I must first offer an apology to those reading this blog, for the very long delay in updating the website. On August 17, I suffered a catastrophic failure of the external hard disk on which the source code and materials for this website were stored. I lost all the text and photos since early 2015 that were used to develop this website and, despite various attempts, I was unable to recover the full contents of the disk. Sadly, I also lost lots of other photos shot during this period that had not already been saved elsewhere. It has taken until now (February 2017) for me to rebuild the underlying document from material that had already been uploaded to the web in the form of the published website up till July 21. I am now starting to build the website from scratch from here on. The only resource I have to work with is daily notes that I make in the Day One app on my iPhone, which have triggered memories of what was done on each day, plus a few photos that I was able to recover from the crashed hard disk, some that I have used elsewhere (e.g. Facebook) or been able to scrounge from someone else. My apologies. But they say the only real mistake is the one you don’t learn from, and so this episode has prompted me to develop a range of backup options using iCloud and DropBox, in addition to a new external hard drive. Hopefully, lightning won’t strike twice in the same place.

During this period, I got some great photos, but unfortunately, most were lost in the Great Hard Disk Disaster of 2016 (for those youngsters wondering about my phraseology, perhaps you should take a history lesson concerning the  Great Tea Trolley Disaster of 1967, or was it 1968?).

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An overnight storm in Romans kept us wondering what conditions would be like for driving the following day, but when dawn broke on Friday, the weather had cleared somewhat so we commenced our drive back to Moissac. However, as we drove down the motorway through the Rhone Valley, we realised that it was a Friday leading up to the last weekend in July, as illustrated by the "Code Orange” heavy traffic conditions. Luckily we were not travelling tomorrow, when it would be “Code Red” traffic conditions. As we turned off the A7 Motorway near Orange and headed along the A9 Motorway towards Montpelier, the traffic lightened, but the weather deteriorated and soon we were heading into another storm. As we continued along the A9, we encountered a convoy of fire trucks that extended for kilometres. We were not sure where they were headed or why (especially on such an overcast day), but it reminded us of being in Australia on a “Code Red” bushfire day.

The reason why we were hurrying home today was because our good friends from the Netherlands, Jan & Mareyne, were coming to spend some time in Moissac with us. They have a unique role in our association with barging, since it was our trip to see them in Amersfoort in 2010 that initially opened our eyes to the beauty of barges.

When we arrived in Moissac, we saw that they had already arrived and had left a note while they had gone exploring the town on foot. So Rita and I got into unloading the van and putting the furniture we had brought from Bern into the garage. We got it all done except for one large wooden cupboard, that was just too large and awkward to manage by ourselves. But as fate would have it, as we were pondering what to do, we spied the van of Thierry Giraud (our plumber) just up the road. So we asked if he could help us, which he did, after which we told him about the exploits of Anthony (his son) and Audrey, who had stayed with us in Australia. When Jan & Mareyne returned to the house, we chatted for quite a while and then returned the van to Renault Rent in Castelsarrasin, before heading off to La Bureau for a nice relaxed dinner (and more chatting).