Wednesday 22nd June - Carcassonne to Fresquel

Carcassonne is always difficult to depart from - not only the constant passenger boats but the hovering around waiting for the lock when there are so many moored hire boats!  That said, the mobile ones are worse......including the one that we had to deal with.  He kept going in one direction, then stopping and turning again - none of us knew what his aim was.  Thankfully we managed to get ourselves safely in the lock. We only managed one more lock before the lunchtime closing as we now had a double and a quick single to go down but several boats were coming up so we had to wait over an hour for lunchtime to be over.  Behind us came an old barge with quite a wild looking Frenchman aboard - we had seen him in Carcassonne.  When the locks were finally ready he came marching down the towpath, barking orders in a strong dialect French.......we shrugged our shoulders and splayed our hands, thinking he should understand that we didn't understand!!  We had some doubts as to whether our engine was cooling properly as there was only limited water coming out.  As we entered the double lock, it was apparent that there was a problem as the 'screamer' went off!  We struggled through the three locks and moored on the bank to investigate. Skip tried yet more clearing of the filter but to no avail, so Henk came on board to help.  In the end, it was the impeller that had failed - it was shredded to bits (boat won't function without this little bit of rubber!).  When the wild looking Frenchman on the old barge came through the locks, he was clanging a loud bell and shouting obscenities (probably), giving us a rude finger sign.  Crew thought he was saying 'travail', meaning that he was a work boat but as far as we were concerned, there was nothing to indicate that he was a work boat.......c'est la vie!!  We had tied up just the other side of the locks in a very open part of the countryside and with the wind blowing a gale!  Henk and Skip toiled for a couple of hours or so and although the old impeller had been removed, fitting the new one proved to be very difficult.  It was very hot work down in the engine room even though the floor of the saloon had been taken up, so after a while the men decided to stop and have another go in the morning.  Crew supplied a makeshift supper and we imbibed red wine and chatted.  An earlyish bedtime was the order of the day.......there was a job to finish in the morning!

4 km  5 locks  3 hours