Unexcused Absences Week 7 Recap, 6/26/-7/2 (he said)

Week 7 Recap, 6/26/-7/2 (he said)

by Kent 4 Jul 2011

As we move westward we have noticed significant differences in the local history. The crusades of the 12th and 13th centuries weren’t as central to this region’s past as in Languedoc, although there was still wanton sacking of various churches by the different groups (Protestant, Catholic). The churches have gotten newer, too. Many towns have churches that have been rebuilt as recently as 100 years ago, although the original church on the site may have been from the 11th century (or earlier).

Sunflowers, flower power, nuclear power

The most interesting change has been the appearance of the “Bastide” (“new towns” built in the 13th and 14th centuries!) along the canals. The advent of the Bastide helped drive a stake in the heart of Feudalism. Whereas the central Feudal concept was that a lord granted land to a vassal in exchange for service (agricultural work and/or military service), the Bastide gave land to an owner (peasant?) in exchange for taxes, so the owner was technically “free”, but in fact had to work awfully hard to pay his taxes. This was an unfortunate “advance” in the name of progress.

A very old half-timbered house in Sérignac-sur-Garonne

The Bastide is a planned village, laid out on a grid (easier to calculate taxes!) arranged around a central market square. The market square housed the town’s weighing and measuring area, used to facilitate trade. In many cases around this part of south-west France, the old market square is still in use today. Many of the houses certainly look like they could have been from the 13th century, although it’s doubtful they have survived unmodified since then. There were over 700 Bastides built in a period of about 150 years. This concept of central market and adjacent houses was in turn strongly based on the Roman “castrum” (a grid of streets) around the central “forum” (market area). History!

Early grain harvest

Recall from last week that we spent Saturday night camped out on the Tarn river under an abandoned chateau, with no one else in sight. Sunday morning we returned to Moissac and their fantastic street market, and paid our lady of the cheese at Le Fromage Rit one final visit. We left town once the locks opened for the afternoon and headed towards a camping spot in a long pound between locks, which would give us a chance to cover some ground before the locks opened Monday morning. However, the hot weather, and les circuits électroniques feuilletée (some flaky electronics), caused a delay in plans.

Fried lock-control electronics

As we pulled up to the next-to-last lock before the long pound, the control lights were blank (bad sign).We could see the top of a boat down in the lock, but both sets of doors were still closed (another bad sign). We moored to the canal bank and walked up to the lock to discover that two poor souls in a hire boat had been stuck down in the lock chamber for almost seven hours! Oh, and did we mention it was close to 100 degrees and cloudless that day? I’m sure they were par-boiled by that time. We found a sweating VNF technician in the control booth with all the panels open and wires everywhere. It was at least 130 degrees in the booth, and he had been there a while. Heather brought him some water and found out that the VNF had no idea when the lock could re-open.

Sunset in Valence-d'Agen

Ce n’est pas grave (it was not a big deal), we turned the boat around and drove back about 45 minutes to Valence d’Agen, a small village with a nice halte-nautique (boat-parking spot). We squeezed in behind Ariana, a gorgeous steel Dutch barge owned by an English couple who actually lived full-time in Australia. They had a Canadian visitor, so we all sat down for drinks and amused ourselves with the curious language differences between Canadian, Australian, and American versions of English.

N.F.H. (Nice... House)

Monday we all headed west again, only to find the lock still out of service. We tied off to the canal bank, on another cloudless, sunny, 100 degree day. Have I mentioned that the good ship Après Ski does not have air conditioning? At 2pm we gathered up some snacks and drinks and were walking over to the Ariana to continue the previous evening’s happy hour when suddenly the lock doors opened! The technicians had hacked a fix, so at least they could operate the locks “manually” by laptop computer. We gratefully passed through the lock and continued our westward journey, along with a half-dozen boats that had also been delayed by the closure. The folks on the hire boat had by that time packed their bags and taken a taxi out of there, so we helped the VNF guys tow their boat out of the lock.

