We arrived back in Victoria BC a few days ago and waiting for us in a massive pile of mail was the third issue of the brilliant Upppercase magazine. We met the creator of Uppercase last march in her Calgary gallery shop. During the past season Brandy & Becky at the Regional Assembly of Text in Vancouver kept us supplied with the first two issues of Uppercase magazine which made for excellent reading while aboard Linquenda. And this third issue features a small article we wrote about our adventures aboard Linquenda. Thanks to Janine for featuring Linquenda! Head over to http://www.uppercasegallery.ca/ to secure your copy…

Here are some visual highlights from our last week, sailing from Moissac to Toulouse in the Company of Holly, Tyler, Geoffrey and Ann, as well as Dad Wolferstan. It was a great week and a fitting end to an adventurous and eventful season. This very well may well have been our last week aboard Linquenda, ever. No promises though.

Look out for more posts on up-coming articles, reunions & plans.

We spent last night at anchor in the Lac de St-Niclas-de-la-Grave which isn’t really a lake but a damned section of the Garonne river at confluence with the Tarn river. It was a pleasant night for anchoring, with a long and delicious meal of moules-marinier, enjoyed while swinging on the hook, a small sailboat gliding by in the last of the evening breeze. Night brought a full moon as the lights of surrounding houses lit up the hillsides. It was a nice change from the canal and an interesting section of river to explore.

We are now counting down our final days of the season. Today we get back onto the Canal du Garonne, locking up onto one of the most picturesque canal bridges to cross the Tarn river and start the voyage south. We have a full boat for this last week with Geoffrey, Ann, Holly and Tyler and the weather is sunny and still warm, a gentle and welcome ‘hello’ to autumn.

Storm clouds brewed over the riverside town of Nerac the day after we arrived. Before leaving, we experienced our first full days of rain since Spring. The novelty of it, while nice for the first hour, wore off pretty quickly though the rain stuck around for two days. Since then we have had a week of foggy mornings and warm sunny afternoons (yesterday it almost hit 30 degrees). Apparently this Autumn fog/sun thing produces a “noble rot” in wine grapes, sought after by the vinters.

This past week also included a slight change of plan due to a breach in a long section of canal between two locks. A small section of the canal bank gave out and 7 km of canal water drained into the adjacent sunflower field and on through a couple of farm houses before making its way back into the Garonne River. This being the original source of water for the canal at its start back in Toulouse. Excitement City.

Accompanying us during all these hydrological adventures have been return guests and friends from last season, the Gillespies, bringing with them the delightful Charrons, all hailing from Edmonton, Alberta. To the crews’ delight the Gillespies and the Charrons were expert patisserie foragers, and so not only our evening meal but most or our lunchs were followed by a lengthy and elaborate array of the local confectioners’ talents. yum!

We have just two weeks to go before this season’s end. From Agen, where Linquenda rests now, we continue our journey to Moissac to pick up Holly and Tyler  and then toward Toulouse.

What could be better than a week with friends aboard a Dutch barge working your way up a small backwater river? Rounds of tea, followed by by rounds of beer, followed by rounds of boules. Kai and Patrick joined us for the voyage from Moissac to Nerac. The first night we anchored out on the Tarn River beneath the aqueduct and spun merrily in the evening breeze. Then we turned around to lock back up to Canal du Garonne and spent time in the charming town of Valence d’Agen, the ‘bustling metropolis’ of Agen and the vineyards of Buzet before entering the wee river Baise. We spent a quiet and pleasant afternoon and evening in Vianne, and wound our way up the tree-lined river to our final destination the next morning, through the smallest locks we have yet encountered in France.

Our delivery into the town of Nerac was a great surprise, as we moored up between the two bridges in the old tannery district (now full of restored worker’s cottages and contemporary art museums). Our surroundings lit up at night like a small theatre, perfect for those inclined to enjoy a small glass of port and/or a first of autumn pipe.

Back in the day, King Henry IV held court with ‘Margot’ in Nerac, a marriage attempting to work out some row or other between the Catholics and Protestants. The remains of Henry’s family chateau tell the story of a royal lineage who created a ‘petite Louvre’ with writers, poets, intellectuals, comedians and musicians and created a park along the Baise for the royal court to converse and create.

We are looking forward to meeting our next guests (our friend Greg’s parents and aunt and uncle) here to journey back with us to Agen, where we will then be slowly making our way back to our final winter destination in Toulouse…

Thanks to Kai too for his digital photocomposition of the Boules game.

