For a change, today was sunny, but still on the cool side. Nico was going back to Redon today to pick up Miyu and the kids, so he asked us if we could give him a ride to Agen, when he was meeting with a car-share group to get to Brittany. But first, he was dropping his van at Jean-Baptiste’s house and meeting us there.

I knew that Nico had been doing some timber work for JB recently, but I was not prepared for what we saw. Essentially, he had rebuilt one end of the house, with a very Swiss-styled alpine look. The main beam across the entire width of the house was a single piece of wood - very impressive. No wonder Nico can stand there and admire his handiwork!

I was particularly impressed by the design of the stairs up to the balcony, with the thin-brick infill and the timber-framed openings. As usual, Nico showed a preference for the traditional methods, and these corner timbers had not a nail in sight - just a few notches and a couple of wooden pegs.

While we could have admired his work for a lot longer, we had to get Nico to Agen in time to make his car-sharing connection, which we did with 10 minutes to spare. We dropped him outside the military barracks in Agen and turned for home. We later found out that one of the driver/passengers was a military guy and after half an hour of conversation, Nico pretended to be asleep for the rest of the journey!

After I got back to Moissac, I went down to the Tarn to discuss power saws with Evelyn. I then realised why David had declined to dig them out for me, since they were buried in the bilge under the driveshaft from the engine, and it required quite a bit of agility and a small frame, which neither David or I now possess. Luckily, Evelyn still possessed both attributes. So she dug out box after box of power tools and eventually found the saws. Unfortunately none of them were exactly what I was looking for. So she put them all back, but it was not a complete waste of time. She found one tool they thought they had lost, and took photos of all the others before she stowed them away. We also had a good chat about the drydock booking system for Toulouse/Ramonville, and she gave me Serge’s contact details for us to make a booking with him for next year.

Since none of the saws on L’Escapade fitted my needs, I dashed out to Weldoms to look at a bench saw that I had seen advertised online, which appeared to be what I needed. I found it, after a bit of searching for something that was right in front of me, and it seemed to suit my needs not only for my current need but also for some future projects I had in mind where precision straight cuts would be needed. So I bought one for 109euro, which I though was a reasonable price.

After dinner that evening, Rita and I went for a river walk up the Tarn to where we had seen the barge moored by the riverside on our recent Tarn cruise. It certainty looked to be a long-term mooring judging by all the paraphenalia on the river bank. As we walked back, I got an interesting shot of some grass seeds silhouetted in the setting sun.

The barges on the Tarn Quai looked very much at home, as did the few boats on the pontoons. Will be interesting to see the difference in numbers next year when the Fetes des Plaisanciers hits town!

When we got back to Kanumbra, we did very little; just had an easy night watching the sky get darker and listening to the bird voices quieten to a whisper.