Life is between the two seas

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We left Castelnaughty in the first week of April with most of our medical issues resolved, the French Medical system is excellent. Marg saw a hand surgeon after an MRI and had a cast put on her wrist and injections for pain relief whilst having a CT scan. Although not one hundred per cent it is a lot better. Pete’s day surgery went well and he is fully recovered although it took longer to get better than the biggie last year. We did seem to spend an awful lot of the winter in medical places including emergency ophthalmology when Peters eyeball fell apart! (Back together again now just like humpty dumpty). Found a great dentist and had some crowns done all at a fraction of the cost of Australia. (Seems to be a recurring theme) Thank goodness we did not wait until retirement age to retire we would never have done anything.

After Christmas the weather in Castelnaudary deteriorated and became very cold with the wind being piped in from the arctic, the canal froze for a day or so. We found the quay to be very noisy and we seemed to attract all the people with mobile phones at all hours of the night. We even had someone want to sit on the boat and make a call at 2 am. We did not really acclimatise to all the traffic and were worried in case Yeti ran out of the boat. For a part of the winter we had an empty boat alongside of us which was ok until the owners decided to come back and fore all the time. We never knew who was getting on our boat and it was really getting to us. Yeti got really stressed out until we were allowed to move them to the empty boat behind us. Christmas was fun although the black turkey was a bit bizzzare, lots of people did not know it was a black turkey and kept asking for the white meat!

We did as much touring in the car as possible and there are some really lovely places within a few hours of Castelnaudary (see the photos) we would have been lost without Tilly. We went to Toulouse a few times as tourists and can’t say we liked the city very much; admittedly it was always cold and wet and we had the worst meal ever one day. The Aviation Museum and Air Bus factory tour were great, very well presented and we got to sit on a Concorde. The Air Bus Factory is huge and extremely interesting especially as we had been on the inaugural commercial flight of the A380 with Singapore Airlines a few years ago. We seemed to spend a lot of time in wine growing areas and villages associated with Toulouse Lautrec! Some of our favourites being in the Gaillac area and a medieval village called Lautrec.

We left Castelnaudary after the boat behind us had had its lines cut and another couple of boats set adrift. We woke up to find someone on our boat apparently pushing off a German yacht out into the canal. We knew the owner of the boat as he had been tied up to us for months. As it turned out the guy on our boat was our friend Nigel who was actually trying to catch the yacht that had its lines cut, luckily Pete grabbed the yacht with a long boathook and tied it alongside. The owner then woke up and was very perplexed by the fact that he was back alongside us. There appeared to be a gang of youths causing trouble but the police were not interested.

One of our winter projects was to try and write a book on our first year in Vintage Cru, it is not quite finished yet but it got pretty close until one day all the files got corrupted despite being saved on two separate drives and we had to start again! It is difficult to try and write this type of book and keep the word “we” to a minimum.

Leaving winter behind we filled up with fuel and food heading along the Canal du Midi in fantastic weather if still a little chilly, mostly tying up to the canal bank. The Midi in spring is just perfect; it was amazing we had the canal to ourselves only seeing a couple of other boats. Having spent some time on this stretch in the autumn we decided to skip along fairly briskly (well for us anyway) passing through Toulouse without being abused.

We did not really know what to expect of the Canal Lateral a Garonne, most people we asked were a bit vague about it, some said it was not worth going, mentioning only the motorway that ran along it , some said there was too much weed and some said there were some nice towns. Some could not remember it at all, we now understand that they may be suffering from Bargeheimers disease, there seem to be two types of this, Ironbargeheimers and Plasticbargeheimers, some days we seem to suffer from the latter , “where were we yesterday?”

We obviously had to go and look ourselves whilst we remembered to go!

