When we woke in Villesequelande, it was still very windy, so rather than battle it again on the water, we decided to take a bike ride to explore the nearby towns of Caux, Sauzens and Villesequelande. As we headed away from our mooring along a local road we saw a homestead that obviously liked cats. How many can you see in the photo below? In real life, we saw ten, but I cannot see them all now in the photo without having them move a little.

After missing a turnoff and heading along the wrong road for a while, we turned back and then found the right road to Caux. It was a pretty, but very quite town, but we were grateful to find a cool water fountain, even though a sign said that the town was suffering a water shortage due to drought.

We then headed off towards Sauzens, which was an even smaller village located directly on the canal. As we headed into Sauzens, we noted a road sign that needs no further explanation!

We had intended to ride from Sauzens to Villesequelande along the main road but the narrow shoulders and the fast trucks convinced us to ride back along the canal towpath. When we got there we went looking for the “Grocery Shop” because we were in need of a few provisions. Unfortunately, we arrived there just after 1400h, the shop was closed, and the owner was just getting into his car and told us that he would be back about 1600h. However, the look on our faces must have moved him, because he came back and opened the shop again so that we could have something for lunch! Only in a small French village!

Despite changing the fuel filter in Carcassonne, and having the generator start first time for a while, we were now back to our previous problem of needing multiple attempts to get it started. So since Villesequelande did not have shore power, we decided to move on in the afternoon, even though the wind had not died down very much.

As we cruised along, we saw many examples of dead and dying plane trees, and the dreaded blue dots painted on the trees indicating that they were destined for removal.

Later in the afternoon, we arrived in Bram and were again fortunate to get a mooring on the stone quai right next to the narrow bridge leading out of Bram; the first bridge opening I ever negotiated when Jerry Crosby picked me to take Vertrouwen out of port in 2011.

A bit later, more Yanks came into Bram, but this time it was one man and lots of teenagers, and in the end I sympathised with them. They saw a mooring space two behind us on the quai, and rather than try mooring with the wind behind them, they wisely went a bit downstream and then tried turning to moor into the wind. However, the wind was stronger than they estimated, and halfway around they got pushed sideways down the canal until they completely blocked the bridge opening! They then pulled back a bit (photo below) and decided to abandon the idea of mooring in Bram and just continued downstream a ways to moor alongside the bank.

In the meantime, we decided to relax for the night and just sit out the wind.