We woke on an overcast Sunday morning to find a fun-run happening around the basin.

As a result, all the roads around the basin were closed, and so the person picking up Rita for her gig in St Maurin would have difficulties getting access to where Rita said she would meet her at the barge. However, after a few hasty phones calls, she managed to park just outside the cordon and walk to the barge, with not too far to walk to carry the pans and other gear back to the car.

While she was away I got working using the primer we bought yesterday at Castorama, painting the various rust areas we had found on the barge. As I worked away, Rob and Cherie came over and said they were going to leave today, and soon thereafter they headed off.

When Rob came over to say goodbye, he had a packet of screws in his hand, and so, given my experiences with finding hardware stores over the past couple of days, I had to ask where he had got them from. And at that point I learned a new word in French, “Quincaillerie”, which Google translates as “hardware store”, whereas “Bricolage” translates as “DIY”. He told me he had got them at Quincaillerie Fabre Agen, which was only a couple of hundred metres from the port, and which Rita and I had cycled past several times in the past few days! So later in the day I walked down just to see where it was. Unfortunately, they were closed on Sundays but I made a note to go there first thing in the morning.

Rita arrived home in the late afternoon, pleased with her performance at the opening of  the cafe in St Maurin, and we took an evening walk up the hill behind our mooring. We had done this walk several years ago and enjoyed the view from the church at L’ermitage.

We must have forgotten how steep the climb up the hill was, and when we looked up Rue de Coupo Cambo, we decided we would save that for the walk down rather than try walking up right now.

Finally, we reached the old church, only to find that it had been privatised and converted into a “business centre” with locked gates barring access to the area around the church. So anyone climbing the hill to see the church, be warned!

But across the road from the church, we got a decent view of the city. I must admit that from this elevation, Agen is not the most attractive city, with too many modern “block buildings” detracting from the old-world charm that one sees from street level.

We took an alternative route down, including Rue de Coupo Cambo, and got a different view of the city, including the railway station.

We also passed a number of homes with large stately gardens, which surprised us on this hillside. But the biggest surprise was when we saw the garden with a bottlebrush tree (Callistemon) on the fence line. We never expected to see such an Australian plant growing in France. It reminded me that I only have a couple of weeks before I return home to Taggerty and our own bottlebrushes.