We woke to a wet morning, with occasional weak sunshine. But our mood rose substantially when we read The Age newspaper online and saw news of Sophie Mirabella's concession in our electorate in the recent Australian Federal Election. It's good to see that local action can replace a terrible politician from one of the major parties with an independent local candidate. It almost gives one some faith in democracy.

We were treated by Judy and Peter to a trip to Grimont (west of Castelsarrasin and south of Moissac) to a cooking school that Judy had attended a few years ago. The cooking school is a joint venture by an English and French chef, and conducts 3 and 5 day courses for about 4-6 people at a time. When we arrived, we were invited into the kitchen to watch proceedings, given Judy's status as a past-student. At the time we arrived, the English chef was teaching the class how to make caramelised sugar string, and caramelised sugar baskets. Strangely, this is exactly what I made for Rita in Bern in 1998 after watching "Ready, Set, Cook" on English TV while she was at work and I was desperate for anything to watch in English on Swiss TV!

We then went across to a small restaurant in the same village for lunch, run by the French chef. He cooks some of the meals and also uses the best of the meals cooked by the students that day. It was a very enjoyable lunch, even though the Confit du Canard was not as tender as what we had in the Toulouse dockside restaurant on the weekend. The restaurant itself, however, was full of old-world charm.

In the basements of the restaurant building was a Musee de Vignobles, with an old Roman well, which we toured after lunch. The collection of vineyard tools and paraphernalia was amazing.

We could have stayed much longer looking around the village, especially the bee and honey museum, but the weather was turning nasty so we returned to the barge, to find we were being evicted from our mooring spot because St Louis and Rosa (both large peniches) were coming into port and needed space to moor. So we hastily took our leave and barged back to Moissac in the rain and wind. To say the least, it was not pleasant barging. On the run up to the Cacor Viaduct, the wind was blowing hard from the west and so, as we made our way along in the relative shelter of the trees, I was preparing myself for when we emerged from the trees to cross the Viaduct in the open air above the Tarn River, and so moved Kanumbra well to the left of the canal to allow for the stronger wind from the left. But as soon as we emerged from the trees the wind direction changed so that it blew in from the east (don't ask me how or why!), so that I now had to fight my way off the left edge of the canal. As soon as we left the canal and entered the relative protection of the trees on the northern side of the river, the wind change back to the west.

Once we arrived back in Moissac, we then drove Peter and Judy back to Castelsarrasin where they collected their car to head off on the rest of their trip before returning to Switzerland.

Rita and I then started moving stuff off the barge and up to the house, in preparation for the time we would spend up there in the weeks before we left to go back to Australia, as we started getting serious about plans for the renovations.