Wednesday 16th July 2008 Moissac to Valence d’Agen C.de Garonne

Hot and sunny; lovely cool and breezy start to the morning. Set off around nine to get to the first lock just after opening time. To our great surprise the hire boat we’d shared locks with the day before was moored only 500m  further down the cut! Only one crew member was on deck so Mike said Güten Tag! to the large elderly bearded bloke (who kept threading half a mile of rope round the vertical sliders from their stern the day before) – he said “Good Morning” in reply! We carried on down to lock 26, Espagnette, passing a pilgrim - shell on his knapsack, rosary in hand, striding down the towpath following the Grand Randonée which is also the route to St Jacques de Compostella in northern Spain. No one around at the lock house, and no sign of the hire boat, so I pressed the green button and we dropped down ropeless, comme normal. We overtook the pilgrim again on the 3.8 kms pound. His route crossed over the canal and continued up the hill to Boudou (a village with a superb vantage point to look out over the junction of the Tarn and Garonne). We ran down to Petit Bézy, lock 27, with glimpses of the Tarn through the trees to our left and dropped down the lock as before. The next pound was a long one, 6 kms, past Malause where Steve and Kit’s Dutch Barge Vrouwe Jeanette was still moored, plus two more replica Dutch barges and a British cruiser. An old Bermuda cruiser went past heading uphill. We went down lock 28, Braguel, leaving the bottom at 11.00 a.m. A short pound of 1.5 kms down to the next lock, Pommevic 29. A cruiser we’d just passed started untying. A Locaboat was coming up in the lock so we had to wait and it took them ages to get through the lock, over twenty minutes. A woman on board the hire boat was taking off her white gloves as they passed by. The cruiser made no signs of following us into the lock, so I pressed the green button and we carried on down. They followed down to the turn pole as we left the lock. 1.9 kms down to Valence lock 30. A private cruiser was coming up in the lock so we waited, stooging around above the lock. Mike spotted there was a young girl in the lock office alongside the lock house, she came out as I pressed the button and scowled as she went across the lock gates to the VNF yard on the other side. The scowl may have been because perhaps I did her job, pressing the button, or not having two ropes on (I dropped the centre rope round a bollard) or possibly the fact that there was a cruiser following us - she wasn’t to know that they had declined to lock with us. At least the VNF staff couldn’t insist that we locked together due to water shortages, water had been pouring over lock gates and weirs all the way down the canal as usual as it’s fed by the Garonne in Toulouse. We carried on into Valence and tied in the space where Rosy had been moore all winter. Mike missed the space first, the flow and flush from the lock carried him slightly too far and he had to run back a bit and turn in from down hill to get into the gap. Roy (the Canadian-Dutchman half of the Odd Couple) came over to help tie up, except he grabbed the bow rope and pulled on it which squashed and burst a nearly new side fender. It was midday so Mike hopped off and went to get some bread for lunch before the boulangerie closed while I put ropes on where I wanted - not where Roy had put them! When Mike returned he decided that mooring next to a rotting hulk was not such a good idea and we moved back to the space next to it, where we’d been moored all winter. Tied the bows tight and then slung our long green rope over the top of the hulk and a British guy on an ex-Connoisseur moored in the next bay gave us a hand to get the rope around the stern of the hulk and I tied it on the bar at the end of the next finger pontoon between his boat and the hulk. I made some sandwiches for lunch while Mike changed the plug on the end of the electricity cable and plugged in. We put the satellite dish up - it refused to work, I tried turning it but also got no signal; then Mike remembered he’d altered the elevation the night before, he altered it back and then it worked OK. He went up into town again to order two new alternator drive belts from the auto shop, (they would be there the following day). Work was going on apace by Valence council workers erecting the stage props on the far bank of the canal and the seating on our side. It was hot; we both had a siesta.