I’d expected a restaurant that served subsidised meals for construction workers – les repas ouvriers – to be something like a British transport caff, all greasy linoleum and reeking of lard and bacon. But this is the Dordogne, France. Auberge d’Imbé exudes homey comfort, featuring white napery and charming service, at just €13 a head for a five-course meal that includes wine.
Roy and I had arrived in the Renault Twingo at his sister Lyndsay’s house in Saint-Geniés in time for Friday lunch. It’s a two-hour drive from Moissac, and we would have been earlier had we not been faced with a route barrée and a deviation, complete with signs.
Bonjour à tous! It’s been eight months since we left our Dutch barge Karanja to see out her first European winter in the port de plaisance of Moissac, in the south of France – and now we’re back on board for the summer.
In case you were wondering, our berth in Moissac is on the opposite side of the canal from the capitainerie, which is presided over by Captain Jim year in and year out.
Family reasons kept me in Durban for a week longer than Roy, who went on ahead. And I’m delighted to say that he made good use of the time to find Lisa, a lovely lady from Essex who did a great job of cleaning both the outside and the inside of the boat before I arrived.
Apart from a build-up of green algae on the decking on the side that gets less of the winter sunshine, and superficial deterioration in the varnish on some of the woodwork, Karanja was in good shape. The intervening eight months had done her no harm. Even the potatoes I’d forgotten to throw out had done nothing more terrible than produce some unusually inventive sprouts – shows how cold it must have been on board!
Playmates
Transitioning from one country to another can take a few days – especially when you’re leaving beloved friends and family members behind. So the arrival of Roy’s sister Lyndsay and her husband John for the weekend was a welcome distraction.
John, Lyndsay and Roy on the terrace of Le Moulin hotel
They did the two-hour drive from their house in the Dordogne (click on the link for my September 2017 blog on our weekend there) and booked into hotel Le Moulin, just a five-minute walk from Moissac port de plaisance. Though of course we’re very happy to put up guests on our pull-out sofa bed – or even in the wheelhouse, though that particular option hasn’t yet been tested – there’s no denying that their corner room at Le Moulin was indubitably more comfortable.
Hotel Le Moulin
They would have been a lot more comfortable, says Lynt, had there not been a spectacularly noisy four-hour deluge complete with thunder and lightning, together with a clump* of geese located t’other side of the river Tarn and honking their beaks off all night. John didn’t hear a thing, it seems. (A couple of litres of local red will do that.)
*collective noun courtesy of Lyndsay
Before that, we had a scratch lunch on board Karanja. That’s so easily done in France, as long as the boulangérie is open. Fresh, crusty bread just needs some butter from Normandie, a simple salad, a couple of cheeses, some olives or cornichons, some sort of dried sausage and last night’s leftover potato salad – et voilà!
Review: Fromage rît
Later, after meeting up for a biére pression on Le Moulin’s terrace with a view of the muddy Tarn, we strolled up the Rue des Arts for dinner at Le Fromage rît. It’s our current favourite of several restaurants in the main square adjoining Moissac’s magnificent abbey, all with some indoor and a lot more outdoor tables.
Le Fromage rît, our favourite Moissac restaurant
Unlike any of the others, Le Fromage rît offers an inspired four course meal (€21) that changes weekly. Its bubbly manager, Julie is the soul of the place; she murders the English language with apparent relish and not a hint of self-consciousness.
This week, it was a choice of two starters: the first based on green lentils, the second a faintly spicy Mexican-style wrap. For mains, it was either brandade morue (baked cod with potato) and toast topped with salmon, or chicken fillet marinated in yoghurt and spices. As usual, an excellent cheese board followed, and finally dessert – a choice of freshly made ice cream, or something based on crème fraiche.
Les hommes managed to get through two litres of a local red, while les femmes restrained themselves to deux pichets de rosé (which sounds a lot better than a litre of the stuff).
The green lentil starter…
… the wrap starter
— brandade morue, or cod with mash
— and the chicken dish
Then it was back to Karanja for un petit Cointreau for me and almost another bottle of red for Roy and John. Lyndsay had brought these two bottles of Côte de Bordeaux as a gift for her brother; she couldn’t resist the name: Les Charmes du Roy.
Les Charmes du Roy – indispuable!
The morning after
So it’s no wonder that we were not the first to arrive at Moissac’s weekend market on Sunday morning, nor that our first stop was for a bracing coffee at the ever-popular Bar de Compostella. Nor that we stuck to Badoit with our salad lunches at Le Kiosque de l’Uvarium. (More on this quaint place later… it deserves a blog to itself.)
Hungover smiles over coffee…
… at Bar de Compostella
As for the market, it’s such a good one that I’m thinking it deserves a blog of its own sometime soon.
For now, let me know if you think Roy should buy a beret from this stand. (I have my reservations, but he does seem quite keen.)
We’ve fallen in love with Moissac – the small town in the Tarn-et-Garonne department of the Occitane region of southern France that has become our new home for the European summer. We’ve just left our Dutch barge Karanja in Moissac port for the winter and migrated like geese to the Southern Hemisphere.
In case you were wondering, the pink umbrella installation in Moissac’s Rue des Arts appeared a few days ago in honour of Pink Ribbon October.
This isn’t our first time here. Exactly three years ago, Roy and I came to Moissac to do the boat-handling course and get the ICC and CEVNI qualifications that you need to navigate the inland waterways of Europe on your own boat.
Seven years ago, Roy’s sister Lyndsay and her husband John – two energetic, optimistic and successful entrepreneurs – bought an old house in Saint-Geniès, near Sarlat in the Dordogne. Transforming it into their dream home has been a labour of love, and for three days last week we were invited to share the dream with them.
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.
Downhill all the way from Lauragais, caffeine deprivation en route to Ayguesvives, five nights in Toulouse with Digby and Allison… and we reach the end of the 240km-long Canal du Midi!
Mostly just us on these stretches of Canal du Midi – we had it all to ourselves
Marseillette; Cathars and cassoulet in Carcassonne; bam-bam-bam on the way to Bram; two nights in Castelnaudary
It was a long, long day from Homps (say “Omp“) – lock, double lock, double lock, stop for lunch before triple lock, and then the final lock at Marseillette, where we stopped for the night.
Joauarres lock on the way to Marseillette – nice and peaceful in this photo, only because I took it on my morning run before the 9am lock opening time…More often on this stretch of the Canal d Midi, the locks look like this!
From Marseillan to Villeneuve-des-Beziérs, “wild”-moored at Colombiers, braving the low, low bridge in Capestang, Ventenac-en-Minervois, Homps
From Marseillan port, we set off at 8.30am back into L’Étang de Thau and to the start of the 240km Canal du Midi that will take us all the way to Toulouse.
Marseillan is by far the biggest, most glamorous port we’ve visited so far, thronged with French and international tourists and lined with bars and restaurants. Best of all, we met up with new friends and made some even newer ones.
Day 1
This feels like the South of France! And yet we almost gave it a miss, turned around and left straight for the Canal du Midi. I’m so glad we didn’t.
