Previously peaceful Pommevic; sexy squid at Boé; green mooring at Sérignac and Buzet; nostalgic return to Moissac
This may be our last jaunt* west on the CdlG, and I felt nostalgic from the get-go. Next June, we’ll be cruising east to dry-dock in Toulouse before continuing along to where the Canal du Midi starts, at Sette, and then heading northwards to St Jean-de-Losne on the river Saône, where Karanja will spend winter 2020/2021.
(*For the first of my three 2018 posts on our westward cruise on the Canal de la Garonne from Moissac to Fontet, click here).
So, with scads of friends and family about to visit us in Moissac in mid-September, we set our sights on the toddlin town of Buzet, four very easy days of cruising away.
Blessedly cool weather! – cloudy, with a high of 24 degrees. It’s just four locks to the village of Pommevic: Moissac, l’Espagnette, Petit-Bézy and Braguel.
At leafy Pommevic halte nautique, we found Brugge-registered cruiser Ki and her friendly Belgian owners Patrick and Katinka. We first met them last month when they were moored at Bressol on the Tarn near Montauban.
Perhaps the best thing about Pommevic is how unbelievably dark the mooring area is at night. I sleep so well. This green mooring is also wonderfully quiet. Or it used to be…
Having taken three years to start using the boat’s dashboard radio USB port, we’re now regaling any unfortunate neighbours with music from Roy’s iPod or my Spotify played through the wheelhouse speakers. This is clearly Bad Form, for which I apologise.
Bound for Boé
On a beautifully crisp, clear morning we passed through Pommevic lock, followed by Valence d’Agen – the approach must be one of the prettiest around – where, happily, Somewhere had filled the lock for us on her way back to Moissac.
Then come La Magisterre, La Noble and St Christoffe, including a couple of nice long stretches. To round off a perfect day’s downhill cruising, there was a mooring available on Boé’s new quay, just behind Elaine and Clive’s Cochon Noir.
Clive took my rope and agreed to come over with Elaine for an apéro before Roy and I went off to dinner.
Review: Le Carré Gourmand, Boé
I might have balked at revisiting Boé had Roy not mentioned having dinner at Le Carré Gourmand again (reviewed here last year.)
We dined alfresco this time, under some magnificent shade trees. Emmanuel and Angeline were again on form; he speaks excellent English, and she enunciates so slowly and so clearly that you hardly realise she’s speaking French.
We had the €29 menu: the foie-gras marbré, followed by encornets dorés (fried calamari on a bed of cold ratatouille) for Roy, and, for me, brochettes de canard – chunks of the tender breast or magret roasted together with whole duck hearts and served with polenta. Dining from beak to tail-feather, one could say. To finish, an exquisitely rich version of crème brûlée.
Just 600m from the port at Boé (turn right at the bridge and take Rue de la Revolution) is a great boulangerie that bakes the best little pain complet (wholemeal bread) ever. What is more, if you carry on up to the main road and turn right, in less than ten minutes you will find a big, fancy Intermarché supermarket with everything you could possibly need. (Thanks for the tip, Trish!)
The little port office is closed on Sundays and Mondays, so if you leave before 9am on a Tuesday you may get away with paying the three-euro mooring charge. But if you’re too slow off the mark, the lady in charge – Sylvie? – will trot around to demand money with menaces.
Sailing to Sérignac
Another beautiful morning: blue skies, just 10 degrees Centigrade and promising to rise to 29.
Four hours on the go today, starting with an hour’s cruising before we hit the trickily placed perche* that heralds the Agen aqueduct and the four locks that follow it.
(*A perche is the rod, suspended mid-stream, that you – meaning I – have to grasp and twist in order to alert the automatic lock that a boat is approaching.)
Here’s an idea of what crossing the Agen aqueduct is like:
This was a relatively busy day on this generally quiet canal. Big barge Anna came through the second lock, and we had to wait for the third one, too.
From there, it’s about another hour to Sérignac; the canal seemed more overgrown than it was last year.
Once again there was no room for us at the Sérignac wharf, so we used our pins to green-moor on the opposite bank. Heather and Simon (Madeleine) came over to say hello.
Sérignac to Buzet-sur-Baïse
An easy run today – 6km or so to the first lock, de L’Auvignon, another good 7km stretch and then an aqueduct over the river Baïse and a chain of two locks: de Baïse and de Larderet.
