Loving and leaving Moissac; Three Men in a Boat: Poms in Lycra at Pommevic; rainstorms, men at work and Le Carré Gourmand in Boé; time with the Thomsons in stormy Sérignac; fish & chips, football and FOMO in Buzet
Hanging out in and around Moissac for a month had been fun, but you don’t need a boat for that. It was time to start our summer cruising proper, heading west in the direction of Bordeaux. We’ll be on the Canal de Garonne (also called Le Canal Latéral de la Garonne) all the way from Moissac to Castets-en-Dorthe, where the canal ends.
Unlike last summer’s adventure, this gentle cruise has no strict agenda. We’ll take it as we find it.
#1 Pommevic, 3 July
After three easy locks: Espagnette, Petit Bézy and Braguel over 14 gentle kilometres, we’d stop at Pommevic’s shady halte nautique if there was room for us.
Luckily there was. Our timing was spot-on: Noordster was moored to the near end of the two-boat-length pontoon, and we filled up the rest of it shortly before Rouen-registered Carpe Diem* arrived and was relegated to the natural bank in front of us.
They were merely stopping for lunch, though; the French are religious about lunch. (And breakfast. And dinner.)
* Q: How many boats named Carpe Diem are there? A: A lot.
Sam (on the right) is the owner of Noordster; the other two are Andy and Dick, and all, from their accents, northern English.
They’d cycled 80km that day, and were planning on staying put at Pommevic until the weekend (despite the posted 48-hour limit). Off they cycled again – this time to a bar in neighbouring Valence to watch England trounce Colombia 2-0 in the football World Cup. To their horror,the bar closed at half-time in the match; they had to come back to catch the end of the second half.
#2 Boé, 4 July
A longer stretch today from Pommevic to Boé – 24km and a good five hours with five locks: Pommevic, Valence, Lamagisterre, Le Noble, St Christophe and Boé.
A couple of locks west of Pommevic, the canal-side building above has been developed as a charming café selling fruit and vegetable juices, teas, coffee and snacks. It shows what can be done to preserve the waterways’ historic infrastructure.
We passed our Moissac-based neighbours on Grettige Henrietta (built in 1932) headed back to Moissac.
Having visited both Valence d’Agen and Agen city by car, there was no reason for us to stop at either place, so it was straight on to Boé.
Like all boaters, we’re very grateful that they’re working on the port moorings at Boé. And yes, we managed to moor with our pins just a little further on. But why does this work have to be done in July? French schools close tomorrow for the summer, and then the season starts properly.
There’s no capitainerie as such in Boé, but the friendly woman manning a little shop selling ice creams, chilled drinks (including wine) and so on said it was due to be completed by 13 July. Barring delays, she added. (Read between the lines, I thought.)
These workers got a bit too close for comfort, but once they’d knocked off for the day – jumping straight into the canal to cool off, and who could blame them in this stinking heat? – the pile they’d driven in came in handy for our forward rope.
Our guide-book had dismissed Boé as having “little of interest”. But what did I find, less than 200m from our boat? Fine dining restaurant Le Carré Gourmand!
Review: Le Carré Gourmand, Boé
Run by husband and wife team Angelique and Pierre, this self-styled “traditional” restaurant is located in a beautiful old brick building with a courtyard. It has two dining rooms, with well-spaced tables; ours was in the second room, next to a window with views on to a lovely garden that I’m sure they make use of when it’s not raining.
Pierre’s service was immaculate, very much in the formal French style. He poured our two flutes of champagne (€11 each) from an impressive magnum, and then recommended the Pas de Deux, Domaine de Gensac (€29), to go with the lamb. He decanted it, asked us if we’d like it slightly chilled, and then brought an ice-bucket to do the job. Parfait!
Both of us had the épaule d’agneau, lamb’s tasty shoulder cut, slow-cooked for 6.5 hours and then gently finished for another 30 minutes. It came with potato and some nicely crunchy sugar-snap peas, and was fabulous. For dessert, we shared a light and peachy confection (€10), and Roy’s coffee came with a quartet of mini-canalettes: to share, said Angelique. (Good!)
So, this was half the price of Michelin-starred Le Violon d’Ingres (reviewed in my last Paris blog-post), and we left it feeling at least twice as happy.
#3 Sérignac-sur-Garonne, 5 July
Last night’s storm brought cooler weather, and washed most of the dust and incy-wincies off the boat. Less appreciated were today’s intermittent rain-showers, strategically timed to coincide with when I was tending the front rope in the lock and had left my rain-jacket in the wheelhouse.
Thirty minutes’ cruising from Boé, before you get to Agen, is a useful row of bollards (below): not a bad place to moor, should there be no place at Boé.
We didn’t much like Agen port; its main pontoon is often full of hire-boats, especially on Fridays when they do their weekly changeover; and the other options didn’t appeal – either inconveniently across the water, or right on the road. (That said, we had been looking at it from the point of view of leaving Karanja there for a few days while went by train to Paris; it’s probably fine as a base for exploring Agen.)
Approaching the beautiful Agen aqueduct, which carries the Canal de Garonne across the Garonne River, you have to negotiate a tricky little bridge, almost immediately after which is a perche and the lights for both entering the aqueduct and negotiating the ensuing chain of four locks: Agen, Marionettes, Chabrieres and Rosette.
Suddenly, the lock controls are on the left (we’re still avalant, or going down). And these are fairly deep locks, three to four metres each. Coming back, we’ll be montant, so to avoid a lot of slimy ladder-climbing, I may decide to pull on some running shoes and lub the land.
