In reverse.
My last post covered Ruru’s passage down the Garonne river, a journey of high stress and emotions.
Full of learnings.
Definitely going forward.
A long held goal, ticked off and filed under “achieved”.
Spent two nights at the Begles port de plaisance, on Bordeaux’s periphery.
We were strung out on the furtherest possible mooring, tied on for dear life to a pontoon in the mid-stream of the river.
This is hardcore boating. A vicious tide rips past 20 hours a day. Fall off the pontoon and nekk minnit you’re floating belly up in the Gironde estuary, being feasted on by seagulls.
What an introduction to Bordeaux. I LOVED it!
Begles is home to the biggest commercial centre imaginable. The Carrefour supermarket was sublime, even if it involved a half km walk from the entrance to the checkouts.
And there was a huge Castorama hardware, where I managed to find all the ingredients for a bathroom corner basin and a bale of recycled cotton insulation panels. Very niche.
Friday we surfed the tide into the city centre to a riverside mooring at the Pontoon of Honour. No idea how it got that name, but blimey it was ground-zero real estate.
Cycled for miles along the quay, passing a vast dining/ hospo/ retail precinct that occupies an old warehouse district. I was hunting down the old WW2 German U-boat base. Which turned out to be an Italian navy submarine base. Which was nowhere near I expected it to be. But was hideously ugly & monolithic. And is now an arts space. Which is just plain weird tbh.
It’s enormous.
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I did some reading on it. Slave labour built the project, including 10,000 Spanish republican prisoners (see the statue in the pic on the right).
A couple of decades ago the city investigated demolishing it.
There is so much reinforcing, it’s an impossible task.
So it remains forever. The fascist gift that keeps on giving.
Sightseeing completed.
Nothing for it but to turn around and retrace our steps.
The tides dictated we leave Bordeaux at 3pm Friday (long complicated story -refer to the tidal chart pic).
Up the Garonne we went on the incoming tide. A light but beneficial wind. More squalls. 4- 5km/h of assistance most of the way. Five and a half hours to cover 58km. Reaching the little floating pontoon at Castets at dusk around 8.30pm. Zero dramas.
Next morning we had the river lock booked for 10am. It was a cold and wet day, so we just ploughed on until late afternoon, racking up 33km and 10 locks.
A brief side note. The journey along the Canal de Garonne back to Castelsarrasin is all uphill, meaning lots more work in the locks for me. Downhill locks are relaxed, whereas uphills are a test of strength for lone navigators. No worries.
Sunday? More rain and cold temps. Another 31km and six locks.
Today’s Monday. I’m back on a stretch of canal I know well — like the back of my hand.
Me and Ruru knocked off the 27km and five locks to Agen in time for a late lunch. Castel is now just two days and 47km away.
It’s nine days until my sleeper train takes me back to Paris for a homeward flight.
That leaves a week to finish the bathroom (current status: 100% functional but lacking cosmetic love), and maybe do some epoxy repairs on some of Ruru’s more easily accessible bits.
I am blessed.
Jeff.