Arriving in the main port of Buzet, our delight at finding the capitainerie mooring vacant was short-lived. Hardly had we attached our forward line than the Rosa arrived and sounded her horn – putain! – so we perforce moved on and luckily found a spot to green-moor not far from the bridge.
Melburnians Peter and Liz McKeand (our friends Rob and Cherie’s new partners on Rovi 1) paused for a chat, and we had dinner with them at nearby Le Vigneron.
Review: Restaurant Le Vigneron, Buzet
This place hugely deserves its high rating on TripAdvisor, #2, immediately after our previous favourite, Auberge Le Goujon qui Fretille – reviewed last year here. (How does one village come to have so many good restaurants?)
Le Vigneron’s spacious interior was playing host to an amazingly long table of diners, but still had room for many more. We found ourselves on a nice verandah at the back. The place serves traditional regional food, with several fixed price menus ranging from €15.90 upwards plus a big carte.
Though we “weren’t hungry”, everything was just so lovely that we ate it all. Whether or not you order the potage, it comes anyway; today’s was a creamy tomato soup with bits of barley – fantastic! Roy refused the starters on our €15.90 menu, but ended up sharing my pied de porc (pig’s foot), plainly slow-braised to gelatinous perfection and simply served with a caper sauce. (I could almost feel the collagen seeping from my digestive tract into my bloodstream and rushing north to plump up my wrinkles.)
For mains came richly stewed joues de bœuf (beef cheeks) for Roy, and a duo of merlu (hake) with pommes de terre gratinées (cheesy potatoes) for me. Peter and Liz loved their tender magret de canard (duck breast) with green pepper sauce.
Finally, they roll out the infamous dessert trolley, hand each of you a large plate and encourage you to choose as many confections as take your fancy. Mine was a rhum baba with Armagnac-soaked prunes from Agen; Roy chose rice pudding, rescued from nursery status by some of those alcoholic prunes. Including coffees and at least a couple of bottles of Buzet rosé, it came to around €25 a head – incredible value for such a memorable meal.
Bike-ride to Damazan
Next morning, leaving Roy to continue digesting dinner, I joined Peter and Liz on a delightful bike-ride to the village of Damazan, 4km from Buzet. (Roy insisted that one of the tyres on his bike had developed a puncture, and sent me off with strict instructions* not to (a) lose my bike, or (b) allow it to be stolen.)
Thursday is market day in Damazan village square, in the shade of the medieval bastide that, uniquely, houses the mairie upstairs.
It was a tiny market that nevertheless had good veggies and seafood; sausages for the barbie and duck pâté were sourced from the boucherie down the road. I found the best pastries ever at one of two boulangeries, and we shared them over coffees.
Back at Buzet port, Roy joined us at a table outside Îsle des Bateaux for a chat over beers and a plate of French fries. (Here in France, though, you just call them fries.)
A few hours later, who should I bump into but Tony and Trish (Anneke), who had just lunched largely at Le Vigneron with their camper-vanning Kiwi compatriots Damien and Sally. They kindly took me along in their car to the Buzet Co-op Cave, where I made a small but satisfactory dent in the debit card.
Farewell to Summer
Autumn came punctually on the 1st of September – it was like the clicking of a switch. Mornings were suddenly chilly (down to eight or nine degrees), time to unearth those sheepskin slippers from the back of the cupboard.
Though we have so much to look forward to, a big part of me did not want to go back to Moissac. It would have preferred to continue cruising along this dreamy canal through the tranquil countryside on our beloved boat – if not forever, at least for another couple of weeks.
We had a lot to be happy about. For ten whole days, we hadn’t needed either to fill up with water nor – thanks to the solar panels – to plug into electricity. That feeling of self-sufficiency was wonderful.
What’s more, this year’s cruising was in some ways the best so far – and indubitably the most relaxed. Roy is now so skilled at manoeuvring the boat in trickier situations; we both feel much more comfortable in the locks, whether going upstream or downstream; plus, we’ve worked out different techniques with the ropes to suit different situations. As a result, we generally feel more capable of handling the unexpected.
Roll on the summer 2020 cruising – it’s going to be a corker!
To round off, here are a couple of takeouts from the journey back:
