Beaucaire to Aramon – 80 km

How to spend 8 1/2 hours cruising over 70 km, through three locks, and end up 1 km from where you started? Well, it is all down to that lock in Beaucaire that was closed when the river level changed. So we had to retrace our journey down the Canal di Rhône à Sète, turn off through the Saint-Gilles lock to the Petit Rhône. Chug upstream on that for 25 km, move into the big Rhône, and finally get to Tarascon, which is just across the river from Beaucaire, where we started hours earlier.

We knew it would be a long day, and with a mistral threatening at the weekend, we decided to get as close to Avignon as possible. No signs of early morning activity on Rickwayne as we crept past. But they aren’t leaving till Sunday.

There’s just the one lock to negotiate on the way down, so we had time to conclude that this canal is not the most exciting one that we have travelled. It gets you from one place to another, but is just not very interesting. Perhaps really it was a mistake to have gone up to Beaucaire, even though we did have the pleasure of meeting Pat and Norman again. But the place itself, having been bypassed, seems a bit run down and rickety.

Anyway, soon we were on the little Rhône, and pleased to find the current quite gentle.

It was a different story when we emerged on the big Rhône: I had forgotten that south of the Beaucaire dam and lock the current can be very fierce. And indeed it was. At times our progress was reduced to 5 kph, though 6 or 7 was more usual.

This slow progress gave us plenty of time to admire these elegant wind turbines, revolving merrily in the stiff northerly breeze, and reflect on how many more will be needed to charge up all those electric cars that we will be using when petrol and diesel engines are banned in France and the UK (2040 is it?).

As we came slowly abreast of Beaucaire, and Tarascon across the river, we were finally able to photograph the castle, which we failed to do when staying there yesterday. Quite a fine pile.

Once we had been raised the 15.5 metres up the Beaucaire lock – rapid and painless – we found the current much reduced and were able to progress at our normal cruising speed of about 9 kph. One excitement was seeing a Canadair firefighting plane dip down to scoop up water from the river. Unfortunately he was too far from us, and up-sun, so photos were not possible.

Eventually, after about 10 hours on the go – we took turns at the wheel to have lunch on the run – we found a berth here at the new river port of Aramon, rafted up to a barge. Tomorrow we will do the short leg into Avignon, and have a bit of a rest.