julies

Yes, Bordeaux traffic was bad every time we went through it. And, at the end of our boat trip we needed to get a different ride into the train station in Marmande from our boat drop off because the driver who was supposed to pick us up was stuck in Bordeaux traffic and running very late.

So, my advice for others who may be planning a trip in the area: To see the city, stay in Bordeaux itself and do everything there you want. Then, if you want to drive around the surrounding countryside, pick a base outside of the city somewhere. This, however, still isn't a complete solution because in order to cross from one side of the metropolitan area to the other you will still need to go through Bordeaux's traffic unless you stick completely to the smaller side roads.

bilboburgler

Getting across Bordeaux, use public transport or a bike.

StCirq

Bordeaux parking is a bi&ch. Getting in and out of town is a PITA. Same for La Rochelle. Our last trip there was a bit of a nightmare. Arrived about 8 pm in pitch black darkness - I don't know why they can't pay for streetlamps on the major roads into town. Could not find our apart-hotel to save our lives. Stopped at a Thai restaurant where no one spoke French or English or any other language we can communicate in. Never heard of it. So we stumbled on, into town and out of town again, maybe 3 times. Called the apartment owners. No answer. Finally stopped at the main hospital (they should know, right?) and they directed us to a tiny alleyway where suddenly we saw the sign for the apart-hotel. Of course it was past check-in time, so I had to call the night-desk people who weren't onsite and get a code number to punch in and get into the building. Amazingly, it worked.

I was on crutches at the time, and the elevator in the building didn't work, so I had to butt-bump my way up to the apartment, to the consternation of several other clients. It was not a pretty day, and while I'm usually pretty sanguine about stuff that happens when you're traveling, I was not a happy camper that day.

We had been thinking about selling our place in the Dordogne and buying a nice little place in La Rochelle. That idea went out the window pretty quickly.

julies

So, we were not the only ones who found la Rochelle to be difficult to maneuver around....

STARTING OUT ON OUR CANAL DU GARONNE BOATING ADVENTURE

Our final morning in la Rochelle we returned to the great food market and picked up some prepared foods that we could reheat while on our boat. We would have a small kitchen facility with fridge, stove and sink, but we really didn’t want to make the effort to do any real cooking. And, we knew we wanted to have some flexibility (and some food on hand) for those occasions when we didn’t feel like venturing out to a restaurant for dinner or when we might miss out on restaurants meal times. Wise thinking on our part because, while on our boat trip, we made quite a number of our meals by just reheating already-prepared foods we’d purchased in the local markets.

So, we packed up our gear and our newly purchased, already-prepared food from the market and set out in the car for the drive to our canal boat adventure. The weather definitely had us nervous, and we were also starting to wonder if the ten nights we had booked on the boat was too many nights. As with every trip, we had had to do some balancing and make a decision on how to allocate our time. The decision to rent the boat or ten nights meant that we’d be foregoing any real time in Toulouse before our flight home. So, while driving to the boat base we made a pact. If we weren’t having a lot of fun and/or if we didn’t think our time in France was most wisely spent by staying on the boat, we would just turn in the boat early and forfeit a couple days rental. We ended up following through on our pact.

One of the issues that many people do not consider when booking one of these canal boats is how to get to the pick-up and drop off points because many of them aren’t exactly easy and convenient to reach. Of course, for an additional fee anything can be arranged! So, our plan for the day was to drive to Montauban (the closest car rental office we could find to Castelarrasin) where we had made arrangements for a taxi to pick us up and drive us to leBoat’s marine base in Castelsarrasin. Before turning in the car, we’d stop at a grocery outside of Montauban to pick up food, water, wine, and other supplies.

(The cool, crummy weather we’d been having in la Rochelle was apparently nothing compared to the weather in more eastern southern France nearer the Mediterranean and on the Canal du Midi at this time. There had been torrential rains and flooding there, so we were lucky that the rain we saw was at its tail end as we headed eastward to pick up our boat. We later heard that, due to flooding, the boat rental companies had to restrict and remove their rental clients and boats on the large lake area on the more easterly part of the Canal du Midi for quite a few days. This too is another caution for those who decide to do a canal boat rental. I am quite certain that the boat agencies rental contracts state that they are not responsible for weather-related problems, so those people who’d rented boats in that area were out a lot of money. I suppose they could have just used the boat to sleep on as a hotel, but they’d have then been stuck in just one spot with no transportation.)