Long canal bridge in Agen

We made it to Agen at 6pm, but the port didn’t look that appealing so we pressed on and made it to the flight of four locks descending out of Agen in the nick of time. The VNF won’t start you down the flight unless there is time for you to make it all the way to the bottom (about 45 minutes), but luck was on our side. We arrived at Sérignac-sur-Garonne (the only potential mooring for an hour in either direction) after 8pm to find all the moorings taken, but a woman on a boat flying the American flag waved us over and had us tie up to their boat Aegir (Sue and Jack from Florida).

Church in Sérignac

This turned into a great meeting, and we spent two days of luxurious relaxtation resting at Sérignac. The town offered free moorings, water, and electricity. Bonus! We also met Jeff & Diane from England, who were friends of Sue and Jack. The six of us had a fun day, where we a) looked at each other’s boats, b) talked about boating, and c) discussed when we could all go boating together in the future. In between talking about boats, I was able to finally solve a small but persistent leak in the window to the aft head (bathroom).

Church in Damazan

Wednesday we drove on to Damazan, a small town but one with two very important features; it had a diesel station a couple hundred yards from where our boat was docked, and it had a market the following morning, important since our cheese supply had reached red-alert status. A bunch of round-trips to the gas station and we were able to add 100 liters of diesel to our boat (good for about 40 hours of motoring), important because we wanted to take a 25-hour side trip up the Baïse river (don’t say “baze” – a naughty French word – say “bay-eese“!)

A lock on the lower Baïse River

Thursday at the market we found the Palais du Fromage, (a mobile cheese truck) and we were able to sample and buy some truly stupendous cheeses. After the market we actually backtracked about 40 minutes, heading south-east to the town of Buzet, which is semi-famous for its local wine cooperative, also a bonus because we had used the last of our bulk wine the evening before. Wine and cheese replenished, we locked down into the river Baïse and wound our way due south into the picturesque and historic town of Nérac by evening.

Église Notre Dame

Nérac is most famous for being the seat of the powerful Albret family, who ruled over this part of south-west France in the 15th and 16th centuries. There is even a connection to Catherine de Medici; Henri Albret married Catherine’s daughter and later became King Henri IV of France. Or something like that – all the town placques are in French, so I’m not crystal clear on the exact sequence of events. The local chateau has a sign, “the king slept here!”

First night in Nérac - not bad for the "cheap" seats!

We chilled in Nérac straight through to Saturday night. The first two nights were in the “cheap” seats, the free mooring area inhabited by live-aboards just below the vieux pont (old bridge). We met a fun English couple, Guy and Jane, who were doin’-it-right, renting out their house for the summer so they could live on their canal boat (Rose of Tralee) in southern France. We visited the great street market Saturday morning, enjoyed terrific kebabs from a Turkish vendor for lunch, and took a walk up a long hill to a chateau (closed Saturday afternoon, naturally) that sells Armagnac. This part of France is the heart of the small Armagnac region south-east of Bordeaux, so I still hold out hope that I will get to sample some from the source. By afternoon it was time to move the boat to the paid moorings in town, since the batteries on Après Ski can only last 48 hours without plugging in to shore power.

Église St-Nicolas de Nérac and central port

We can’t believe we’re already on week 7 of our adventure, we really don’t want it to end. This part of France (the department Gers) is almost unknown to American tourists, so the visit with our fellow countrymen on their boat was actually a bit of a treat. The paysage (landscape) has changed again, and now consists of rolling hills dotted with corn and grain fields, deeply wooded rivers in narrow valleys, and the aforementioned Bastide towns with their half-timbered houses. If the architecture were a little different we could be in rural Pennsylvania. For week 8 we will continue south up the Baïse river to the end of the navigable portion, then retrace our route back to the Garonne Canal and wrap up our north-westward trek.

Week 7 Numbers: