Left Meilhan in the late morning to head for Castets. it was a pleasant trip in bright sunshine until we got to Fontet. As we were leaving town under a low bridge I made the mistake of aiming for the middle of the water, rather than the middle of the bridge (which had a towpath on one side).

As a result, I clipped the underside of the bridge with the right side of the bimini, which was then ripped from the roof bracket and twisted to the left. The clunk sounded bad, as did the scraping sound as we continued under the bridge. We pulled over and moored to reluctantly check the damage.

Luckily, the bimini has a fail-soft mechanism, with the frame coming out of the bracket, and the total frame twisting via joints. The roof bracket looked like it had suffered the same damage previously, as the screws were held in with caulking compound. They screwed back in pretty well, and then some cable ties worked well in place of the pop rivets attaching the frame to the roof bracket (at least for the time being). The rest of the frame just twisted back into the correct position. So, nowhere near as bad as it sounded, and a good lesson learned about steering under offset bridges.

After lunch, we decided not to barge any further since the canal was badly weeded in front of the next lock in Fontet, and two boats that passed us while we lunched and fixed the bimini were having trouble with weeds in their props. So, perhaps we were lucky to have hit the bridge!

Instead, we decided to cycle to Castets, just so we could say we had got to the end of the canal, and looked at the deep lock down into the Garonne River. The flood level gauge on the ecluse house was very informative about the power of the Garonne when in flood.

It was a nice ride to Castets in the sunshine. The canal around Castets was pretty, with parkland along the last few locks, but the town was absolutely dead - no shops, no pub, no bank, no toilets. So after a sleep in the grass, we headed back to Fontet, then off to Fontet marina to check out the swimming lake and the shop. Had a few beers, another lie down in the grass, then back to the barge for a leisurely cold salad dinner. The swimming lake looked a bit like a pointillist impressionist painting of French swimmers in the Seine.

We sat on the back deck till dark, watching the black fish swarm in the canal (to background music from Radio Nostalgie), listening to the owls, and doing emails and diaries. Let's see what tomorrow brings.