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Published: July 28th 2011
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A few hours after our early afternoon departure from Capestang, we made a stop at the beautiful village of Le Somail to fill up outr water tanks. I went for a wander, took photos of the stunnning ivy covered hotel/restaurant and sniffed out a little wine seller where I purchased a couple bottles of rose to chill for dinner. Once our tanks were full (that's the water, we weren't 'tanked up' … yet!) we moved on and motored up to Ventenac, the fabled village du vin terry and Kath had told us about. I saw the chateau on approach and kicked myself for buying wine just 2 hours ago … I hadn't realised how close we were!!
However, when we pulled up and tied our boat to some trees, we wandered over to find the chateau shut. Good job I had bought the stuff at Le Somail!
As we were already off the boat we decided to take a stroll around the town. There really wasn't much there apart from the chateau! It was clearly a quaint little Languedocienne village with a handful of ancient houses and a lovely old church in its streets. That evening we BBQ'd the giant
chicken bits we'd bought in Capestang and fed scraps of bread to the passing Black swans … one of whom was so eager he grabbed it out of my hand! The next morning we arose early, grabbed all the empty containers we could find and went to the chateau to purchase our goods. We were restricted as to what we could get as, despite having saved plenty of empty water and sprite bottles, we only had 4 euros left until we got to a cashpoint. Undetterred we went on and bought a litre of each colour of wine, costing us just over 3 euros! Bargain, and a fine way to spend ones final pennies!! They lasted a couple days and were delicious … worth every penny!
We spent a full day on the canals after purchasing our wine, making our way through 16 locks in the sunshine and the company of various rental boats containing Aussies, Kiwis and Brits before resting for the night on the bankside when the locks closed. Whilst we rested mike and I discussed work – our money was runing low and it might help to look for some jobs. I made a sign advertising
his engineering experience and put it into the window of the boat. Mike liked it and asked if I could make 2 more to go into the side windows. I did as asked whilst he planted the lettuce seeds we bought … in a few weeks we should be eating home grown produce! The following morning we went through the last couple of locks to Trebes, accompanied by our kiwi buddies from yesterday who commented admiringly on my lassooing skills ('Jeez, you make it look so easy. Very impressive!'😉 and chatted to us about Mike's job as we waiting for the water to rise in each lock... the signs were already attracting attention.
We moored up in Trebes around 2 and went off to explore the town. It was really pretty, if a little expensive, and we noticed a lovely shady spot on the canal so went round there with Ozzy. A big duck slept and waddled next to us the whole time we were there and we went off on bike rides along the canal to look at what lay ahead. The canal was gorgeous from a bike s well as a boat. We would depart the following
day for the walled city of Carcassonne.
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