Homps

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This morning we set out about 9:15am to get to the next lock as it opened but unfortunately the lock keeper was doing something else and then boats came from the other direction so he raised their side first and we had to wait for them to come up. This took a good hour or so and we came into the next town of Homps about 11am.

We needed to refuel but the port was full so we had to wait until a spot became available (i.e. another boat left) so we could back in and plug into the electricity and refill our water and fuel tanks.

After walking around the town for a while, we ended up at a café by the canal where we had lunch. Benny and I both had a Croque Madame (toasted ham and cheese with an egg on top) and Ann had a Croque Monsieur (no egg). The bread is soaked in egg and has gooey cheese on the inside as well as the outside and then the top is grilled. Very yummy.

As we were finishing, we noticed a boat leaving so we dashed around to our boat to grab the vacated position in the port. Unfortunately, it had started to rain when we were in the café so the day has become wet and miserable. Despite the weather, you have to be out on deck to secure the ropes, etc. so we pulled on our wet weather gear and covered up.

After the le Boat guy finished refuelling, we asked him to have a look at one of the buttons on our dashboard that we thought should have been lit. He played around with it (making it worse). Consequently, we had to head back to the office in the rain to request a technician to come around and have a look. This happened reasonably promptly and he reset our system and gave us some further instructions on how to use the generator and electrical system. All this through a translator app on his mobile phone.

As we had our engine running whilst we were plugged into shore power to charge up the generator, I stayed with the boat whilst Benny, Ann & Joe went for a walk around the town.

The rain had eased but it was still fairly miserable out so we decided to stay moored in the port for the night rather than get soaked out on deck as we went through the next 4 sets of locks.



After this, we have 54km of canal without locks, until we get to the famous set of locks called the Fonserannes Staircase, a series of 7 locks just before Beziers.

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Comments

[Modris Vilnis]

Viewing photos
Sorry about the weather but seven is a lucky number so the next locks should be great. Enjoy.

[Andrew Pursey]

Homps
Service from le Boat sounds reasonably good, especially using the phone app translator; sure beats some of the tradies in Sydney! French rain is cold - who'd have thunk it; seriously, hope the weather improves for the next stages on the canal. Looking forward to seeing photos of the staircase of locks; we used to have one near us back in the UK - and they are quite impressive. Keep having a good time.