After the consistently high temperatures of the past week, we had heavy overnight rain which cooled things significantly and allowed us to get a good night’s sleep. After doing a bit of cleaning at the house in the morning, we drove to Montauban to pick up Pete McKirnan & Vicky who were arriving by TGV from Paris. We had originally intended to cruise down to Montauban on Kanumbra over a couple of days, but other commitments in Moissac left us with not enough time to do so (as it turned out, it was lucky that we didn’t pick them up on Kanumbra, since a violent storm brought down many trees over the canal near Montech which closed the canal for a few days, meaning that we would not have been able to get them back to Moissac before it was time to take them back to Montauban again to get their train to Paris to then fly home to Australia!).

However, their train was about an hour late, so we went down to the port at Montauban to see how full it was and to see if there was anyone there that we knew. As we arrived, we spotted Tom Hollows on board “Lo Tarnaise", which we were scheduled to play on with Pans on Fire last year in Moissac. The top deck on the boat would have been a perfect stage for the band, and we soon saw why it was such an obvious choice for use in the Pentecote Parade in Moissac in May.

With time running short, we said goodbye to Tom (and Sandra Lalley from Blue Felix) and headed back to the station, where we gathered Pete and Vicky, and headed home to Moissac. After showing them around the house, where they will be staying for a few days, we showed them the nearby boulangerie, where we felt obliged to sample the product. So we headed up to the Belvedere (French for “gazebo” and meaning “beautiful view”) to chill out for a while.

As if we needed any more to eat, we eventually headed over to the barge where we had dinner on the rear deck, and then went for a walk along the canal and the River Tarn. As always, the flowers in Moissac make many views spectacular.

After we took Pete and Vicky back to the house, and returned to the barge, the heavens opened with a heavy rain storm coming up from the south. This was the storm that brought down the trees in Montech, which is almost exactly where we would have been if we had used the barge to pick up Pete and Vicky. Sometimes, fate intervenes in the nicest ways.