I had found a last minute half price offer from LeBoat for an end-of-season, one way repositioning on the Canal du Garonne, picking up in Castelsarrasin and dropping off in le Mas d’Agenais. We knew that we really didn’t want to do a roundtrip and go up and down the river in both directions because we would probably find it boring, so we had been looking for a one way rental. We were so glad we did this rather than a round trip. This way is definitely worth the extra charges over the price of a roundtrip where you start and return to the same base.

We’d booked the Corvette A boat for ten nights; we’d be arriving at the boat on a Friday night and basically be using it as a hotel that night before departing on Saturday morning. Most boat rental agreements (unless you want to add on additional fees) have a check-in after 16:00 and a return by 10:00 am. In reality this probably means that you will be spending the first and last nights of your rental moored at the rental boat company’s headquarters. http://www.leboat.com/boats/corvette-a (Interestingly enough, the review I submitted—a quite negative review—isn’t on their website even though I used the official form they asked me to use and in fact responded to my review.)

Renting a canal boat is by no means cheap (even when a bargain base rental price like we had is offered); in fact, it can be a very pricey proposition. The price quote one initially sees online is just the beginning of the costs (at least with leBoat anyway). There is diesel fuel (a good couple hundred euros), insurance (not cheap either) and any extras you want. Want a lantern for evenings outside? Extra. Want cushions for the outside chairs and seating? Extra. Want a grill? Extra. Want wifi access? Extra. Don’t want to spend your last hours of the trip thoroughly cleaning the inside and outside of the boat? Extra.

Want bicycles to get around? Extra. And, with bicycles renters need to be careful to check out the cycles to make sure they are actually comfortable and ride able rather than complete clunkers. We’d put in a request ahead of time for some decent, multi-speed bikes that would be good for a ride of more than a few kilometers on flat ground. But, we still had to take time to give each of them an investigatory ride to make sure the bike fit, was comfortable, had gears that actually worked, and had been properly maintained.

Our original plan had been to get to Montauban by about 4:00, drop the car, take the taxi to leBoat’s base, get the boat orientation taken care of, have dinner at a restaurant in town, spend the night on the boat, and depart the next morning for Montauban where we’d see the sights. I think of this list, the only two things that actually followed the plan were that we took the taxi from the Europcar agency in Montauban, and we spent the night on the boat.

We arrived at the rental agency office to drop off the car late because we had ended up taking a route that was a lot longer than we’d originally anticipated, and so we got behind schedule. Our plan had been to take the most direct and fastest route—via the expressway cutting down to Bordeaux and then heading east. As we were roaring along (my husband driving and me navigating) leaving the la Rochelle area on our way to the Bordeaux area there came one of those moments where a split second decision had to be made as to which way to go. What the GPS was saying and how things actually looked on the road and on our map were different. So, I made the instantaneous judgment call to not listen to the GPS. Thus, we ended up being routed along the slower route, but it was definitely scenic whereas I know the expressway wouldn’t have been. Then, we still wanted to stop at a grocery so we could get supplies—especially those that would be heavier and bulkier and that we wouldn’t want to have to walk or cycle with.

rhon

I am looking forward to hearing about your boat stage. Some people love them and others have enjoyed it less. It is not something we have considered as we expect it to be a bit beyond our budget. But gliding along a canal in lovely France does sound idyllic at times. We have, in the course of travels around France, stopped along canals, and some places do not seem very convenient with the shops etc a long walk away. I suppose it depends on which canal and then which places you choose to stop.
It is always disappointing when something does not meet expectations. We were in France from mid Sept to mid Nov last year and had fairly good weather in the areas we stayed -just a few showery days until the last week when it was a bit damper. But that was mid Nov. The weather does colour one's impressions, though, and it seems to be becoming less predictable. We had the worst week in April 2012 in the Charente. It just rained all week, except for a morning we spent in La Rochelle. And I seem to remember having difficulty finding the car park as well.
Enjoying your report.

julies

rhon--

As you will soon hear, we probably fall into the category of those who didn't enjoy it so much as we anticipated we would. Weather did play a part, but that really isn't the main issue.

