The day dawned with overcast skies, but the rain radar showed no rain forecast for our area. The river level website showed that the Tarn at Montauban has fallen below 1.0m; still not down to the official level of 0.9m, but let’s hope it is low enough. While yesterday's forecast said that today would be fine and sunny, there are now some showers forecast for later today and tomorrow, so today will be our only chance to go out on the Tarn, with the intention of travelling to Bressols and Corbarieu. Checked with Lionel and Frances at the Capitainerie and it’s all go for the Tarn today. They also have to go down to the Tarn to repair the yellow marker buoys guarding the barrage, which were washed away in the recent floods, so they will head out after us.

So around 10am we headed down through the double-locks under the road and railway bridges, with Hilda May leading the way. As Kanumbra came out of the second lock, Hilda May was ready to head up the Tarn.

Although the weather was cool and overcast, it was a delight to be able to get out on the river and let the barges run a little bit quicker. We both opened up the throttle and took the chance to clean out the diesel injectors (because the large diesel engines rarely get the chance to run at high revs on the canals).

Going upstream against the flow, we were sitting on 2000rpm and travelling at about 10kph over the ground (as measured by my iPhone GPS speedometer). While travelling at speed, we kept a wary eye out for debris still floating down the river from the recent floods.

Up front on Kanumbra, the only noise is the gurgling/swishing of the bow wave, with the motor un-detectable.

After about 30 minutes, we stopped in at the pontoon at Bressols. This was a new pontoon installed last year by Veolia (who also run Montauban port), with water and electricity bournes. Unfortunately, the locals had already vandalised the bournes, stripping out all the wiring and tubing (to sell for scrap). Veolia have said they won’t be replacing the bournes; a shame for boaters and the local communities. We stopped for lunch (a nice minestrone soup that Rita whipped up) and then we went for a short walk through Bressols (a nice clean town, with ample shops for passing boaters – shame that the vandalised bournes will not be attracting such boaters to the town).

While we were finishing lunch, Lionel and Frances arrived in a small open boat. They had decided to make a short inspection trip after the floods. They then headed up to the next pontoon at Corbarieu, and we followed behind them. After we all got there, Stuart talked with Lionel about the videos he was making in Montauban, and arranged to do one with Lionel at a later date. We then all had a tea/coffee on Hilda May and had a good chance to talk with Lionel and Frances about the future at Montauban. We all agreed that there was a good chance of putting on some concerts in the various ports next year, as a way of providing a focus for boats to go to those ports (as well as attracting locals).

As we prepared to leave Corbarieu, it started to rain, and much of the return trip to Montauban was spent in driving rain. Nonetheless, running with the flow of the river made it a much quicker trip back. Running at 1200rpm, we were sitting on about 16kph.

As we got back to the double-locks, Lionel and Frances had started to put the yellow buoys back across the river. So we tied up at the mooring across the river from the locks and waited for them to finish, since they also had to operate the locks for us (given the rain forecast for overnight, we had already decided not to moor on the Tarn overnight in case the water level rose dramatically again, as it can do on this river).

When they were ready, we headed across the river and straight into the open lock, before mooring again for the night in Montauban port. We both had trouble with a couple of fishermen who where fishing amongst the reeds on the south side of the port area. As we came out of the lock on the south bank, we had to keep to the left in order to do a 90degree turn to the right into the mooring area. Unfortunately, this crossed their fishing area, and they would not remove their lines while we passed. As a result, Hilda May ran over a couple of their lines, and were roundly abused (in French) by the fishermen. 15 minutes later, Kanumbra emerged from the same lock and followed the same path, not even seeing the fisherman in the reeds (because we were concentrating on the mooring area on the right) until they also started swearing at us. What they didn’t know was that we had a French-speaker on board, who could understand and respond in French to their swearing! Lionel had also observed all this from the Capitainerie Office, and later went over and had a few stern words to the fishermen.

That evening we had dinner and drinks on Hilda May, after which Rita and Stuart retired to the music room on Kanumbra to continue their jam session from the previous evening. Despite the somewhat inclement weather, today had been a very satisfying day.