Cooler overnight. Grey clouds first thing, brightening up to sunshine and white clouds. Mike took a few photos of the mooring before we left. A cruiser called Bon Vivant went uphill as we were getting ready and a hire boat went past heading downhill (like us) just as we were untying the ropes. The towpath/ cycle piste was heaving with walkers and cyclists even before we got out of bed, we could see shadows on the bedroom curtains. Set off at 10.10 a.m. A little further down the canal towards Agen a large tree was down on the left bank (must have been in last Tuesday’s hurricane) it looked like a rotten carrot the way it had snapped off at the base. On into Agen. In the big basin there were still a few hire boats moored on Crown Blue Line’s pontoons and there were several boats moored on the grassy bank alongside the road and houses on the right hand bank; wide boat Sainte Margaux among them.
A few resident Dutch barges were moored a little further on, right next to the railway, by the bridge that leads to the city centre, a mere five minutes walk. We had a red light at the start of the aqueduct so I turned the hanging pole (another short one, I could only just reach by standing on the gunwales) and nothing happened. Through binoculars Mike could see the boat in front descending. As the gates closed behind him I turned the pole again, this time it worked and we got a red/green. The lock was filling so we went on across the aqueduct. The gates opened and we got a green but before we were halfway across the aqueduct the gates closed and the lock emptied! Someone stole our lock! I didn’t think they could do that!
We hovered at the end of the aqueduct to wait for the three boats to come up and out. They took ages. Ropes flying everywhere. Then they took forever to leave the lock. There were crowds of gongoozlers around the lock including a whole class of kids on bikes on the tail end bridge. Into lock 34 Agen as soon as the hire boats had gone. It was midday. Expecting there had been VNF intervention in the last uphill lockful, I got off with the centre rope as we were on the right hand side of the lock chamber and Mike got off and went over to the cabin (which were now on the left, we hadn’t spotted that) to turn the lever (they’d still got the same levers for activating the automatic sequence as when we were there last time, ie 1994) and got back on the boat,
then a VNF man turned up and reminded us that you had to turn the lever twice. Once to raise the paddles and again to open the gates. In theory this means that there has to be a member of crew that remains on the lock side. What do single handed boaters do? He turned the lever for us to open the gates and let us out of the empty lock. Two more hire boats were coming uphill in lock 35 Marianettes. They came out and we went in, on the left side this time next to the old lock cabin and the lever, I dropped the rope on a bollard and turned the lever twice. The gates shut but the paddles didn’t open. The VNF man returned in his flatbed van and went to the control box down by the bottom end gates (which was already open and buzzing loudly) fiddled with the controls and came to tell us to turn the lever once,
the gates close and paddles go up open THEN turn the lever again and get back on the boat (it’s a very old system and can’t cope with two commands at once!) We dropped down and went on our way to lock 36 Chabrières, where yet another hire boat was coming uphill. A young couple on board, videoing us as we passed. It was the first hire boat we’d seen this year towing a covered “swimming pool” (just big enough for two people to sprawl in) behind them. This time we got the sequence right, after the fourth paddle had fully opened Mike turned the lever again and got back on the boat. The lock emptied and the gates opened! Hooray, got it right! No signs of the VNF now. In fact, when we got to the bottom lock of the flight of four, 37 Rosette, it was completely deserted – no hire boats, cyclists, walkers, picnickers, etc.
The lock worked perfectly, we dropped down ropeless and the gate opened with no problems. It was 12.35 p.m. lunchtime as we left the bottom. A short section of canal lead on to the old route down to the Garonne, now blocked off by bricking up the arch of the road bridge, and there we met the next hire boat turning the pole for the lock on the apex of the 90° bend. The Spanish crew yelled “Wonderful boat!” in English as they took photos as we passed. The canal below the flight was totally different in character to the one above the locks. Above there were roads and houses and people, down here was jungle on both sides in a shallow cutting with a passable-only-on-foot towpath – the cycle path was somewhere up top of the bank beyond the trees.
I made sandwiches for our lunch on the move. The canal widened out briefly by the village of Columbe, where there was an old silo and picnic tables, now in use by fishermen. We dived back into the cool green Amazon. At KP116 an old tjalk was moored among the herbage by an old house and behind it was a little tug called Teal from Skipton, we hadn’t seen that boat for a while. No one on board, it looked left for the duration. The moorings at Sèrignac were completely full. We couldn’t have stopped anyway as there was only one possibility of getting satellite TV - right on the end of the mooring - due to the trees. One of the boats that had been moored at Sèrignac, a large British cruiser called River Holme, set off and overtook us. We stopped before we got to lock 38 Auvignon on a long straight and tied next to overgrown old piling where it was deep enough to get right next to the bank. Cyclists went whizzing past level with the tops of our windows. It was 2.50 p.m. Mike had spotted that one of the flexible pipes in the loo was cracked and leaking slightly, so he cut a new length of reinforced tubing to replace it and hacked (carefully removed. Ed). the old piece out while I held the torch so he could see.
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