Friday 12 August - Hilda May, cycle to St Leger, Trivia Night in port cafe
Up bright and early in the morning to turn the generator on again. We had found the batteries running low overnight (down to about 40% of capacity) for a few days now while we had been moored bankside and not connected to shore power. An hour or two of running the generator brought it back up to 80-90%, but we had to keep an eye on it and turn all the power circuits off overnight where possible.
After breakfast, we headed down to the port and caught up with Stuart and Christine on board Hilda May to see what they had been up to. Their daughter and son-in-law and two grandkids are arriving this week, and they are planning to go to Bordeaux (on Hilda May) this year. We also discussed a few technical issues about the barge with Stuart and he came over to Kanumbra and gave us some useful advice about pumping out the blackwater tank - importantly, we jointly found the seacock that needed to be opened to enable the tank to be pumped out.
That night the Buzet Port Cafe had a Fish'n'Chips and Trivia Night (bilingual with questions relating to English and French trivia). We were on the Pied Pipers team with Stuart and Christine, against a team of mainly-Americans (including Dick and Carol), a team of local French residents, and a team of everyone else. Clearly, the French know more English/USA trivia than the English/USA/Australians know French trivia, since the French team won easily! But then they were kind enough to share the prize of a bottle of red with all the tables. After dinner and trivia has finished, Stuart got out his button accordion and Rita found her piccolo and they started making music. They were then joined by a couple of local lads who played Rugby and they started singing rugby songs. Luckily, they sang in French so most of the ribald lyrics went over most people's heads! We retired about midnight, but the party kicked on. A good example of a fun night in a port town.
After lunch we rode back to Damazan to have another look around the town, and were again impressed. Then we continued on to the town of St. Leger on the Garonne River. Just near the bridge to Aiguillon, we saw an old peniche half submerged but still tied up to the dock. It seems it may have been caught by one of the floods that periodically rush down the Garonne.