You are so right that weather is no longer predictable. Four or five years ago we spent three weeks in Italy in May; it was the coldest May in Italy in 200 years. There was aqua alta (a winter phenomenon) in Venice, and rather than sitting in the garden apartment we'd rented on the Tuscany border, we instead learned how to use the pellet stove in the living room.

julies

BOATING ON THE CANAL DU GARONNE AND RIVER BAISE

So, we were late arriving at the car agency to drop off the car and late getting to leBoat’s base. It was nearly dark and lightly raining when we arrived. We met up with the base manager and quickly transferred all of our things from the taxi to the boat. The manager quickly showed us around the boat and how to operate the basics as far as heat, bathrooms, and lights. We all agreed that the best plan would be for him to give us the orientation in the morning when it would be daylight and (we hoped) wouldn’t be raining.

We’d done our homework prior to renting and followed the advice to get a slightly larger boat even for two people. Our boat was compact but had two bedrooms (although the second bedroom was so small that I don’t think two adults could fit in the bed), two bathrooms, and a sitting/kitchenette area with a table that could be opened for meals. There was an outside upper steering wheel, and a steering wheel inside too that we never used because the manager told us not to use it because of having less visibility in that position. (In retrospect, we should have ignored his advice and used the inside steering a couple times when it was really chilly out.) We stashed our things away and immediately decided that since it was still raining and wasn’t very nice out, we weren’t familiar with the town or where the restaurants were, and we really didn’t feel like exploring on foot in the dark and the rain we’d just warm up some of our food for dinner.

Then, we went to wash up the few dishes from dinner. No hot water. This was strange. No hot water in the bathrooms either. So, no showers. We boiled some water to make hot water for dishes and figured we could do without hot water for one night and sort things out in the morning with the manager. The bathrooms were also extremely teeny (to be expected on a boat), and these were in essence wet rooms as far as showering. So, we decided that we would make the smaller bathroom the dedicated shower room; that way we wouldn’t have to contend with trying to mop up a wet bathroom after showers. There was one more strange thing we noticed that night. Before we went to bed I saw a small, yellowish puddle on the floor at the base of one of the toilets; this hadn’t been there earlier.

In the morning I went off in search of a boulangerie before we met with the manager. We then signed all of the paperwork, paid some fees, chose some bikes, and gave several of them a trial run before deciding which two were the most manageable.

When we asked about the lack of hot water, the manager seemed surprised that we hadn’t have any. After checking into a couple things he told us he was surprised to find that, even when connected to shore power, this particular boat would only have hot water if the engine had been running for a couple hours. The engine, obviously hadn’t been running--probably for days. Of course, he also told us that just running the engine to heat water would also increase our fuel bill. LeBoat’s promo materials mention, “fully equipped with all of the amenities of home”. At our home we have hot water available whenever we want it. We don’t consider hot water an amenity; it is a basic.

As far as the toilet whose puddle was increasing, he mentioned that he’d been aware of it but thought this had been fixed already. However, it was visibly apparent that it hadn’t been. So, he went and got some tools to take care of the problem of waste water (yuk!) leaking out of the toilet. One of the burners on the stove wouldn’t work, and he couldn’t get his fixed, so we said we could manage with three rather than four burners. Then, he went to find us some extra long matches for lighting the burners (no electronic ignition here).

We are boat people and like the water; that is one of the prime reasons we decided on this type of vacation. We own boats and have for decades, and we keep one moored on a river where watching for sandbars while cruising and fighting the current when landing need to be contended with. But, we’d never before operated a boat like this. And, we had never done locks before. My husband would be the captain, and I would be the mate who jumped off and manipulated the lines and signaled the gates when going through locks.

Our plan had been to backtrack to Montauban because it is supposed to be an interesting town, and then return to the Garonne at Montech, and head west from there on the Canal du Garonne. The manager suggested that this might not be a good idea for people who had never done locks before because there would be nine locks each direction, for a total of eighteen locks rather rapidly one after another. Not for us we immediately decided. Even if Montauban had a lot to offer for tourists, we were not ready to jump immediately into a journey with that many locks right off the bat. A very wise decision on our part as we were soon to find out.

