Friday 24th June - Trebes to Homps

It is very difficult to gauge what time to leave, as there are lots of hire boats on the canal and the queues at the locks can be long, so we left at our usual time of ten o'clock.  On arriving at the triple locks of Trebes we found three boats waiting - they had already waited an hour!!  So we would have to wait for them to go down and boats to come up!!  Time for Crew to get out her duster!  We didn't lock down until 11.30 - leaving the last lock at midday!  Two hours........it's going to be a long day!! We had a long stretch till the next lock and had only to wait for half an hour for lunchtime to be at an end.  It was a long, hot afternoon with eleven locks still to go but as we had one triple and three doubles, all went smoothly and we got into a rhythm with another private boat.  We arrived in Homps just after 5.30 but didn't manage to get tied off until 6.15 as mooring is always difficult there.  There is a big hire boat base but, for some reason, we are not allowed to moor there!  Very frustrating!!  A few beers then everyone to get cleaned up for dinner at 8 o'clock as it was Arthurs' 78th birthday.  skip booked the table at La Peniche restaurant, where we had eaten several times before.  We had a good Cremant Rose as an aperitif and a lovely dinner to follow, with good wines of course!  Arthur had had trouble mooring in the port so he'd moored a kilometre or so from us.  He hitched a lift to the restaurant on a boat in the lock near him - very resourceful is our Arthur!  Henk organised with the owners' son a lift back to his boat.  A good night was had by all!!

28 km. 14 locks. 8 hours