Last bit of Le Canal du Midi, then on to Le Canal de Garonne:

Hot and grumpy in Grisolles, electrical wizardry and magnificent munchies in Montech, chatted up in Castelsarassin, journey’s end in Moissac

It’s a long, long way to Grisolles

Tenderly, I asked my husband: “Do you still like boating?” It was a loaded question.

Under the scorching sun, sweating like a beast, he’d just hammered the second mooring pin into what sounded like concrete under the patchy grass. It would have been 35 degrees in the shade in Grisolles – had there been any shade. And my Roy does not like to be hot.

Leaving Toulouse

Our day had started with the alarming approach of a large passenger barge, reversing* up the canal towards us as we were trying to leave Saint-Sauveur port. The jolt of adrenaline certainly woke us up quickly! Thank goodness Roy has a penchant for loud horns in his vehicles; the captain of this huge thing could not possibly have seen us from where he was sitting. And by the time both boats had come to a halt, it was an uncomfortably close thing.

(*Sorry, Digby, should that be “going astern”?)

By the time I asked my loaded question (“Do you still like boating?”), we’d been on the canals for seven hours, 12 locks and 32km non-stop. For the last three of those hours we’d been looking for mooring.

“Why don’t the guides just say there’s bugger-all mooring between Toulouse and Grissoles, so you know you have to do it in a day?” demanded Roy. He had a point. There’s plenty of what looks like it may be mooring, but it’s too shallow for us – and possibly for anyone else, it seems, as we saw hardly any boats all day.

Our first three locks that morning were numbers 3, 2 and 1 on the Canal du Midi. From there, we’d turned into the Canal de Garonne – newer than the Midi, straight instead of winding, and with regular, rectangular locks. Automatic, meaning they don’t have lockies, they’re activated by twisting a perche (rod) that’s suspended over the canal. (We first encountered this type of system back in June, on the Canal de l’Aisne à la Marne.)

Once properly moored in the lock – with two ropes, one fore and the other aft – I press the button to start the process of the gates closing and the lock emptying, then quickly hop back on board with my rope so as not to be left high and dry on the lock-side.

One lone lock to Montech

Next day, with only a single lock between us and Montech, a leisurely 10am departure was in order. On a swift baguette mission, I discovered Grissoles to be a nice little town with at least one excellent boulangerie, a couple of bars, one already open at 8.30am, a handsome church, a Carrefour supermarket and a quincaillerie (great word, hey? – it means hardware store, for those who didn’t know).

Oh, woe!

The minute the engine was started, it emitted an urgent alarm that would not go away and was impossible to ignore. Despite it being a holiday in the UK, Roy got hold of the lovely Simon Piper on the phone and together they identified the problem: a broken wire at the front of the engine – no doubt caused by our infamous rattle. Having no suitable wire to hand, Roy borrowed a bit from one of the living-room lamps to extend the broken wire and fix the problem.

“Oh,” I remembered when he’d finally finished the long and fiddly job. “You could have got some wire at the  quincaillerie just up the road!”

Never mind – my husband had the triumphal glow of a man who has mastered his machine. Then, during the course of the day he established himself even more firmly on the moral high ground, because I took advantage of a 14km lock-free stretch to top up my tan on the roof while he was at the wheel. (And no – it’s not like there was nothing else for me to do. On a boat, there’s always something you should be doing.)

Review: Bistrot Constant, Montech

One of the hottest days we’ve experienced, this evening was not the time to cook up a cassoulet. Instead, after a couple of icy G&Ts, we strolled the mere 200m that divided us from Bistrot Constant, Montech’s #1 on TripAdvisor.

This eatery, by the way, is part of a group that belongs to top chef and entrepreneur Christian Constant; there’s Maison Constant and Les Cocottes de Christian Constant in Paris, for starters. (And no doubt for mains and desserts, too.)

To begin (€10 per starter), Roy had oeufs mollet roulé à la mie de pain, tomates confit au citron vert et sauce béarnaise (poached eggs), while I had the gaspacho de courgettes, gambas croustillantes et espuma citron (cold soup, hot prawns). For mains (€19), he chose the agneau du Causse farci (stuffed lamb), haricot cuisinés comme au pays Basque; I had the merlu croustillant (crusty hake) aux amandes, pousses d’épinards et dés de citron. No desserts. (F**k off, I’m full.*)

With a bottle of Provençale rosé, the total was €92. The waitress reminded Roy of actress Marion Cotillard, and the service was excellent.

* from Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life – the Gluttony sketch

 

Cruising to Castelsarrasin

I, for one, wasn’t feeling too strong today. Something to do, peut être, with last night’s G&Ts, rosé with dinner and then that rather large post-prandial Cointreau en bateau.

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Flight of five locks from Montech

Montech lock is the first of a flight of five locks (or the last, if you’re montant, i.e. going up), separated by 700-odd metres, 400m, 400m, 400m and then 630 metres, and all presided over by two lady lockies.

On my walk there and back the previous afternoon, I’d met up with one of them and told her we’d like to go through the locks the next morning. (“À neuf heures?” I enquired, hopefully. Locks open at 9am, you see. “À neuf heures quart,” she suggested. “Parfait, Madame! Merci, Madame! À demain.” She arrived at 9.25am to open the gates.)

Arriving spot on 12.30pm in Castelsarrasin, where we’d booked ahead for a couple of nights, we found a nice mooring, partially in the shade of the passerelle (pedestrian bridge) that leads from the town to the train station.

Port days are wonderful! It was nice the next morning to wake up at leisure and go for a run towards Moissac, before doing the laundry and then heading out for a spot of shopping at the Aldi that’s about 1.5km along the Toulouse road.

On the way back, the locals were gathering – exactly as they’d done the previous afternoon – at the petanque pitch next to the passerelle.

Conversational French

One of the players asked me to take his photo, so I did; he’s the one in the middle of the photo. Another of them – the one to the right – popped by for a chat around 5.30pm, after they’d all knocked off for the day. The others had no doubt gone home to whoever was going to be feeding them.

Then ensued a French chat-up lesson, me explaining who Roy and I were, where we’d come from, that we were leaving tomorrow; that no, we would not be coming back to this port; that yes, I liked to go for long walks and that no, sadly, my husband clearly didn’t; that no, I was too tired to go for a walk with him; that no, in spite of my being so charmante and, indeed, ravissante, it would not be possible for him to come aboard now for an apéro (pre-dinner drink), as (a) my husband was asleep and (b) I had work to do. There’s nothing like immersion!

Home port: Moissac

It had rained all night and was blissfully cooler in the morning. After waiting for the rain to lift, we slowly and with by-now-practised ease went through the seven locks on the final 8km of our remarkable three-month journey.

As the écluse gates opened and we edged out of the final lock of our journey, the sun came through the clouds and lit up the town like a promise. We hugged each other, and of course I shed a few tears in the emotion of the moment. (But that doesn’t necessarily mean very much. I cry at bank commercials on the telly.)

Statistics

He’d been head-down over notebook, logbook and calculator for well over an hour. So, what had Roy worked out?

From T&K Marina, UK, to Moissac, France:

1. We’d covered 1,806 kilometres.
2. We’d gone through an incredible 357 locks.
3. We’d been on the French waterways for 98 days.
4. We’d put 322 hours on the engine
5. We’d used 1,300 litres of diesel.