Now came the time for the actual orientation on how to run the boat. The manager quickly showed us how to operate the engine, how to connect to shore power, and how to fill the water tank from shore. We had a quick discussion of how to maneuver a lock (ecluse in French). The basics of approaching a lock is that there is a cable running high across the river. As the boat approaches the lock and goes under the cable, the “mate” gives a quick twist to the long rigid pole that hangs down from the cable. This pull/twist triggers the lock gate to open.

The manager put his bicycle on the boat with the plan to take us through the first lock and then leave us on our own as he rode his cycle back to the base. It was a fairly straight shot and not all that far to the first lock, so, with the manager watching, my husband drove while I waited to pull the rope to signal the lock to open. He was driving a bit faster than wise for approaching so I nearly missed catching the rope, but I caught it at the last second and managed to operate the opening signal. As we entered the lock, the manager showed us how to secure the lines and hold them to guide the boat as the water level in the lock dropped. Although a bit haphazardly, we’d made it through the lock, and the manager pedaled away leaving us alone to start our adventure.

The locks on the Garonne are all now mechanized, and the former lock keepers houses are now being sold for other purposes. So, boaters do not need to adhere to a lock keeper’s schedule, but there are still set daylight hours when the entire system is operational and not shut down for the night.

When we arrived at our second lock (the first one we’d be alone for), it just happened to coincide with the visit to that lock of a woman who was an employee of the canal system. Seeing the comedy of errors when we tried to go through, she was shouting out advice in French. My French is really, really rusty since I studied it years ago in high school and college, but I was able to interpret what she was saying. Noting our ineptness, she (not coincidentally at all I am sure) met us at each of the next two locks making sure we got through okay.

We were having some problems with how to best approach the lock, how to tie the lines to best secure them temporarily while preparing to go through the lock, and with the best placement for me on the boat as we approached the interior of the lock. In each lock the mate has to jump off the boat with the line in hand, and I was trying to figure out where best to be standing on the boat so I could hold the line easily and be close enough to the ground that I wouldn’t risk an ankle fracture while jumping down too far. And…. my husband was having difficulty controlling the boat, something that we both though strange since he has driven so many other boats before.

There definitely was a learning curve as to how to do this entire operation of going through a lock, and many times we discussed how it was do-able with just two people but would have been a much easier operation with three or four people. By halfway through the boat trip we had a good routine figured out that worked for us, but it was definitely a learning curve. So, we were glad we took this trip at a relatively dead time of year; it would have been much more difficult learning all of this while under pressure with other boats coming both ways towards us and waiting with lines of boats to go through locks.

And, I was quite apprehensive about how it would be with the added complication of being in a lock that was filling rather than draining, so we were glad we were setting off in a direction where we’d be dropping down rather than going up. By the time we had that challenge, we were more familiar with things and were better able to handle what in reality wasn’t really all that more difficult or different. My big concern with going into a lock that was filling was that I would have to climb up a slippery, slimy, eight foot vertical ladder. I had to do something partially similar to that once or twice, but the entire operation was not nearly as difficult as I had imagined.

yestravel

Geez! what a start. Fascinating to read about this as I don't know anyone who has done this on their own.

bilboburgler

My experience is similar, I found the steering control just about as naff as is just about safe (I think the rudder was loose on the pintel), though I would expect to only get hot water after running the engine.

StCirq

Great read, but you'd never catch me doing a boat ride on the Canal du MIdi. Just not my cup of tea, at all.I drive by those people on those boats frequently and alway think Thank God it' not me.

julies

We too had often seen people traveling by boat and wondered if w'd like it. Since we are boat/water people, we thought we'd give it a try. The other big factor in us deciding to take this boat trip was that my husband had had a problem all summer with pain in his foot stopping him from taking long walks, and despite visits to the podiatrist things just weren't improving. We knew we wouldn't be able to do our usual vacations where we do a lot of walking, so we gave the boat a shot.

