Today we biked into St. Nazaire d’Aude. Beautiful mediaeval town. Bought 2 bottles of wine and Dave rode back to the boat one-handed, despite his handicapped thumb.
The locks are now in the downward direction as we have turned around back the way we started. The downward direction is easy because there is no water rushing in that you are fighting the whole way. The danger is that if your line gets caught in a crack, you can “hang the boat” because once the rope gets stuck, it just gets tighter and tighter as the boat begins to “hang” on the rope. This could be very dangerous because the rope can break and spring back so hard it could kill someone. Hence we were very cautious of this. Alas, Dave’s rope on the stern got wrapped around a cleat in such a way that the rope got twisted around itself and had this same effect. Dave realized what was happening and tried to get the rope out, but it was already too tight, and as the water ran out of the lock, we were soon “hanging” by the rear corner”. Amazingly the boat held there till the lock keeper could put enough water back in the lock to float us again allowing Dave to untwist the line. Whew!
Arrived in Homps and bought two more bottles of wine before heading off to dinner at the other end of town. Fabulous food!