Bouzigues to (almost) Lattes

Thursday, September 27th

Just as the sun was setting last night the sky began to clear, and by the time we were tucked up in bed the sky was full of stars and the moon almost full. By morning it was still quite serene, but a little high cloud had appeared.

By 8:00am the oyster farmers were already out tending their crops (if that’s what you call a field of oysters).

We backed out of Bouzigues and headed straight for the Sete marker buoys.

Unfortunately, after the buoys, the estuary became confused, yet again – I think these oyster farmers and fishermen are deliberately making it difficult for we tourists!

Ahoy – there’s the entry to the canal (in this case the beginning of the Canal Rhone to Sete). This was the first of many French style “Sylvania Waters” that we would pass through today.

For quite a few kilometres we passed through industrial estates and storage tanks – quite a change from the plain tree lined Canal du Midi of the past 10 days.

Then we entered another estuarial lake, although on this occasion the canal was sectioned off and therefore easy to follow.

At around 10:30am we arrived in Frontignan, home to frontignac, and also a road bridge that only opens to boats at 8:30am and 4:00pm – that’s a long wait, but better to be safe than sorry (that’s us, first in the “queue”).

What else to do but visit the local market (conveniently held every Thursday), and have a coffee.

Visit the fantastic 12^th century walled church.

And buy Prue a new watch (5 euros, including spare battery) – her Fossel watch battery had died a few days ago, and she’s lost without the time.

Back to the boat, and the long wait until bridge opening time. Boats arrived during the afternoon, including another hippy boat.

And the queue began to grow (we were still first, though).

But when the bridge lifted at 4:00pm on the dot it was every man for themselves (well, every Frog man!). It didn’t occur to some of our fellow queue members that boats coming the other way had priority – chaos! Prue: “what the fuck?!”.

Where is an Englishman when you need him?

Back in the next estuary we played tag with the queue jumpers:

And were shadowed by another potential pirate boat:

Some faux Aussies passed us (for God knows what reason) and then we all passed a very large cargo boat that seemed to take up most of the navigable channel in the canal – hair raising!

At the cross roads, some went right, some straight ahead, and we went left into the Lez river and the last few kilometres of our canal boat odyssey – more Sylvania Waters, but on a much more humble scale.