And, no it definitely wasn't a very auspicious start. As far as the hot water issue, I guess neither one of us had given this a thought as to the mechanics of heating water. Tons of people travel in RVs or camper vans, and I assume they have hot water. Maybe the issues are the same. I don't know.

kansas

Great story!! You write very well!

rhon

Oh dear. We will stick to staying in gites. I cannot see me jumping off boats! We manage to drive around France with me navigating and not have an disagreement. But trying to co ordinate grabbing things and jumping off and everything else. A recipe for divorce!?
You did well.

julies

rhon--In all honesty, I think we'll be back to gites too after this experience. But, it was the type of thing that intrigued us enough to give it a try.

kansas--thanks for the compliment.

julies

Our goal for our first night was the town of Moissac which is famous because it has a very nice eleventh century Romanesque abbey to visit. Despite the difficulty my husband was having controlling and steering the boat, we made it into the port, secured the boat, paid the mooring fee, and set out to explore. Moissac turned out to be a charming town (our favorite of the boat trip). In fact, so charming that we decided to spend two nights there so we would have time to take it all in on a leisurely basis rather than just making a brief stop to tie up overnight. After all, we had a ten night rental and could be flexible. The capitaine at Moissac had told us that Moissac is a very popular mooing and many people use it as their home base when they own boats. By the end of the trip, after having moored at a half dozen spots, we could definitely understand its popularity.

We were lucky that we had a beautiful, sunny day which was nice for boating and wandering through the town. Nice enough that I was fine just wearing capris and a long sleeved shirt or light windbreaker. After wandering around the town, we ended the day sitting on the upper deck with glasses of wine as we looked out on the small port and the adjacent town. So far, this trip seemed to be living up to what we had been hoping it might be.

After a leisurely breakfast on the boat (I’d been to the boulangerie), we set off to visit L’Abbaye St. Pierre and its beautiful, intricately carved columns in its 11th century cloister. The adjacent church was also interesting for a brief stop. Since it was Sunday, there were lots of visitors to the town and cloister; many were enjoying themselves in the outside tables at the restaurants in the main part of town near the abbey.

Moissac is on the route of the Way of St. James, and in the middle of town I discovered an outdoor clothing store that was obviously operating to cater to the needs of those hikers. The shop didn’t have the greatest selection, but I found just what I was looking for—a pair of synthetic pants that were regular material on the outside with a soft fleeced inside. Later on in the trip I was so glad I’d decided to buy these, and they got lots of wear on the cooler days we were to have.

Then, it was our chance to explore outside of town for a while on our bicycles. We found an interesting back road path that led to the outskirts of the town, some fruit orchards and a small waterway. In places some of the leaves were exhibiting bright fall colors as we pedaled along this back road. Since we’d now been tied up for twenty-four hours, I knew if I wanted a shower it would be at the public shower at the marina. Since we used to camp a lot in the past this was not big deal to me to walk over there with my toiletries and pay a couple euros for the shower. It had been another nice day (weather-wise and activity-wise), and we were definitely happy we’d decided to spend two nights in Moissac rather than just being speed demons who wanted to quickly move along in the boat. This was another day that was just the exact mix of what we’d been hoping for in a canal boat adventure.

In Moissac moorings were such that boats were parallel parked alongside the edges of the canal, and we were lucky in that we had the room of two slips. On Monday we got a leisurely start and managed to make it out of our mooring without incident despite the fact that steering was definitely a challenge. Our goal for the night was the boat center in Valence d’Agen. The sun we’d had the previous two days had been replaced by rather overcast weather, but it was still quite pleasant boating through some nice but unremarkable scenery.

But, my husband was having a lot of difficulty steering the boat. And often he’d have to spin the wheel three or four times in order to get it to respond at all; this was strange because on our boats at home a slight turn of the wheel produce a nice response. I kept asking if there was something wrong with the boat, and he kept blaming himself thinking that he just hadn’t figured out how to best operate this boat.

We were lucky that this day there were perhaps only four or five locks to go through. At one point the boat was so un-responsive that we missed when aiming to drive under the pole so I could trigger the lock. We had to turn around to make another approach—no easy feat making a u-turn with a boat whose steering mechanism did not seem to be working properly. This was quite a spectacle for people who had been walking along the canal and stopped to observe the boats go through the locks. I am sure we got lots of laughs from the spectators that day. As we approached another lock, an old man who was walking along the path shouted to us, “Vous etes dans une mauvaise position.” And, we were in a bad position.

Despite the difficulties, we made it to Valence d’Agen and our mooring for the night. This was a much smaller and much less busy or interesting mooring basin that the one in Moissac had been. This time we had to pull into a narrow slot so we were perpendicular to the shoreline, and we were definitely having problems with getting into the slip. Fortunately, here some very kind boater owners helped us get the boat aligned and moored. As we were slowly learning, most slips required backing in, and this was one of those. Not an easy feat with an unresponsive boat.