From the chain of locks, it was a green and leafy 7km run to Sérignac-sur-Garonne. And no, what’s this? Again, the entire length of port moorings is undergoing maintenance.
Instead, temporary signs welcome you to wild-moor on the other side. The bridge also bears a special sign, indicating roughly that the mooring is re-beautifying itself, that the village, Sérignac, is ravished to welcome us, so we should moor and enjoy!
Next to us is Pedro, with Elaine and Simon on board; and we’ve hardly knocked in our pins and placed the gangplank when Angelique appears from the west, bearing Digby, Allison, their son Dylan and his girlfriend Taryn. Lekker – tonight, we braai!
In search of bread, milk and braai-meat, I wandered into the picturesque 13th-century village, with its 13th-century church and famous bell-tower, over the bridge and less than a kilometre away.
More signs: laminated ones that give information about the various buildings – who ran the butchery here hundreds of years ago; which was the post office; where the bakery. Right now, it all happens in just the one épicerie-boulangerie-boucherie (grocery-bakery-butchery), where another sudden rain-shower kept me trapped for a while.
Tonight, we braai!
A concrete table with seating came in useful. What a beautifully cool evening, and what a wonderful old plane tree! Digby spotted a branch that he thought might fall on us, but we were spared.
6-8 July, Buzet
Roy having kept Digby up drinking rum way past their bedtimes, it was close on 11am before we set off – Angelique heading east to Agen, and Karanja continuing west to Buzet.
As we left port, 111-year-old barge Passim, which we last saw in our Castelsarrasin mooring, pulled out just ahead of us. Before long, however, she was forced to stop and wait, with us behind her, for a team of workers engaged in removing a large tree that had fallen across the canal. They were done in less than 20 minutes from the time we arrived – bravo, VNF!
Today’s first lock, L’Auvignon, was followed by the short aqueduct that allows the Canal de Garonne to cross the Baïse* River, and then immediately a chain of two locks: Baïse and Larderet.
*It’s essential to pronounce this correctly; ba-ease, in accordance with the umlaut on the i. The word baise (pronounced bez) used to mean kiss in days of yore – but now it means fuck. That said, most English speakers here don’t know the difference, and probably wouldn’t give a baise anyway.
Karanja cruised into Buzet around 2pm, passing the first and larger port with its hire-boats, going under the bridge and finding the smaller port where we’d booked at.
Several stern-on moorings were available, but nothing alongside, so we moored as directed to the side of Les Vieux Papillons, currently unoccupied.
Exploring the main port (400m from our mooring), we timed it right to pop into the friendly lock-side restaurant-bar, L’îsle aux Bateaux, to watch the last ten minutes of the World Cup quarter-final, in which a deserving France won 2-0 against Uruguay.
Kevin Sharp, together with his wife, runs the smaller port and is the chef and owner of its restaurant and bar, Au Bord de L’eau.
Friday night is Fish & Chips (say “feesh ’n sheeps”) Brittanique night at Au Bord de L’eau. This was, seriously, the best fish and chips I can remember having: thin, light and crispy beer-battered cod with delicious skin-on chips, fresh baby peas (not that vile, mushy, farty, tinned stuff) and house-made sauce tartare. It came with chunks of fresh baguette, of course. This is France. (But no butter – this is the south of France.)
We skipped starters and shared a dessert, fresh peach melba. Including a bottle of local Buzet blanc and a coffee, it all came to €57.
Buzet Day 2, Saturday
Up at what nowadays passes for early (around 8am) to wash the sheets and festoon them along the boat rails to dry: it’s going to be another stinker – clear skies and 31 degrees. After that, a walk up into town to check out the mairie, the church, the Spar épicerie and half a dozen restaurants.
Then back to the canal for an eastwards stroll along the shady canal tow-path.
By the time I returned, Daisy had arrived from Moissac bearing Nick and Ian, and was moored next to us. In effect, Karanja is sandwiched between her and Les Vieux Papillons, but it’s only for tonight. Later came Dilli gaf with Julia and Tony, and then our Moissac neighbours, Californian Linda and Keith, on their nice old Dutch cruiser Swerver. It’s looking like a full house for this afternoon’s England-Sweden quarter-final.
In the end, Roy went alone to watch the 4pm match at Au Bord de L’eau, while I cowered in the air-conditioning. Gratifyingly, England won 2-0; less impressive was the next day’s news that some London yobs had trashed their local IKEA – and that was after winning?
The heat starts to ease off immediately the sun sinks behind tall trees on the opposite bank, around 7pm. By 8pm, we’d ordered dinner – oeuf en cocotte, burger gourmand and smoked salmon salad, all brilliant – and Terry had started playing. (Terry and Sandra live in the port aboard their boat Felix. They provide music on set nights, and Sandra helps out in the restaurant.)
Buzet Day 3, Sunday
While I was out for a jog – westward along the tow-path to the next village, Damazan – Nicky and Ian (Daisy), Julia and Tony (Dilli gaf), and Linda and Keith on their friends’ hired boat (what a good idea!), headed off to the double lock that descends to the river Baïse.
I had a terrible pang of FOMO last night while they were discussing their plans. But it’s simply not possible for our Karanja to navigate the Baïse. Even if we could be sure of the river being deep enough, our 4.27m width is just too wide for the Baïse locks. Daisy, for example, is 3.8m, and if she pulls in her fenders she can scrape through (not literally, we hope).
Case closed! (Or perhaps not quite, as my next blogpost may reveal…)
