Sunday 21 August - across the Agen Aqueduct, Poule a Velo, Aussies at Vd’A

Next morning we were up bright and early to get through the four locks before the traffic arrived. As we were making preparations, we saw two boats approaching from the west. We hurriedly cast off and got out into mid-canal ahead of them. We didn't want to have to wait any longer to go through the locks, so we were quite happy to head off at 8.59am and clear the locks by 10am, then get the green light to proceed across the aqueduct.

After going through Agen, we continued till about 1pm, when we reached St Christophe lock near Mouynes. The old eclusier cottage had been converted into a little cafe (Poule a Velo - Chicken on a Bicycle), so we pulled over and stopped for lunch. Rita had "All Things Trout" and I had the "Inspiration of the Day" (a homemade pie with local sausages).

After lunch we headed on towards Valence d'Agen. Since it was a pretty hot day, we put the front window of the wheelhouse down so that I could get a breeze in the wheelhouse. Out on the deck, you can catch the passing breeze as we move along, but inside the wheelhouse it can get pretty stuffy, even with all doors open. The lowered front window improved things a lot, so long as you were careful of the passing wasps etc.

As we neared Valence d'Agen, we once again passed through Golfech. On the way down, we had noticed a spot near the bridge where an interesting view emerged, but we were too slow to get our cameras out. This time I knew where I needed to stop, in order to get the amazing superposition of the local church spire and the nuclear reactor cooling tower. From a distance, it almost looked like the image of the church had been stencilled onto the cooling tower. It was uncanny the way the church and spire have the same outline as the tower and steam. It must be a sign from above!

That evening we moored at our favourite bankside spot in Valence d'Agen. As I was doing some cleaning on the boat, I heard the call of "Aussie, Aussie, Aussie"; before I could respond with "Oi, Oi, Oi", I heard it from elsewhere. I looked around and saw three people sitting on the deck of the adjacent boat. Further investigation showed them to be three Aussies (two living in France, Narbonne and Toulouse). Paul owned the boat and had found Kevin and Donna as crew through an internet "crew matching" website. We chatted for a while, then went searching for dinner in town. Unfortunately, it was Sunday night and although we found two places open, they both said they were closing soon and could not serve us. So we returned to Kanumbra and ate whatever we could find. As we were doing so, we heard a cracking/crashing sound outside. We initially thought it was some fireworks left over from the festival the week before, but the final crashing sound indicated it was something else. We went outside, but it was too dark to see anything. Then we saw a light go on on the Aussie's boat and someone said "Nope, it missed!", so whatever it was, we thought all was OK. In the morning, we saw that a large branch (25cm diameter) had fallen from one of the plane trees along the towpath, and had left twigs and leaves all over the deck of their boat. A close call!