boarding saint christophe

Today we farewelled Fontenay-le-comte and headed south. The paddocks of straw and sunflowers slowly became grape vines and kiwi fruit. Stone and clay houses with tile roofs poked out of the vines. Following Charlie, our sat nav, we avoided most of the major roads and instead found ourselves at a village every few kilometres. We'd weave our way through it and come out on the other side ready for the next one.

The houses here are small, especially by Australian standards. Most have exterior shutter blinds, pulled down during the heat of the day. It's regularly topping 30C each day with the hottest part of the day the afternoon. I don't know what time it gets dark because I'm always asleep by then. When walking to the supermarket at 9pm the other night I still had my sunglasses on. Gardens are exactly that, either flowers or vegetables. We've seen some really impressive vegetable gardens, nearly every house has one. A lot of the the buildings have flowers in flower boxes outside their windows, or beautiful hydrangeas that seem to grow out of the footpath. I haven't seen any 'yards' as we know them.

I have no idea how big the villages are, it's difficult to tell because we only see a street or two. However there is always an impressive church. Most of the time everything looks quite closed because the shutters are down. Every now and then, in what looks like the middle of nowhere we'll pass a random business - a mechanic, car dealerships or a furniture store. I always wonder how many people actually stop. While top speed on the motorways is 130kmh, through the villages it's usually 50km, and 70kmh on the approach. It goes up and down quite quickly. Sometimes we'll come through a village and the speed will go up to 70kmh, only to drop to 50kmh 100metres later.

After a full day of driving, including a stop at a supermarket to stock up, we arrive at Agen and board our canal boat, the Saint Christophe. After squeezing our luggage and groceries into every crevice, we set sail. The locks close at 7pm so we don't quite have enough time to make it through one. Instead we decided to cruise about 10km in the opposite direction to where we eventually want to head. It will only take a couple of days to get to Valence-sur-baise so we can use the rest of the time to explore the canals and rivers.

Lying in the sun on the deck, an early evening breeze keeping me cool...this is the life.