Wednesday 21st August.
Canal boating is quite a sociable affair, you meet other boaters at locks or moorings and exchange views on different places to visit or avoid and where to get free water. We were going to leave Beziers until the return leg of the trip until another boat mentioned the festival the following night, otherwise we would have missed it. A couple of days ago we met, within an hour of each other, two English boat crews who had just come from Narbonne. The first (from Southampton) said Narbonne was dull and not worth visiting which rather put the mockers on our plans. The second (from Torquay) said they had been wandering the waterways of France for the past four months and Narbonne was the best place they had visited!
We are with the good people of Torquay, Narbonne is a pleasant place to stay for a couple of nights. Armed with the tourist map we did the 21 sites and museums, only three were closed for no apparent reason.
One we looked forward to was described as “La Mediatheque – This culture centre of 900 sq.m in the town centre is an advanced amenity providing access to the very latest knowledge.” We were a little disappointed to find out it is the library! Enterprise House could be rebranded in the same way and put on the tourist trail. Perhaps the boaters from Southampton made it their first place to visit and then gave up.
The picture left is in an art gallery with an exhibition of paintings of Tunisia and Morocco, above shows I am not the man I used to be.
Unfortunately today was our last proper day sightseeing. Tomorrow we have a to cover 27km, pass through 10 locks (including one huge one) and cross a river so we will be fully occupied with the boat. We then have dinner booked in a nice restaurant we visited at the start of the holiday before taking the boat back on Friday morning, having a leisurely French lunch before getting a taxi to the airport and home.