After the July 14 fireworks on Friday night, Saturday morning saw a mass departure of boats from the banks of the canal near the viewing sight. From being absolutely packed with boats on Friday night, Kanumbra was the only one remaining by noon on Saturday.

Because we were rapidly running out of internet capacity on our Webtrotter, we rode out to the suburban La Clerq site where the nearest SFR store was located. We tried explaining the situation to the “technical expert” that we were running out of data allowance, with yet another week to go before our contract period began again on the 23rd, and our data plan was replenished with 30GB. For quite a while he said that there was nothing he could do, but then we finally thought we’d broken through when he said he could add another 5GB to our allowance. So we agreed to that, and it was only after he had done all the online paperwork and charged it against our account that he told us that it wouldn’t become active till the 23rd!!! What’s the point of getting extra data in the next month when it was in this month that we were short of data? We thought about complaining and getting him to reverse the transaction, but in the end we just gave a gallic shrug and walked out of the store. We think he really had no idea what we were saying. Let’s see if we get 35GB allowance next month.

The only advantage of going to the store was that it was very hot outside, and very cool inside, so we stayed and had some lunch to extend the period of coolness.

As we rode back to the barge, we decided to go a bit beyond the barge to check out the site where the canal almost meets the Aude River. We left our bikes by the side of the towpath and crossed the road to look at the river. Not very exciting in hindsight, but at least we could say we’d seen it. However, as we were waiting to come back across the road, we heard a loud cracking sound, and then saw a large tree branch fall on the towpath no more than 10 metres from our bikes. It was a sizeable branch that would have caused significant damage to our bikes, and even more damage to any cyclist who happened to be riding underneath at the time. We tentatively cleared the branch from the path, watching out for any more falling debris, then went back to the barge.

When we got there, we found that the boat had almost been cast adrift by our stakes being pulled out by passing boats. We suspect the culprit was a tourist barge operating out of Carcassonne (the Lou Gabaret), since they came past again just after we got back to the barge at a rate of knots. No amount of flagging them down could slow them. Even though they are supposed to be operated by professional skippers, many of them really have no idea of how to pass boats that are moored to stakes driven into the banks. In this respect they are even worse than the amateur skippers of hire-boats, who mostly speed past in ignorance of their impact. The tourist boat skippers should know what the effects will be, and one can only assume they speed by out their high-handedness and sheer bloody-mindedness.

This incident reinforced our intention to move to a powered site, with bollards, closer to the city. We had checked with Stephanie on our way to SRF and she was going to try to rearrange some boats to create a space for us near the lock. On our way back, we checked with her again and she had indeed created a space for us, right behind the tourist boat Cocagne (as we were to see later, this was not one of the offending speeding tourist boats; the skipper of Cocagne was most considerate of other boats). So we upped stakes and headed west into town. When we arrived there, we found our friendly robot C4C3 holding a sign welcoming Kanumbra to its new mooring site.

As well as being behind Cocagne, we found that we were also just in front of Amethyst, a narrowboat whose owners we had met for the first time last night at the fireworks. As often happens on the canals, we hit it off immediately with Wendy and John (who had a delightfully dry and wicked sense of humour), and by the time we said goodbye to them on Monday morning, we were good friends with them.

As we were talking with John, Rita mentioned our problem with the generator and John, being a hands-on mechanic, immediately offered to come aboard and have a look at it. The first thing he checked, from experience, was the fuel filter and on removing it, he saw that it was full of “crud”. Before concluding his diagnosis, he suggested we test the generator engine by running it without the filter to see if that fixed the problem. So he found a suitable size length of copper tubing and connected the input and output hoses, and the engine started first time (something it had not been doing recently). So we concluded that might have been the problem, and he suggested a place near the port where we might get a replacement. So we walked up there, but it was already closed. However, since we were not going to use the generator for a while, we decided we could wait till Monday morning to get a replacement.

On our way home, we passed by Lyneve and spoke to Steve about the free concert he had mentioned that was in town tonight as part of the Carcassonne Music Festival. Turns out it is being performed by Steve’n’Seagull, a Finnish band, and given the name of the band we figure that Steve and Lynda should join us. When we got back to Kanumbra, we also asked John & Wendy, and they readily agreed. So at 2030h, we all met at the bridge over the lock and walked up to Place Carnot. The warm-up band was a bit loud, but Steve’n’Seagull were very good with a mix of rock, bluegrass and cover songs. The lead singer bore a striking resemblance, from a distance, to our Aussie barging friend David Rothery. We stayed there till the last song, and had several drinks, and then we all wandered home to our boats.

After we got back to Kanumra, we invited John and Wendy aboard for a late night drink, and then spent the next two hours having a very interesting chat, finally getting to bed about 1am.