We had another problem too. I had noticed an ever-growing yellowish puddle on the floor by that toilet again. Luckily we had a cell phone with us, so we called the base and told them about the problem. They promised to send a mechanic out within the hour to properly take care of the toilet problem. He arrived (in reality by car we weren’t all that far from the base at Castelsarrasin) and it took him about an hour to take care of the toilet leak. It was quite obvious that the toilet itself had been replaced numerous times over the lifespan of this boat, and it was probably increasingly difficult to get a good seal in the marine toilet.

Luckily, this mechanic spoke English, and when he was done fixing the toilet he asked if there were any other problems. I piped up and said we were having a lot of difficulty with the steering. The guy tried spinning the wheel and immediately told us the problem was that there was no hydraulic fluid for the steering mechanism. He put in at least a liter before declaring the problem solved. One would think that something as important to the safe operation of a boat would have been taken care of by the company before releasing the boat for rental.

There were a lot of other things that also weren’t up to snuff in this boat. The outside was really beat up with scrapes and peeling rubber guards, so beat up that we were wondering why we’d paid all of that insurance because any exterior damage we could have done to it wouldn’t have shown up anyway. When we picked up the boat there was a nice napkin type cover over the top of the interior captain’s chair; we soon discovered this was placed there to try to cover up the completely frayed-through upholstery.

Before we made the final decision to rent the boat I’d asked leBoat’s salesperson how old the boat was. The answer to the question was 1999. A seventeen year old boat is not exactly brand new, but we figured it would be acceptable. Several days after the start of our trip, however, when we became increasingly disillusioned by the condition of the boat we found the manufacturer’s plate on the boat—1987. So, we got misleading and deceptive information from leBoat about the product they were selling and gave us a boat that was nearly twice as old as they had promised in their e-mail. In fact, by the middle to end of the trip we were thinking we should just be delivering this thing to the salvage yard to be junked out.

Since we had been dealing with the mechanic upon arrival and we’d also invited the owners who had helped us with the landing maneuvers for a glass of wine, we didn’t have time to explore Valence d’Agen until the next morning. We were fortunate that we were there for Tuesday’s market day, so we set out to visit the market. There were several different areas or squares in the town where the vendors were set up, and we had a leisurely stroll, once again picking up a variety of food supplies. Valence d’Agen is noted in all of the guide books for its old circular washhouses, and these were quite close to the boat moorings so we quickly walked by them. Not too much to see really, and I certainly wouldn’t make a trip to the town just to see those.

Our guidebooks had recommended Auvillar because it is one of les Plus Beaux Villages. So, after our stroll through the market we set off on our bikes on the back road D11 route to visit Auvillar. The initial ride was through some farmlands, and then we had a rather steep climb into the village. We had thought of perhaps stopping for lunch in the small town, but we could only find one restaurant that was open (even though we were within the normal lunch hours) and it didn’t call to us. Once again the problem was that we didn’t want a full three course French lunch, and this was all they had on offer. We only wanted a sandwich or a bowl of soup or something similar. Once again cultural differences were apparent. We had plenty of lunch supplies on the boat and decided to just return there to eat.

The town didn’t do a lot for us either. Yes, it was pleasant enough to walk around for ten or fifteen minutes, and since it was at the top of a hill there were some nice views. But, we’ve seen a lot of small, quaint French towns and this was not all that special. In addition, the fact that we had arrived during lunch hour meant that everything was shut up tighter than a drum. So, our excursion was brief and not particularly great. To me, this might be the type of town that if one is taking a driving trip might be worth a slight detour but nothing more. For us, it wasn’t worth the effort and the time we took to ride bikes there.

yestravel

I can't believe all the problems with the boat. The steering would be such a huge concern & a leaking toilet-yuck. Geez, at least you could get someone to fix it. I'm continuing to enjoy your story. Glad you had one town that you liked. Sounded like a very nice 2 days. I don't think a boat trip is in my future.

julies

We are thinking that a repeat canal boat trip is not high on our list right now either.

annhig

julies - it seems to me that your very well-written TR is summing up all the pros and cons of a boating holiday of this type - we've all seen people sitting on deck drinking their aperitifs and envied them but what we don't see are the battles with a dodgy steering system or leaky loo. And once you've taken delivery and paid for the boat, there's not a lot you can really do about it.

