It was an early (for us) 0830h rise, for breakfast and some quick checking of emails, before Rita went into Agen to go to SFR to sort out her problem with recharging her data allowance. While she was gone, I put together the "Piper Battle” Video from last Monday’s Karaoke Night. Rita came back without a resolution of her data problem and we eventually made a start westwards at 1145h.

We cruised smoothly across the Agen Aqueduct with no delays due to other boats. We kept it on a straight course down the middle of the canal, helped by aligning the front corners of our side-railings with the edges of the walkways (the unused positions on our bike rack could also be used for alignment).

We then went down the four Agen locks, and then "up the Amazon” through the densely vegetated section of the canal west of Agen. Encroaching and overhanging trees have made this section of the canal very narrow in places and care must be taken if another boat appears from the opposite direction near one of these bottlenecks. Since I was going downstream I technically had right-of-way, but on a couple of occasions I slowed to pull into a wider part of the canal to let others pass more easily.

We passed Daisy and Dilligaf who were moored at Serignac. They were wild-moored on the northern side, since the usual quai moorings were out of action during a reconstruction of the main moorings on the southern side of the canal.

An hour or so later, we pulled up at Phillipot Park, one of our favourite shady mooring sites. We had a quick nap, and then I followed the World Cup where France defeated Uruguay 2-0. Rita and I then started our own World Cup when we resumed petangue hostilities from last year (even though I’ve called it “bocce” above to get the page heading onto one line). The series ended up tied 1-1 as darkness fell and a few mosquitos appeared.

After dinner, I followed the evening World Cup game where Belgium defeated Brazil 2-1. After his antics during the series, it was good to see that Karma caught up with Neymar during this match. In the final 10 minutes as Brazil desperately tired to level the game, Neymar was fouled a few times but, despite them probably being real fouls, Neymar’s reactions and his previous history of acting meant that the referee just allowed play to continue and told him to get up and play on.

Later that night, given our remote location, Rita and I did some steelpan rehearsal without fear of annoying the neighbours. It was a good chance to play the whole repertoire together for the Dindi Moon tour next month.