In which Sid and Doris canoe down the Tarn and think about a new route home.
Up late. We think we are putting on weight and we are not riding today so breakfast is a fairly civilised event, memorable for the pasteque and orange confiture. And they put out some of their creamy cheeses. This is a two hearth and three pot Logis with their skills and love on show this morning.
Sid went to organise canoe hire. The system has you set off on a two hour paddle, nine kilometres down stream, slow even by our standards with instructions as to where to pull in to be collected. It is not quite the wild frontier so the beavers are unfazed by the little rapids. The river is rather low today and sometimes we can hear the hulls, which draw almost nothing, grind over the stones. Later we will see how high it has been in record years.
Many birds including kingfishers, herons and egrets. The singing of “Egrets, I’ve had a few” is banned after the first four kilometres.
The canoe organiser asks us to mark on the map where we are from. Surprising to us, many are locals, some from Paris and Lyons with almost no foreigners.
We see egrets, herons and a kingfisher. Later, on the Presqu’Ile we see a Birds of the Tarn poster and are surprised to see Ronald Searle’s gerund enjoying impersonating a bihoreau heron. [No, I am not going to paste a link about the gerund, you can have all the fun of looking it up yourself. Especially if you’ve never read the Down With Skool Books. D.]
The near-oxbow on which Ambialet stands hosts a hydro-electric plant originally built (1917) to power the steel works of Saut du Tarn who made horse drawn farm tools. See the elegant advertisement. [sorry technical problems with the picture upload, will try to do this later – D.]
The oxbow creates a 3.5 metre drop that powers the turbines. It is still in use by Electricite de France, remotely operated from 20 k away. It is built like a baby Loire chateau and beautifully looked after. We missed the guided tour while out in the canoes, gnash. Here is a picture of a picture which reminds Sid and Doris of their fab visit down the London sewers (Miftah Bat much impressed with the stinky flow) and the pumping station at Abbey Mills, the cathedral of sewerage.
Coming back we go to record this enamel on cement road sign. In very small signwriting we can see it was created in October 1966. PIC
This afternoon we looked at our route planning from here, to and across the Pyrenees to Spain, thence by roads unknown to Santander where many of the sailings are already full. What we found was that actually we do not want to go to Santander. We would rather go to a French port. It is about the same distance, most especially does not involve another complicated mountain range crossing, involves no new language, has hotels at convenient distances and easy ferry timetables. See Doris for new news.
Tonight we have another local music treat, probably not on a par with Bolden’s Buddies. This is a three piece R&B band. The cafe where they are playing was running at more than capacity at lunch time but selling us a beer shouldn’t be too hard. We will eat in the Logis Hotel du Pont and go out ready to groove along.