That said, we were stuck with a dodgy gite once, and more or less the same applied.

As for what to do about strange French eating practices, I sympathise. They can be very rigid. We have eventually come to the conclusion that if a 3 course lunch is the only thing on offer, that's what we will have and the lunch fixings will do for dinner. A case of "want what you can have, not have what you want"!

bilboburgler

Friends of ours took a boat out onto the large lake near the sea as you describe it. At the final lock to the lake, they discovered the deck leaked, they stopped and called out the maintenance crew who turned up, old lag and apprentice.

Long story short, they apprentice chopped one of his fingers off. Blood everywhere, finally sent him off with the digit in a plastic bag with all the ice thy had to have it stiched back on.

I enjoyed my trip, but my friend had £250 of glass whipped off by a passing tree (well you know what I mean) and since the water is full of boat effluent (again you know what I mean) declined to jump in after them.

julies

Trying to finish up this trip report....

After riding back to the boat, we left with our now functioning and steerable boat up the canal in the direction of Agen. One of the things boaters see on this part of the journey that seems rather incongruous for a rural France wander is the Golfech nuclear power plant that can be seen from miles away. Apparently there were large enough financial incentives for the local people to agree to building a nuclear power plant in the midst of their rural countryside.

Agen is a large town with some things of interest to tourists, but according to the information we had the moorings at Agen weren’t very pleasant or very quiet and interesting. So, we decided to only go about 20K and stop just short of Agen at the mooring at Boe. This port de plaisance was basically a mooring place in a county park so there were no shops or restaurants, and so we knew ahead of time that for dinner we’d just be staying in the boat and re-heating the food we’d purchased at the market that morning.

The next morning when leaving Boe we got an earlier start than we’d been having other days since (a) there was no boulangerie to walk to for breakfast and lunch goodies, and (b) we needed to make a long day of it if we were to make our next intended mooring that was 34 K away in Buzet sur Baise. It was definitely colder than it had been previous days, and we were wearing our jackets and the knit stocking hats we’d bought in la Rochelle. I was also so glad to have the warm pants I’d bought in Moissac. It was going to be both a long day and a cool day.

Near Agen there is a fascinating portion of the Canal du Garonne that was constructed to go over the River Garonne. So, essentially, boaters on the canal are driving through a cement-sided waterway that passes over and looks down on the river below. We took lots of photos while traversing this engineering wonder.
In the area near to Agen there are also portions where the canal is quite close to the railway line, so this is not the most attractive area along the canal. We definitely felt that the portion of the canal east of Agen was much more interesting to travel along than the portion west of Agen. The Baise river, however, was also nice. So, I guess our recommendation would be going no further west than Buzet.

Even though many people who are boating recommend a stop in Serignac sur Garonne for a wander or a lunch or a night’s mooring, we by-passed it so we would be able to reach Buzet sur Baise in a timely manner. In fact, we didn’t make a stop all day other than to pull over briefly by the side of the canal so we could eat our lunch I’d put together from supplies we had on board with us.

We’d been on the canal for several days now and had noticed that we really were at the very end of the season. Many of the canal-side restaurants were closed except on weekends. All along the canal there were boats that had obviously been weatherized and tied up until spring. We didn’t see too many other rental boats either, not like it would be in the peak months.

On the other hand, we know we would not want to take a trip like this in the peak months. Not only is there the problem of all of the competition to get through the locks, there is also the heat factor. This isn’t the kind of boat trip where people can get off the boat and swim to cool off either. And, we were told by one of the people at leBoat’s base that the interior of the boats can have the heat build up to 50 degrees C (120 F) on sunny summer days. Not for us! We’d prefer to have to turn on the heater (the boat had both the built-in heater and a small portable electric heater that we could use) at night than deal with trying to cool a boat down.

During our trip we did meet some people (primarily Brits) who owned boats and lived on them permanently (including all winter). And, the canal does occasionally ice up; it is cold there in the winter. Most of these boats were slightly larger than the one we were renting and had some more amenities, but I still can’t imagine being cooped up in one of these during the nasty months. Granted, for most of these people a significant part of the attraction was the fact that this was a way to stretch their income, and this is one of the cheapest ways to live.

