écluses

We started off the morning with a trip to the boulangerie/épicerie in the town and stocked up on plenty of loaves. We had quite a few locks ahead of us today, so we made sure we had a hearty breakfast. It was pretty unbelievable how much bread, butter, marmalade and coffee we all managed to scoff every morning :)

After breakfast, Uncle Wes decided to check on the water leak. He opened the hatch to see the engine and there was a large pool of oil lying in the sump! It didn't look too good at all.

One of the scariest locks we did that morning was the lock at Béziers - no one gets out of the boat and you just tie up to metal bars that run from the top of the lock down into the water. It was so unbelievably high and when the water started to rush in, the boat was all over the place!

We were lucky to get through our first few locks as it was essential we made it to the 7 Locks of Fonseranes by 11.45am when the run up begins. If you miss that time, you must wait until about 4pm later in the day! Dad gave one of the lady lock-keepers a bottle of rosé for letting us through!

Through Béziers, we also went over a large aqueduct which was pretty impressive and saw the castle of the town in the distance.

Once we reached Les Ecluses de Fonseranes, I decided to get out of the boat to do the ropes. Because it's such an amazing sight to see the 7 locks in action, there was quite a large audience of schoolkids, tourists etc. No pressure then!! Each lock is quite difficult to steer in to; a bit like getting through the wee tiny bridges - it's so easy to bang into the sides. Luckily, we made it up the 7 locks unscathed!

After Fonseranes, it's not far to a 160m tunnel and then to a place called Colombiers where we decided to stop as it was a base for our boat company. We arrived and there were loads of other Canalous boats and a large garage with a couple of mechanics working inside. One of them was Tony, the guy who'd shown us how to drive our boat in Agde on the first day! We beckoned him over, he checked the oil issue and put in a call.

It would take 3 hours to fix and we really had no other choice but to wait. We filled up with water, a few of us had showers, we wrote our postcards and played a few games of Boggle to pass the time. It was such a cold day too, so even walking around the wee town wasn't a particularly pleasant experience. I bought us soup for lunch and that warmed us up no end :)

Finally, the oil leak was fixed, we had expressed our pissed offness to the guys from the Company and we set off once again - next stop, Capestang. Carrie had checked out the travel from Capestang to get Wes back to the hire car the next day. He had to get the train at 12.34 from Capestang train station and he'd get to Agde in no time.

We arrived in Capestang that evening and immediately went on the hunt for the train station so that Wes knew where he was headed in the morning. We found the Route de la Gare and walked up and up and up...no sign of a station. We eventually found some locals who told us there hadn't been a train running through Capestang since the 50s. We never really did find out how Carrie had managed to find the departure time, length of journey and fare details when there was, in fact, no train station at all in the town!

Dinner that night was a fancy one - we went to a great wee restaurant, had a really good French meal, plenty of wine and headed back to the boat for an early night.