Reached Castlenaudry

Had a good day today, did 28 km and 9 locks of which 3 were doubles and
one was a triple. A Dutch barge had set of before us from our over
night stop of Gardouch which meant we lost first go at the first lock,
but we found that after that there was no hold up. This was in contrast
to the previous day when we ended up going through the locks with 2
novices in a large cabin cruiser, they took ages getting in and out of
the locks and in one lock lost control of their bow line and would have
swung round on to us if the lock had been 3 inches wider! The lock
keepers have been helpful and friendly which has also been a big help.
We are now going down the locks which is a big relief as the locks are
narrow to get in and out of (being oval they are actually quite wide
inside) and it is much easier going down than up, on our penultimate
'up' lock I got caught by a side current in the entrance which moved the
boat about 6-12 inches which was enough for us to go in to the lock
wall, fortunately without doing any major damage. Because the locks are
oval the trickiest manoeuvre now is when we are in a series of locks (a
staircase) as the person on the helm has to angle the boat across from
the entrance to the side of the lock and there is only about 6 inches
either side to play with.
We reached the summit of the canal by lunchtime and hoped to stop at
Port Lauragais for lunch and to see the Canal du Midi exhibition there,
unfortunately the exhibition closes for winter and we'd missed it by 3
days.
Yesterday morning we had some cloud and this evening it has clouded over
again and we had a brief shower, other than that it has been wall to
wall blue skies and temperatures in the 20s or low 30's.