The canal starts at Toulouse and is one hundred and ninety three kilometres long and has fifty three locks, all the locks are easier than the ones on the Midi. Leaving Toulouse the first few hours were a bit industrial and the canal did run alongside the motorway for about ten kilometres. We are writing the first part of this blog tied up to the canal bank outside Buzet on our way back along the canal. We would have to say this could be our favourite canal yet! It has been very relaxing the locks are easy both up and down, it is unspoiled by millions of charter boats, no hotel boats as yet, parts of it are a little unkempt and you have to drive around lots of fallen trees but it is delightful. There are lots of lovely places to stop, most of the halt nautiques are empty ( apart from a few of the boats that have been just left there) the canal is very easy to stop along side of and only now in the middle of May are we seeing more private boats and a few charter boats. We had to use more of the halts with electricity as our brand new 4000 watt inverter which runs the fridge and freezer blew up! Our generator also got a fair bit of use.

The countryside is gorgeous; it is no wonder the British and the French used to fight over this part of the world. The medieval towns and villages that are everywhere all have a story to tell. It still fascinates us that people live in houses that were built over 600 years ago. Most of the older towns have something called a Bastide, for some of our Aussie friends this is not a French word for the POMS but means a covered medieval town centre with lots of wooden beams.

Everyone in the villages has been friendly and some of boulangeries bread is to die for. Most of the larger of towns along the way are also worth visiting, we particularly liked Moissac and where we were in the port. We had been there on a wet and cold day in the winter and wondered what the attraction was. There was a winter berth available for next year for us but we now had plans for next winter. (Bahamas here we come) Some of the towns had displays by an artist of large bottomed women in strange positions; these for some reason appealed to us hence all the photos. We have lots more if anyone else is also a bit odd. Quite a few of the towns have these sculptures so we are not that odd.

Our original destination was to be Castes en Dorthe right at the end of the canal where it joins the River Garonne. This is where yachts heading to or leaving the Med join the canal system. The Gironde estuary comes in from the Bay of Biscay passing through Bordeaux and some of the world’s great wine growing areas on both sides of the estuary.

We booked into Castets for a week where we tied up stern to the quay, this was the first time we had done this as normally we have so much stuff including bikes on the swim platform that getting on and off was difficult. A bit of culling and rearranging and life was easy. Peter went back to Castelnaudary by bike and Train to pick up Tilly the van. We spent nearly every minute of the next ten days being tourists. Every major wine area in Bordeaux was visited and most of the wines tasted, if not at the vineyard then we bought a bottle to try later. What an amazing choice and varieties of tastes from what is to Aussies a small geographical area, we could not say what our favourite was but we did splurge on a Margaux which was good but we did seem to like the Graves quite a lot. It is a lovely part of the world, we are surprised we had not been there years ago when we used to tour France in the MG. We are now more inclined to buy a Bordeaux wine than before when it would have been low on our list of choices.

Castets en Dorthe port is idyllic, beautiful scenery, great walks, a very good restaurant and a great Port Captain, Bruno who was very helpful and welcoming, very tempting to just spend the rest of the summer there but boats are meant to move and we do have plans for the rest of the year.

We were going to have a few days at the seaside as we miss the sea and were going to book in to Biarritz for a few days but were having so much fun in Bordeaux area we decided to just make it a day trip. A lovely drive for a couple of hours through yet more vineyards and chateaux. Biarritz has probably seen better days but its original charm and attraction are still to be found. The beach and coastline are lovely and with some of the older hotels one can imagine it being the playground of the wealthy. We had a great day out and really liked the place despite getting lost and not being able to find where we had parked the car!

After Toulouse we were not expecting much from Bordeaux city, how wrong we were. It is superb for just wandering around, we were there on a Public Holiday, nearly everything was open all the fantastic cafes and restaurants were busy and the streets were full of life and people enjoying themselves. Normally we hurry through the Brocante markets as it is nearly often just junk to us but there was a huge one open by the Monument and all the stalls were fascinating, we could have spent a day just browsing. The monument to the Girondais was possibly one of the best we have ever seen; the detail in all the fountains was astounding. A great city and highly recommended.

Summer is now close, up until now we have only had a few days of rain, hopefully enough to keep the canals full but today it is pouring down with thunderstorms! We are glad of the day off as we expect to have a busy few months of cruising back to the North.

We decided to spend a week in Mossaic on the way back as we have a few engine overheating problems that need resolving and do not really plan to stop for very long anywhere for the rest of the summer.

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