Lucania left us quietly at 7am after another stormy night. Andy and I watched her make headway downriver en route to Beaucaire where she was due to collect a cargo of grain for delivery to Paris. These boats make epic journeys all year round, seven days a week, plying the waterways at a sedate pace.
Although it is Sunday there are plenty more commercial boats on the river and we wait until a lull before we leave the safety of our mooring and venture out into the white horses.
The clear blue skies and bright sunshine cannot defeat the chill of the Mistral and I wonder, as I stand on the bow and cast off, if I am shivering from cold or fear.
“the water began to move down the walls. Down and down we went, bollards groaning, alone, into a void six hundred feet long and thirty-six feet wide and seventy-five feet deep : Gloucester Cathedral, with green and black and yellow walls, mud and weed, armoured gates, water falling down. Two hundred million gallons. It took only ten minutes.”
It was a Sunday and the saints of the Donzere Gorge had allowed Lobelia with her two altar boys to process through this Cathedral. All was well. The lock gates opened and released us into a world where the Mistral was but a whisper.
But this whisper soon returned to a roar and we are moored in a beautiful spot at Roquemaure, surrounded by ruined castles and world-famous vineyards which produce the delicious Cotes du Rhone and Chateauneuf du Pape, yet buffeted and plagued by the dreaded Mistral which shakes you to your core.
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