Passed Trebes

Got through the staircase of locks at Trebes this afternoon and decided
to stop for the night. Slower day today as we had to wait at several
locks and were travelling with other boats.
The weather remains hot and sunny, but the wind is back though nowhere
near as bad as when we were in Castelnaudary so it has not held us up.

latest progress

We stayed in Castelnaudary until the 10th when the wind moderated (30+
kmh with big gusts) as it would have made getting in and out of locks
very tricky. Castelnaudary was for us a bit bland as pretty much every
thing is covered in sand coloured stucco and the museum was closed (it
is only open from July to the 18th Sept).
One night we were woken up by loud splashes which turned out to be coypu
doing belly flops off the bank into the canal, which reminded me that
just before Castelnaudray we passed a bloke walking two rottweilers
which were taking it in turns to do belly flops into the canal - quite a
sight!
We have got so conditioned to the facilities in ports not being
available when the Capitainerie is shut that we did not bother to go on
the main quay, only to find out that they have a card system to allow
access at all times so we missed out on WiFi as well as the other
facilities (we arrived on a Friday and the capitainerie was not open
over the weekend).
Today we finished 1 lock short of getting to Carcassone: we were 2
minutes off the lock when the lock keeper passed us in his car having
finished for the day; however, it is a quiet place to moor up and we
should get to Carcassone by 11am tomorrow if all goes well so we will
have most of the day to visit the bits we missed last time we were
here. The next stop after Carcassone is Trebes and between there and
Capestang we have some knowledge of the canal as in the past we have
done 2 holidays on hired motor boats there.
The canal has changed in 2 major ways: it is more windy and it is going
through vineyards. There is not much traffic on the canal, but it is
depressing to see how oblivious people are of how to drive on the river:
we regularly see people going passed moored boats and close to the bank
at full speed which causes boats to pull their moorings and speeds the
erosion of the banks.
We have a good system for getting in and out of locks now, the only
downside is that we are slow at entering, which got us a rebuke from
another boater who was rushing to get someplace, but it was
water of a ducks back to us as our priority is not to damage Mango. We
stopped for water after that lock and let him get ahead.

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.

Some general canal photos

Waiting pontoon for a lock, they are not all as good!

Trees at the begging of october

Waiting for the lock to fill, bucket has the laundry in to soak!

Agen and Moissac

Garrone from the aqueduct at Agen

Agen Aqueduct over the Garrone

 

Helen steering Mango over the Garrone

Agen public moorings, we decided to give it a miss!

Channel in to Moissac, pleased nothing was coming the other way!

The port at Moissac

The abbey church at Moissac, the tympaneum is very impressive

Cloisters in the abbey church at Moissac

Towing, Marmande and Mas d'Agenais Pictures

Towing the hardway, 2 lines keep her parallel to the bank

Towing the easy way

Street in Marmande old quarter with Bromptons

Marmande, patterns of bricks filling in between the wood

Bridge at Mas d'Agenais

In Toulouse

Got through the locks in Toulouse this morning and are now moored safely
in the City and hope to get a WiFi connection to upload pics.
Transiting the locks was very scarey as they are fully automatic, no
green button to press to say you are ready, and were a different layout
to the ones we have used to date so we were desperately tying on warps
as the gates closed. The mitigation was that the water was let in
gently so it was OK, but we did not know that at the time! Three people
would make transiting the next canals easier as you have to let someone
off to open the gates whereas on the locks we have done to date you
twist a pole hanging from a switch as you pass it on the water.
We have until the end of the month to get through the canals, if we
don't we are stuck were ever we end up until next March!