Thursday 1st August
We spent all day going up hill! We managed to go through 18 locks in the space of 16km, this took us over 6 hours of motoring so at least the batteries are charged.
Canal boat users become obsessed with electricity and water, if the batteries are not charged up every day they run flat, this means the fridge, water and toilet pumps won't work which is bad news. The water tank holds 600 litres of water and we seem to use 100 litres a day so when we see free water we top up.
Tonight we are living it up a little, we are moored in the Grand Basin of Castelnaudary (pictured above) where, for the fee of 17€ we have water, WiFi and the use of hot showers (we have a shower on the boat but it is not great). We could also plug in to an electricity supply if our boat had the facility to use a remote supply but unfortunately it has nothing as sophisticated.
Castelnaudary is the Cassoulet capital of France, cassoulet is a stew made up of left over bits of meat and beans, the French get very excited about it and chefs compete for grand awards each year. For 22€ they will even deliver one to our boat but we, being more adventurous headed off into town searching for the cassoulet to beat all cassoulets.
I mentioned before that some lock keepers have a nasty streak and test the resolve of novice boat captains. As you can see above a boat next to ours was getting a good blast from the gates being opened too fast and the picture right is of a boat like ours whose crew were not paying attention, the water rushed in through the door and sank the boat, not a great start to the holiday!
After returning from a very nice dinner last night we noticed activity in the bank, at first we thought it was otters but now we are fairly certain they were coypu, they provided an entertaining end to the day.