It’s the end of the month, and still no advice from DELWP about the outcome of our application for support for our Taggerty Microgrid project - I’m beginning to have doubts about the potential outcome.

Thinking ahead about the trip north, I asked on the Can2Mers forum today about advice for shuttling our car from Moissac to Auxonne. Got lots of useful feedback (which is why I like the Can2Mers forum), and the consensus seemed to be to try doing it in one step, making one trip by car to Auxonne and then getting back to Moissac by train. This assumed that we wouldn’t need the car along the way. However, we know that we will need the car for Rita to get from Carcassonne to Dijon for her courses in September. So we came to a compromise, with leaving the car in Moissac while we barge to Carcassonne, then having Rita train it back to Moissac, and drive to Dijon. She would then drive back to Carcassonne with her friend Sarah, who would then barge with us to Beziers, then train it back to Carcassonne then drive back to Dijon (or at least nearby Besain). When we get to Auxonne, we then retrieve the car from her. Sounds all very simple, but there may be some changes along the way!

Having worked out the plans for car-shuttling, it was necessary to modify the trip north timings for Ian, Flis and Sarah to ensure that everyone could make their desired train connections at Beziers.

Thanking ahead again, I started to design the new dogbox fly tent and other covers for over-wintering. The idea is to get the materials from the same suppliers in Moissac/Castelsarrasin who provided the material for our wheelhouse cover last year, and then build the required supports on the trip north. The main cover for over-wintering is about 10m x 3m, so it won’t be a cheap undertaking.

I also took some time to build a spreadsheet to work out fuel consumption for the trip north. It predicted that if we filled up in Moissac before leaving (1500L capacity), we would have 6L left by Auxonne! I think we might fill up along the way!! Reading many other’s experiences on various forums, I decided that Valance looked like a good place for refilling the tank.

In the evening, we headed over to Auvillar to listen to the Rübigen singers, who we had seen many times in previous years. We got there early, which gave Rita time to talk to the gallery owner, and line up a potential gig for Dindi Moon, and for me to get a good shot of the old market place.

Tonight they were doing their improv pieces, which covered a wide variety of styles, from various instrumental combos, to folk duets, to a choir, captured here under the awning through the market place.

While we were walking around after the conclusion of the performances, I got a strange SMS from Joanna, Rita’s niece. She asked me to tell Rita to phone Frank, Joanna’s father, and followed up with a muiltimedia message with the words "Because oma”, followed by an emoji for an ambulance, followed by a photo of two hospital beds!  From this, we gathered that Rita's mum had been taken to hospital! So Rita immediately phoned her brother Frank, and discovered that this was the case, but that the situation was not too serious, since she had actually been admitted a couple of days ago. Nonetheless, it cast a dispiriting gloom over the evening, as Rita worried about how she really was.