNF chef kept tittering after that! We entered the basin and moored close by the dock. Took a few photos – it was quite the biggest dock we’d ever been on. Fanny ran up and down the forty five degree sloping stone walls with ease. Bill said it was great he could throw her ball and she’d get tired out running up and down the walls. We went to the office and signed their papers for a key to the side gate. The chef said we couldn’t leave the car inside the VNF compound overnight we would have to park it in the street, it was the rule. Mike baulked at that, he’d never had to leave our vehicle outside like that in all the boatyards, docks, clubs, etc, that we’d stayed at before. We went to get the karcher (pressure washer) he’d arranged to hire from Kiloutou (nice name - qui loue tout - who hires everything!) by jnc 15 Roseraies on the A61. We were going to do some shopping too but Mike decided to take the karcher back to the boat first. We put the machine on the boat and went off to Carrefour at Labège 2, bought the groceries and headed back. I piled all the junk that normally lives in the car into several bags and unloaded them and the shopping by the gate. Mike parked the car next to the gates in an awkwardly placed parking bay. Bill gave me a hand carrying the shopping across the wide cobbled yard. I was glad to see Mike had the same trouble as I did with the key in the side gate, he couldn’t remove the key – I said “turn the key to the vertical position” to him and he pulled the key out – it had taken me five minutes of fiddling to discover that! I put the groceries away and made a sandwich as it was too hot and too late to cook a hot meal. Later we chatted with Bill. He said he’d been making phone calls to the guy who transports narrow boats who had told him he hadn’t got any boats booked to come to the Midi. Bill said he’d told him that Agde was the place to be craned out otherwise crane hire would cost him about 1,000€. He said he’d ask on his website if any boats wanted to come to the Midi and do a deal with him for half rates.