Cooler, sunny with white fluffy clouds. Mike was up first at nine and went to get bread, La Poste for cash, Casino for petrol and then Tourist Info Office to pay for three weeks mooring at 15€ per week. Set off at 11.05 a.m. The lady off little Luxe Bon Aventure came and say goodbye; she said everyone was going downhill; then Shebah-Mike came out of his cabin to say au’voir. A British owned ex-hireboat had just set off also heading downhill as we were untying. There were four boats tied up at Golfech, including Linde, who was there for the summer (because it’s free!). The first lock, 31 Lamagistère, was empty, so we had to wait for it to refill after we’d turned the pole. The lock was automatic, the house lived in but was shuttered (probably on holiday). We descended ropeless as usual.
I cleaned out the starboard side handrails which were stuffed full of chaff after the hurricane on Tuesday night, then I made some sandwiches for lunch which we ate on the 6.6 km pound down to 32 Noble. A big blue Moissac hire boat was coming uphill in the lock when we arrived. Again we dropped down ropeless. We were going to tie up at what we thought was a mooring at St Jean-de-Thurac (we’d driven past it loads of times), which turned out to be a parking area for camper vans with no provision for mooring as the bank edge was shallow at least a metre from the grass. We attempted to moor above the next lock but again it was too shallow by the landing for the lock, as was the piling on the other bank. We dropped down St Christophe. The lock house was closed and uninhabited. Just beyond the bridge with the road that lead over the "clackety" river bridge (wooden decking!) to Sauveterre-St-Denis there was a piled edge.
It looked deeper as there was no weed growth, so we managed to get right next to the bank with the fore end sheltered from the sun under an overhanging acacia tree. It was 2.20 p.m. The wind was blowing straight down the canal and through our front doors. I found some right angled hooks and screwed them into the panel under the front door to anchor the bottom edge of the door curtain and stop it flying up in the breeze as there were lots of house flies about. Not long after we’d tied up there was a splashing and commotion outside so Mike went out to have a look. A big black dog had gone in the canal after a stick and couldn’t get out as the piling was too high. Neither Mike nor his owner could lift him so they had to encourage him to swim back towards the bridge. A lovely old black dog, he was even bigger than our Rowsy was and just as daft! I cooked some pork chops for dinner. Nice to have a cooked meal after all the recent salad and it was cooler so the heat from cooking didn’t turn us into dripping zombies.
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