When we left this morning we went through a lovely village called Poilhes, and I can only assume that the semaphore station had sent a signal that a British Boat flying the Red Ensign was coming through as they had their Canon ready as we went through as boldly as Cochrane or Nelson (OK I know they would have had a white ensign)

Today we also went through the Malpas Tunnel which was kind of neat as inside you can still see the marks where the stone was cut away by hand.

We arrived at the 6 locks at Fonseranes nice and early, and on our own, only to discover that they only allow boats down the locks at certain times of the day, which meant we had to wait a couple of hours. Going down the locks we came to what I consider to be the lowest and most awkward bridge in the whole canal network.

The following photo shows the locks from the bottom and was taken by R Collins and taken off the internet www.beyond.fr

There were ourselves and another two boats going down the locks – which are oval in shape – and if you can visualise a low bridge over the exit/entrance between two locks and manoeuvring boats into position in locks with curved walls – it was tricky. The chap sitting up in the flybridge of a holiday boat was almost seriously injured as when he turned his boat under the bridge he came within a whisker of being squashed in the curve of the footbridge………if doing these locks, you have been warned! The bridge, curved red brick can be seen in the middle of the above photo.

The locks when we reached Bezier really are deep but they have poles down the wall of the lock, so that one simply puts a line around the pole and back onto the boat, and as the boat descends the rope slides down the pole – pretty straightforward.

The way we set up Sun Dog was that on one side of the boat we had our long lines fitted, and on the other, our standard mooring lines. So that if it was a lock with poles we went to one side of the lock, and if not we went to the other so that we could use our longer lines. This proved to be a good set up for us on the way through and saved a lot of kerfuffle going through the locks.

When tied up at Villenueve we had a good old walk around to stretch out our legs, but as the skies darkened we headed back to the boat. We were then treated to Mother Nature giving us one of her firework displays as both sheet and forked lighting lit the skies and then the heavens opened and gave Sun Dog her first fresh water wash for a long time, as due to the water shortage washing boats is banned along the canal.