Getting the Twingo to Villeton; skinning a cat in Nérac; snail soirée in Damazan; petrol-pump wine in boozy Buzet; three canal-side resto reviews; Bastille Day – let them eat paella; Allez les Bleus!

There’s more than one way to skin a cat. Karanja’s 4.3m width being too wide for the river Baïse locks, we’d have to explore Nérac (see the featured photo above) and area a different way – by car. That entailed getting a train to Moissac to fetch the Twingo from its garage.

First, we’d have to find a place: (a) where we’d be happy to leave the boat while fetching the car, and (b) with good train links to Moissac. That place turned out to be a hamlet called Villeton.

Villeton is just 12km and two locks from Buzet – Berry and La Gaule. Going downstream, just before the bridge at PK146 is La Fallotte, which has pegs and free mooring. (Remember this for the return journey in a few weeks’ time.)

Villeton has a well-maintained stretch of mooring. Boats come and go: there’s not much to keep anyone here for long, not even a place to buy bread.

Fifty metres from the mooring is the mairie of Villeton; next door is bar-restaurant L’Ancre, and next door to that is a museum of farm implements that I meant to visit but never did.

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Fetching the Twingo

Straight after mooring, I called to book a 4.30pm cab  to  Tonneins station, about 5km from Villeton, where we’d catch the 5.10pm train to Agen. (There are only two a day.) From there, hourly trains run to Moissac.

When we got back to the boat around 9pm, fellow Piper boat Kanumbra had arrived, so we went over for a chat with Tony (Aussie) and Rita (Swiss). Having spent seven or eight summers in this region, they are mines of information. We arranged to meet up with them the next night at Damazan, at the regular Tuesday night market, complete with live music and food stalls.

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Nérac

Having the car with us is fantastic! First up was a drive to the splendid medieval town of Nérac.

In the wake of my FOMO regarding the Baïse, I’m pleased to report that we did get to cruise this river. Not on Karanja, but on a two-hour commercial cruise (€13.50) from Nérac.

It went through two different locks, avalant (going down) on the way out, and then montant (going up) on the way back. These locks are indeed narrow, confirmed the captain: 4.2 metres wide, giving his 4.1m-wide cruise-boat barely 2.5cm (two inches) on either side. Being such a tight fit, there’s no need to moor the boat against the sides – you’re rubbing up against them!

Soon after casting off, he had to bump his way through the narrow port-side arch of the Vieux Pont to approach the tricky first lock.

Here’s a slide-show of the cruise:

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Damazan marché nocturne

Damazan has a regular Tuesday night festival market during summer, held partly under cover in the town square and with live music.

Rita and Tony had reserved space for us, as well as for Phillip and Terrie, Terrie’s daughter Steph and her husband Adam – and also Kevin and Sara, who run Au Bord de L’eau in Buzet.

We were among the earliest arrivals, soon after 6.30pm, and though the place looked pretty full by 7.30pm, we were told that it’s usually a lot busier. Though the World Cup semi-final between France and Belgium was being screened in the square, a lot of people must have stayed home to watch it.

I felt sorry for the band, who had to keep it down and cut it short.

We started with a French sort of pizza, and I had to try the escargots from the colourful snail man (below). How much for six?, I asked. The single euro he quoted seemed very reasonable, so I thought I’d give it a whorl. (Sorry.) But then he dished up about a dozen of the little beasts.

These snails were huge for their shells, filling them completely and having to be tugged out with a certain level of determination.

The taste was a little muddy; the texture rather nicely chewy, but a bit gritty at the end – the stomach? The anus? It could have done with more garlic, it must be said.

Most of the people around us were old hands at this sort of event, so we followed their lead and ordered from the duck stall.

It was fabulous: we shared a portion of magret de canard (breast) filled with foie gras, its fatty edge nicely reduced on a hot grill, and then cooked to perfection (below left); and another of aiguillettes de canard (below right: breast fillet?), cooked to medium pinkness and served with huge fried tomatoes, a few lettuce leaves and a couple of chunks of baguette. €26 for the lot.

The Lys de Buzet Rosé (€5.50) was going down well, and we would have had more of of it if Roy wasn’t driving us back to Villeton. Oh, and France beat Belgium 1-0.

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Boozy Buzet

Seeing an internet reference to Friday being market day in Buzet, we set off to find it; but at 11.30am the sleepy village centre showed no evidence of any market, past, current or future. Our next stop was Le Cave, Buzet’s famous wine outlet.

It does a brisk trade in bulk wine dispensed through the sort of pump you find at a petrol station. Be it red, white or pink, this perfectly drinkable tipple costs just €2.20 a litre: that’s US$2.56, SAR34.11 or S$3.51 per litre.

But I couldn’t think how we’d store it; you’d have to fiddle about with decanting it from a large plastic container, chilling it, and then focus on drinking lots of the same wine every day before it went off.

So we tasted a couple of whites, a couple of rosés, and – finding that each of us preferred a different white and a different rosé – ended up buying equal amounts of everything we’d tried. The price? A little over €6 a bottle, and pas de stress.

Around Buzet

What is this castle, perched on a hill? We spent a good hour hunting it down through the byways of Buzet, but to no avail. What looked like a possible entranceway was barred by a firmly shackled gate and obscured by dense foliage.

No matter – here are some views typical of the area: Buzet vineyards, Buzet sunflowers and other scenes of bucolic Buzet beauty.

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Lockside Restos

#1 Villeton bar-restaurant L’Ancre is run by friendly couple Nabil and Sendrine. When we arrived and popped across for a shandy, he  was barbecuing sausage for lunch. That was today’s plat, with which you’d get a starter, dessert, coffee and a quart of wine for just €13.90 at lunchtime – le repas ouvrier, or workers’ meal again – or €19 in the evening.

Nabil carefully explained that a quart in this context is a quarter-litre of wine – not a British quart!

We did have a dinner at L’Ancre, but, though the service was good and we liked the people,  I can’t honestly recommend the food – and particularly not the starter buffet.

#2 La chope et le pichet is housed in the lock-house of La Gaule lock (no. 42), only an 800m walk or bike-ride from Villeton along the tow-path. This being the eve of 14 July, Bastille Day, it was fully booked, but while we chatted to the Belgian patron, Thierry, someone called to cancel and we got our table.

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Thierry and Katharina Meersman/Vervack won a 25-year contract with VNF to convert this lock house into a restaurant. They’ve done a sympathetic restoration job, even using the original paint colours; completely unlike the knocking down of walls and opening up of space that’s been done at the newly opened Île des Oiseaux, their counterpart in Buzet (reviewed at the end of this post).

We had a lovely meal. After a couple of coupes of champagne (€8.50 each), Roy had the excellent steak tartare (€19). I thoroughly enjoyed the interesting chicken Madras salad with its strategic dollops of mayonnaise and a side of Belgian fries. (Heaps better than the average French fries, it must be said.)

Roy’s apple crumble (€6) wasn’t really a crumble and was a tad stodgy, but it was freshly made and prettily presented with fresh fruit and sorbet. As evening fell over the still waters and darkened the shadows along the tree-lined canal, we lingered over a bottle of delicious sauvignon blanc (€21) before crossing the tiny, hump-backed lock bridge and heading home.

14 July, Bastille Day – let them eat paella!

My Bastille Day started* with a hot and sunny run toward L’etang Maziéres; but, though I saw plenty of signs for the lake, I never saw any water as such. Mainly, I was running through farmland, mostly maize plantations bursting with tender young cobs. By bike would have been a better way to explore, I think.

(*Sorry, that’s not quite accurate. The day actually began with me singing lustily along to the French national anthem, “Le Marseillaise”, on YouTube a few times – first the long, official version, and then a shorter version. (The snoozing Roy was disappointingly unappreciative, especially after the third replay.)

Around 7pm, we took a drive to see what was happening in neighbouring Tonneins: nothing was, but it’s a nice-looking town.

Checking the poster (above) we’d seen before in the centre ville, we headed for nearby Damazan and its lake Moulineau, where eventually we found the stage, the trestle tables, and the serving area. There, they were adding the final touches to a giant paella(€9 for a plateful), which turned out to be delicious: spicier than expected, and full of all the good stuff apart from seafood, such as whole garlic cloves, broad beans and black olives.

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Three-piece band Furiosso did a good job with such numbers as I Shot the Sheriff, Stray Cat Strut and more, their energy making up for a Gallic lack of closing consonants, for example: Very superstisha, writies o the war…

We left before the 11pm feu d’artifice (fireworks), however, while the rest of the local population was pouring in. As I write this back in Villeton, on the poop deck of Karanja, I can hear the rat-tat-tat-tat of the climax.

So, this was our second 14 July in France. Last year, we were in St Jean-de-Losne, enjoying a bal populaire on the canal quay with Fred and Vinny from Piper Boats. (For more on that, click here and scroll down to Liberté, Égalité and Fraternité.)

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Jazz and the World Cup Final, 15 July

Around lunchtime, we drove off to Casteljaloux, famed for its thermal springs, which I’d love to try sometime. Today was the second of a two-day jazz festival, for which the entry fee is €20 a day. But it was free to enter until 3pm – the main performances start after that; so we lingered for an hour or so to buy me a cheap and nasty hat, sip a glass of rosé, nibble some frites, and listen to the trad jazz band (below).

After that, we were just in time to get to Buzet’s Île aux Bateaux for the 5pm World Cup final. It was a great match – and great that France beat Croatia 4-2. A violent storm came up during the game, wreaking havoc with the restaurateurs’ alfresco arrangements and causing the electricity to fail – not once but numerous times – adding to the general drama and suspense.

Normally, I care little to nothing about sport on TV, but it was something to be in France, with French people, at what was only the second time this country has won the FIFA World Cup. The first was in 1998, on home territory, in a 3-0 final against Brazil.

It reminds me of the day Italy won the 1982 World Cup final against Western Germany, 3-1; I was in a small town on the Amalfi Coast (I think) when the entire country erupted ecstatically onto the streets.

One last canal-side resto review:

#3 Île aux Bateaux (where we watched the footy final)

Recently converted lock-house Île aux Bateaux keeps its menu simple: several starters, including a really good charcuterie board, and then either moules frites, saucisson frites, poulet frites (mussels, sausage or chicken and chips) or salade du chef, around €9 each.

My mussels were wonderful, but Roy ordered the sausage – and neither of us enjoys those dry, boring plats of some sort of meat with fries, unrelieved by sauces, veggies or salad.

However, a bottle of Buzet blanc (€14) and the general champion du monde atmosphere saved the day. Allez les Bleus!