Pressed on regardless until .....

Saturday

Having revised our horizons for our next overnight stay we set off again and enjoyed the scenery and the interesting locks. Along the way we caught up with a couple of boats, one group were French and another were Czechs.

They seemed eager to be giving us instructions but we soon discovered that neither group matched our prowess. We were hoping to get to Marsialette for the night and were on track despite the power problem seeming to be getting worse.

Disaster struck at the lock at Puichric We headed towards the lock but lost power yet again, but this time it was the reverse which had failed at the worst possible moment and we also lost the steering so went crashing into the wall beside the lock entrance quite hard - no human casualties but some of the chattels on the boat didn’t fare as well. The wall of the lock didn’t appear to have any lasting effects but the boat is a little more snub nosed than before.

Mechanic arrived reasonably soon and declared the boat boat to be kaput. The boat company suggested a couple of options neither of which were palatable ( one being to take us back to the beginning and give us another boat). The option that we came up with was to take us to Carcassone the next morning. So we sorted out a house to stay in and enjoyed a party night for our last night on the boat.

The lock we didn’t get through had lots of metal sculptures, which we looked at while waiting for the mechanic

Sunday morning we said goodbye to the boat and have arrived at our lovely house at the foot of the castle at Carcassone.