We woke to a cooler morning, which was welcome. I started reading a new book “The Undoing Project” about the lives and work of Daniel Kahnemann and Amos Tversky, two psychologists who did some groundbreaking research in the field of choice behaviour. Since I had used their work in my own research on travel survey methodology, I was keen to learn the human story behind their work. The book had been suggested to me by Craig Hupp, our visitor next month, who has suggested that we might discuss it in the first meeting of the Garonne Aquatic Book Club & Wine Society!

While I started reading this book, Rita attended to her emails from various people on various topics. Work never stops!

In the early afternoon, we jumped on our bikes to ride to Fontet. At l’Auriole ecluse, I snapped this photo of my favourite mill (now converted to a glorious house) and noticed the buildup of clouds in the background.

After just a little while, we arrived at the Fontet Halte Nautique and swimming lake. While we had a cool drink, we enquired about mooring at the site, since they seemed to have a spot or two that might fit us in. But the girl from the Tourism Bureau said that she was not from the Capitainerie, and while it looked OK, she couldn’t be sure. No one from the Capitainerie was there at the time, so Rita prepared to go for a swim in the lake. But no sooner had she got wet, than I heard a clap of thunder in the background, and then a whistle from the lifeguard at the lake, telling everyone to get out of the water, since they were obviously scared of what might happen if the thunderstorm came over the lake.

We looked to the west, and saw the approaching stormfront. So we had a choice; we could stay under cover at the lake, and wait for the storm to pass over, or make a run for it and cycle back to Meilhan, away from the storm. We made the decision to cut and run, and were soon on our bikes pedalling east. As we passed the old Mill at l’Auriole, we could see that the stormfront was catching up with us, so we pedalled on and tried to race the storm home.

But within minutes, the storm had caught up with us and while there were only a few spots of rain, the wind was howling across the canal and branches were starting to fall from trees. But we just continued on (what choice did we have), trying to avoid any debris on the path. In record time, we arrived back in Meilhan, dumped the bikes on the floating pontoon and jumped aboard the barge. Two minutes later, the wind died a bit, the skies opened and down she came.

We spent a warm, dry night having dinner on board and doing some more reading.