There are two different marinas at Buzet sur Baise, and we were nervous when we went by the first because there did not appear to be any open slips to spend the night. (Lots of boats that appeared to be permanently moored there for the winter were taking up all of the spaces.) Fortunately for us, there was an open slip at Au Bord de l’Eau in Buzet. But, once again, as we approached to tie up for the night we were having a lot of difficulty with getting the boat properly into the slip. We have a pontoon at home that we keep in a very narrow slip and also have to at times deal with a really strong current when docking. How could the docking process for this rental boat be so difficult to do on a nearly motionless body of water? Fortunately, the woman who was filling in as a temporary manager at the capitainerie saw the problems we were having and came out so we could throw the line to her; she manually pulled us into the dock.

The friendly woman whose boat was pretty permanently docked here told us about a good restaurant to go to in town. We walked the four or five blocks into town, by- passing the canal-side restaurant, and enjoyed our prix fixe menu at le Vigneron. We couldn’t believe the value for the money since the included dessert course was a dessert cart full of many delicious choices, and you could have as many desserts as you wanted. Just what I didn’t need since good home-made sweets are my weakness. We were so impressed with this restaurant that we had dinner here again when we came back through Buzet.

When we returned to the boat after dinner we spent some time online looking at all of the different options we would have for the last few days of our trip. In Buzet we had good, fast reliable internet, something that was lacking for a lot of our boat trip. LeBoat offered the opportunity to rent a device to connect to the Internet, and we tried it our first night in the port at Castelsarrasin. It was so pathetic that we turned it back in choosing instead to rely on our phones' data services while enroute or to use the wifi connections that some ports offer as a part of their mooring fee.

From Buzet sur Baise we intended to go south down the Baise River a ways. We’d been told that because of river levels we’d only be able to travel as far south as Condom and decided to just wing it and see how things went because the Baise had been described to us as a lovely, small, mostly wild river that has a natural course, twisting and turning, instead of the more monotonous and straight canal. Our goal for the night was Nerac, a lovely old city that had been the home of Henri IV.

Immediately upon leaving Buzet we had a set of double locks to go through in order to get on the Baise. The locks on the Baise were different than those on the Canal du Garonne, and we needed to get a key card to operate these locks. So, at the first lock the lock keeper (interestingly enough all of the lock keepers we encountered were women) gave us the card to use to operate the locks on the Baise. Another difference with these locks than the ones we’d been used to on the Garonne was that some of these would be filling rather than emptying, so this would be a first for us.

On the way to Nerac we bypassed two other interesting looking small towns that were set above and along the river—Vianne and Lavardec (both bastide towns). Since we weren’t sure how long it would take us to get to the port at Nerac, and we really didn’t want to just tie up wild with no shore power etc., we wanted to make sure that we would be able to get through the locks and arrive in Nerac in a timely manner. We figured we could always make a stop at these towns on our way back upstream to Buzet.

And, once again we were having steering problems. The fix had worked for a couple days, but now we were back to having the same difficulties we’d had before. Things kept deteriorating as far as steering. As we pulled into the Nerac area, we saw a local tour boat coming in our direction and were very concerned that we might run into it because the steering just wasn’t working properly. In fact, my husband later told me that he nearly used the horn signal (we’d been given a pamphlet that included horn signals) that would indicate, “I have no control of this boat.”

Luckily things worked out okay, and we managed to parallel park alongside the canal at what we assumed was the port because there was a tie up and electrical. But, there was no one around to take our money and no apparent center to do so since the small office by the landing was completely closed. I finally saw a sign (in French) that said the port master would come find us. Later on he finally did stop by for payment and a brief conversation.

It was cool but clear out, so, as had become our custom, we had our wine and appetizer outside on top of our boat (wearing our jackets of course). That night we had a conversation about how our trip was progressing and what to do next. The Baise was lovely, but we have spent a lot of time on other lovely rivers. The canal was becoming somewhat boring with the same types of scenery and repetitive days and not a lot of particularly interesting towns. Traveling on the river was really slow; bikes could go a lot faster, and walkers could walk nearly as fast as we were going.

We were in agreement; we’d pretty much had it with the boating. While the boat, and living on it, was a novelty initially, we were starting to get antsy and decided in the morning we would turn back up the Baise and return to Buzet. From there we would make run to Le Mas d’Agenais and turn in the boat two days early.