Sunny start, cloudy by mid afternoon, hot and sultry. Around 8.30 a.m. a small British yacht from Plymouth, arrived having been overnight above the last lock. They’d had problems with the locks the day before and had called the keeper out four times. I walked up to the lock, which showed two reds, “en panne” (out of order). The yacht went in the lock, the gates closed behind them and that was that, nothing worked. Mike turned the pole, he got a yellow flasher for a couple of minutes then it went back to red. The woman off the yacht called the VNF again. We chatted on the lockside. No sign of the VNF so after half an hour I used the intercom. He replied that he was on the road and would be with us shortly (In the meantime Mike ‘phoned and got the same reply). He arrived, (a very pleasant chatty young man), and set the lock working for us. I’d taken a short shaft with me to get the ropes off Mike but didn’t need it. I forgot it and left it on one of the big piles of gravel lying on the lockside. It was just ten o’clock as we set off again. When we arrived at lock 1 Lalande the “itinerant” (mobile lock keeper) was checking the weed trap on the weir so I asked him if he could get my boat shaft for me. No problem. He ‘phoned someone then went off to collect it. We said au’voir to the Brits on the yacht, as they were in a hurry to get to Castelnaudary, and waited a few minutes for the man in a van to return. A large ex-hireboat with a Canadian flag was coming down to lock 1, but he’d missed the turn pole. He said to Mike that he’d been concentrating on missing all the kids in canoes from the training centre above the lock. Told him the keeper would be back in a few minutes. When he turned up with my boat shaft I gave him a bottle of Corbiéres (a nice red wine) to say thanks – it wouldn’t be easy to replace the small boat hook and it’s a very useful thing – and set off on the long pound into Toulouse. It was very noisy and very smelly in places. A buzzard sat in the top of an old dead tree oblivious of the noise. We passed an eight man rowing skiff, a clunky looking French vessel. The tramp was still living by the motorway under a bridge and a few tents and makeshift wooden shacks had appeared in the undergrowth by the motorway. Past the line of moored houseboats, noticing there were a few gaps, and into the port de l’Embouchure where we swung hard left on to the Canal du Midi. I got off at the landing below the first lock on the Canal du Midi and walked up. A young chap was working the locks. The little yacht had just left and was dawdling above lock 1 Bearnais. The keeper emptied the lock and we stood chatting, he invited me in to look at the command post – six monitors for watching his three locks plus one with a schematic of the first section of the canal de la Garonne. He said he used to work at Niffer lock on the Rhine near Strasbourg and I told him we’d passed the winter two years back at Saverne. He said he came south for the sunshine – so did we, but we’re heading back north again. The little yacht was waiting for us in lock 2 Les Minimes and we went up side by side again. We used our centre rope on a bar in the wall. On up through the disused lock at Matabiau and into the deep lock, Bayard. We had a bar for the fore end and a floater for the stern. The yacht had a floater for the stern but only a ladder at the bows so he used the two rope system (put one rope as high as you can reach, then when that’s getting level with the boat reach up again and put the second rope as high as you can reach, taking the first one off, etc). The water shoved us off the wall by about a foot, but otherwise we rose quite gently. The keeper had said his lunchtime was flexible, so we were pleased he let us through the top lock without making us wait an hour for lunch (although the beggars’ tent city below the lock had disappeared, we were quite glad to note - however there were two bodies in sleeping bags under the next bridge (the one with Riquet’s statue) on the off side and two tents under the next arched bridge; Toulouse has had problems with vagrants for a long time) We followed the yacht into the city centre. They stopped next to an old péniche and said they were stopping to shop at Aldi. Mike took photos of a VNF dredger.
Passed a Dutch cruiser heading downhill at the aqueduct over the motorway. Ate our lunch going through the first Midi avenue of plane trees. We passed a tug pushing an empty dredging pan and another just before the start of the houseboats at Ramonville. Zambezi (the council’s youth boat, that frequently moored at Valence) was on dock in Ramonville. I got off below Castanets lock with a rope to drop down to Mike. No sign of the lock keeper so I had a look round for him - not doing the gardening and I spoke to the old black dog who was chained by the office in the shade. The keeper appeared to say he was on the ‘phone and would be with us in a couple of minutes. Mike brought the boat in and I dropped the rope back on the roof as there was a vertical pole in the extended section at the tail end of the oval lock for him to attach to. The sky started clouding over just after three o’clock – arrival of the afternoon rain showers? We went past the dredging tip just below Vic and took a photo of the guy with the digger waiting for the next pan to unload.
The pan wasn’t far behind us as we’d heard the steerer hoot for the lock as we left Castanets. The gates were open at Vic so we sailed straight in and I climbed on the roof to throw a rope around a bollard at the start of the straight section. The blonde lady keeper waved us forward into the oval section (no thanks, not when there’s a straight bit!) but we said we were OK in the back end of the chamber and she said OK as long as she could get the gates shut - then she opened the wrong paddles and blew us off the wall! She didn’t look very happy, perhaps she’d been watching something interesting on TV in the portacabin by the deserted, decaying lock house. There was plenty of space for us above the lock on the old quay between the two remaining houseboats. Tied up, helped Mike get the moped off the roof (the yacht went past hoping to get through the next lock, Montgiscard, 7.5 kms distant, before they closed at six) and he went off to get the car from Lacourt.
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