Le Somail to Capestaing

Saturday, September 22nd

The day started being woken by swans – black swans! Where did they come from? Funnily enough, they have been the only animals of any kind to have attitude.

Then we walked the few hundred metres back into the village to get the daily baguettes. Unfortunately, we were too “smart” and should have gone to the canal barge shop on the other side of the bridge.

Luckily, by the time we realised our mistake they still had a few baguettes, and breakfast was assured – remember the apricot jam from yesterday?! The "captain" was ready too:

We had a relatively late start because we only had about 25 km to do, and there were no locks. It was overcast, calm, and quiet, but keeping to the 8 km per hour limit we still had a 3 hour trip into Capestaing. It was peaceful, the canal was meandering more than usual, and there was relatively little traffic. The various 17^th century aquaducts were a reminder of the engineering genius that the Canal du Midi is.

At about 1:00pm we decided to stop for lunch before entering Capestaing. About this point the canal diverges - north to Beziers and south to Narbonne:

We've just come from Carcassonne.

At this point, Prue noticed something odd about the “plumbing” – it appeared we had no water. Our tranquil day just turned to merde. We discovered that a leaky pipe had emptied the entire contents of the water tank into the kitchen drawers! And guess what we had stored in the top drawer?! - the loo paper and the lunch baguette were very soggy...!

We tried to call Locaboat, but French “lunch” intervened again. What else to do but have lunch as well, and get into Capestaing tout de suite! After entering the port via the smallest bridge on the entire Canal:

...we found a nice spot and called base Argens where we got immediate service (we have become their dream and nightmare customers all at once). 

The sweet young Clement arrived within half  an hour and under his direction we moved the boat closer to a water supply. Here’s where the situation became “ugly”.

We tied up next to another Locaboat boat, and then a confrontation ensued between the lovely Clement and the ugly English owner of the local hire boat company (Hapimag – oxymoron). Now you don’t call Prue “darling” and get away with it – he’ll keep.

Poor Clement diagnosed our problem as a broken tap pipe, went back to Argens and got some new parts and had the problem fixed relatively painlessly. Merci Clement.

Dinner was spaghetti with chorizo and tomato sauce, and a bottle of local red purchased several days ago. Delicious. The day ended with clear skies, perfect temperature, and the dregs of a bottle of red on the “poop deck”.

  
The fantastic old cathedral of Capestaing formed a lovely backdrop as the sun sank slowly in the west (yes, today is the equinox Prue, whatever). 

Bonne nuit!