We left Gannay to a dukes of Hazard fanfare from Mary Rose`s
airhorns and Jean Claude blowing a toy trumpet as he waved his farewells from
the bar. It was a friendly send off from a very friendly stopover. We had a
lovely slow drift to Garnat where we pulled in for a long lunch. Rumour from
last night was that Aldi was just 500m from here and this had been confirmed by
the eclusier at the last lock. We were
out of Saumur. A local lad looked blank when I asked him direction. It was a
proxy marche. Garnat was a very pleasant spot and Collette produced a superb
warm goats cheese and figs salad for lunch. The honey based dressing was
devine.
Incredibly, as I
sipped the last of my Rose in the heat, a glance south west threatened our
bliss. We only just had time to get the covers on before a flash thunderstorm
hit. We had planned on a much anticipated reunion with Nick and Pam on Avalon just 2kms and one
lock further downstream but it looked grim. We had been playing catch up with them for a couple of weeks now but at 4pm there appeared to be a break
and so we made a dash for it only to arrive at Beaulon in more heavy rain but at last we were soon
rafted up to Avalon and a lovely warm welcome of “kettles on”.
Dried and changed we joined Nick and Pam for tea
mysteriously clear and tasting a lot like gin. At 7pm the local garage returned Nicks
now repaired starter motor. He plied them with whisky very grateful for the
extremely reasonable bill. We moved out to the poop in the brightening evening
skies and sunk more gin before I got a bottle of the grand ordinaire out for a
degoustation. When Nick and I downed the last of it, we said our goodnights. It
was 10pm.
We had our emergency lidles chilli with lashings of emmental
rape and crusty bread. Eating this late was becoming a terrible habit. We even
put on another awful Sharpe episode. Bean, how did you get away with it?
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