Having received a reminder from my accountant back home, it was time to settle down for a couple of hours this morning to do the end-of-financial-year books for TUTI (even though the company has largely finished operations, there are still some transactions that need to be recorded each quarter). Then it was time to head south again. Thanks to some detailed directions from Albon, this time we were not “Lost in Lyon” as we took a bypass road in the direction of the airport. Before we knew it, we were on the A7 south of Lyon and headed for Valence. It was just as well we were heading south, because the northbound A7 traffic was faced with a Code Orange Bouchon warning, given that it was the last weekend in August and many were heading home after summer holidays in the south.

Since we missed Carcassonne when coming up from Barcelona with Ruth a few weeks ago, this time we made sure we made a stop at the Carcassonne viewpoint on the A9. And what a surprise it was for everyone! For Ruth, because she had never seen the old Cité before, and for us because we had never seen it with yellow stripes before. Who the hell thought this would be a good idea to put yellow stripes on a UNESCO-listed building? Thousands of people cross the globe to see and photograph Le Cité - what a disappointment it must be to see it defaced in this way, especially if this was your one and only chance to see Le Cité.

We then continued on to Toulouse, and headed to the drydock to meet Serge at 1630h, before the gates were closed for the day. Kanumbra was looking pretty spiffy with her cleaned and painted bottom.

I walked around looking at all the bits you never see when she is in the water; the prop, the weedhatch, the bow thrusters and the anchor. All were looking pretty good.

Since we were heading south to Barcelona tomorrow and this would be Ruth’s last night on the boat, we proceeded to get her steel pans off the barge and into the car, but first we needed to do some repair work on the handles on the corflute cases, and finally the pop-riveter I bought a couple of years ago came in handy again. While we were doing some other work on-board, Ruth took the opportunity to catch up on some reading she had been neglecting.

In early evening, we went down to Le Bistro du Port, but they were not yet ready for patrons, so we went for a walk and drink in the Park Grand Rond (the park in the big roundabout).

At 2000h we went back for dinner at Bistro le Port, but disappointingly it was not as good as we had experienced last year. Oh well, I guess not everything stays as good as they were, or maybe we just had our expectations too high in our minds. We then headed back to the drydock and enjoyed a mild night on the deck looking at the moon.