(#15) Onward to Béziers and Port Cassafieres

As we looked forward to a simple day of a few locks before turning back onto the Canal Du Midi (CDM) and going through the 'Les 9 Ecluses de Fonseranes'.  The first lock runs so smoothly with only us in it.  As we pull out go the lock oh what do we see in the far distance just before the next lock but our little yellow boat waiting patiently, I guess for us.  With only a few locks to go with very small elevation changed we are off like a herd of turtles.  We pick Luigi up just before we head into the CDM put the pedal to the metal and find that in about 30 minutes we are at the top of Les 9 Ecluses de Fonseranes and must wait for about 2 hours to continue our voyage. Because of the number of locks that you travel through consecutively traffic flow in one direction only for a set number of hours with each direction of travel happening twice daily.  The elevation difference is 21.5M over a distance of 300M.

As we waited for the traffic direction to change we went and had a visitors view of the operation as the boats headed up the locks. Pavé and I decided to have a refreshing Sangria while the others headed down the hill and towards town.

Looking down the locks

one of the behemoths were only one vessel was in the lock at a time

Our pack travelling down the locks

the injury from before and that is not tan on my thumb

the look in the lock after we dropped down ready to move into the next lock 

Just before this set of locks we went through a significant tunnel, without incident, but after we exited the tunnelled and were well clear and boat from the opposite direction barrels towards the tunnel with no indication of slowing down. As we did not hear any horns or other horrific sounds they must have made it through scot-free.

Onward we travelled until we found a quite spot away from the adjacent highway to stake the boat and have our last quite night on the boat.  The following day we pulled into Port Cassafieres and what do we see but the little yellow boat tied up adjacent to the dock rather than perpendicular with the stern to the shore.  We notice later in the day they are moving all there belongings into a travel camper and it turn out they had lost their propeller so this was the end of their trip on the canal, which was to end the following day anyways only a short distance further down the canal. 

We prepared to leave the following day at 7:00 am for the train station in Béziers, train to Toulouse, plane to Lisbon and then finally a plane to Porto.