This week Linquenda was pleased to welcome Dad back to France after almost two years absence, his longest time away from the boat since the family first sailed Linquenda in 1996.
We also have two good friends Patrick and Kai from Victoria with us, as we weave our way up the River Baise to Nérac.
More from Nérac soon…

A few of the food highlights from the past week…Before departing Mas D’Argenais we liberated a bundle of fresh figs from a tree not far from the boat. Combined with some crumbled roquefort cheese, olive oil and ground pepper these little delights made for an excellent snack. They went down well with mint-tonics, a simple combination of muddled fresh mint and tonic water.

On a particularly overgrown stretch of canal we were able to harvest blackberries from the boat which made for excellent picking as all those on land could not get to them. And then there are the tomates- yesterday evening found us moored next to a organic market garden with over 4o varieties of tomatoes and a couple euros got us a beautiful little sac full. Lots to be thankful for…

This picture looks down on Linquenda from the Bastide town of Mas D’Agenais, a town that houses one of Rembrandt’s paintings and the site of a Roman statue of Venus. (The fig tree in question is just out of view below this shot.)

From Sete on the Meditteranean, where we last splashed in the salt chuck, we have traveled 413km of canal and negotiated 137 locks over 23 days. Two more hours on a train (and another 100km) found us in Arcachon, a seaside town at the head of a massive tidal estuary southwest of Bordeaux. First thing we did, of course, is walk the three blocks from the train station to the beach to soak our toes in Atlantic. That done, we went and found a second morning coffee to admire the views and watch the comings and goings on the long wooden piers. 

Sufficiently rested, we rented a couple bikes so we could make the most of the day, first cycling along the excellent seaside bike path south along forests of pine towards the Dune du Pilat, Europe’s largest sand dune. And it is huge. It took about 20 minutes to climb to the top where we could admire the view of all the day-triping boats, paragliders, the coastline to the south and the Arcachon Basin to the north. It took less than a minute to descend, landing softly and quickly in the decline of warm golden sand.

Back in Archachon we rolled along the wooden boardwalk/bike path over the sand to the marina. We were able to get a fairly close look at a collection of wooden boats as they had a section of the marina all to themselves. There were a few of the local traditional boats, the ‘pinasse’, a lug rigged open boat. We also noticed the motorised launch version and saw many of these pinasse launchs throughout the basin.

The end of the day saw us turn inland again, to begin making our eastern journey towards our winter moorage in Toulouse…

Last Friday we left the barge for the weekend (first time off the boat since March) and it was a great get-away. Bordeaux has got to be one  the most pedestrian friendly cities we have ever visited, which makes it a pleasure to stroll through and explore. A perfect flaneur city. The large city centre. another UNESCO world hertige site for it urban and architectural fabric,is full of shops and cafes and it is beautiful. And then there are the trams, modern, clean and ad-free, which silently glide along the boulevards, riverside quais and through the parks. The “Mirror of Water”, a massive fountain, or water feature, on the quai steals the show opposite the Palac de Borse. It goes through a cycle sometimes creating a misty environment sometimes a smooth shallow lake. The photo above was taken on our first day in the city. The next day, Saturday was sunny and when we strolled through the fountain it was packed with people. Most noticeable were the hordes of little kids shrieking, running around, and trying to swim around in a inch of water, all in their under wear. Vancouver needs one of these (well it could use a frigging central square first, then one of these, then trams…)

Other highlights included an excellent 3 course lunch for 11 euros on Rue St Remi. At Cafe Brun, a cozy traditional pub just down the street, we had an afternoon pint of beer while watching two older ladies sip wine, noting the street life pass. Mollat bookstore was great to browse maps and plan a trip to the Atlantic coast for the next day (photos to come)…

Since departing Castelsarrasin just under a week ago we have been slowly creeping west towards Bordeaux. Over the Tarn river by canal bridge and into Moissac, then on to Valence D’Agen and Finally Agen, famous for it prunes (dianna says they are delicious). After Agen another canal bridge took us over the Garonne river and then it was on to Buzet, Damazan and finally the charming town of Mas-D’Argenais. Many of these little town we have passed through are Bastide towns built on a regular plan in the 13th and 14th centrury as part of colonizing effort in Southern France. There is quite an interesting history surrounding these town so those inclined might want to type ‘Bastide town wiki’ into their search browsers (excitement city!) Anyway, Mas D’Agenais is fairly close to the end of the Canal du Garonne, about a days travel, and from here we will turn around soon and start the voyage back to Toulouse. Today we are going to hop on our bikes, ride down the canal a ways to Marmande, where we’ll jump a train to take us into Bordeaux for the weekend. Thanks to dianna’s Mum for this weekend getaway.