Saturday morning started with the sound of clanking petanque balls in the Uvarium Park as a big tournament got underway for the weekend.

After watching a few games, I went back on-board to finish installing the external capacitor box for the generator. While all the wiring was working correctly, I just had to tidy things up and find a place for the capacitor box, which I did on the bulkhead wall just in front of the generator soundproofing enclosure. It looks like it has been there forever.

While Rita went out to Dede’s house for lunch with a few friends, I did the washing and hung it around on the rear deck to dry. A nice advantage of this is that it acts like an evaporative cooler, drying the clothes and cooling the air at the same time. It’s very comfortable sitting on the rear deck with your head lost in the washing.

During the afternoon, Stuart & Christine came down to explain that they would not be able to do the section of the Rhone trip with us as we had discussed a few days ago. On investigation, they found that the train and air connections to get them to and from England would not work out with the timing of our trip and the proximity to stations and airports. A shame, because it would have been a fun trip together.

Rita continued working on the CH@T Grant from the Dept of Health and Human Services for admin support for the new Community Hub at Taggerty. Hopefully we will be successful with this application.

In the evening we went up to the Saturday night Parvis concert with Stuart & Christine. They were an interesting band, and the musician on the right below was blind, yet played a variety of instruments which the singer handed to him. My favourite was the goat bagpipes - I took this picture to remind Oscar at home what might happen to him if he doesn’t behave himself.

After the concert, we went around the back of the Abbaye to check out the old Creperie, which we were considering as a Plan B for the Festival if the weather was rainy. It looked OK from the outside.

That night, the biggest event for the Speedway Grand Prix series was held in Cardiff. Australia World Champion Jason Doyle had a bad crash in the final heat, when he clipped the rear wheel of a rider ahead who had lost control, and then went over his handlebars and into the fence, with his bike following close behind. It looked awful and it took a long time to load him into the ambulance for the trip to hospital. Despite being unconscious for some time, he was realeased next morning with just a “few small fractures”. Tough boy, Jason, but may not recover fully in time for next SGP in a few weeks time.