Just outside the city of Beziers the Canal de Midi has to make a steep descent.
This is done by a stairway of seven locks, know as les Neufs Ecluses (there used to be nine)
This series of locks has become quite a feature of life here and we often spend a few hours watching barges ascend and descend through these locks, admiring all the time the skill of their builder Paul Ricquet who put the whole thing together over two hundred years ago.

Part of the fascination is the amateurism of the canal boat drivers, usually people who have hired the boats for a few days and are often English.
Early this summer happened the incident which I will now tell.

I was sitting, with Síle, on a bench on the bank at the bottom of the locks as an ascent started and several boats started to file into the bottom lock to start their long climb up the stairway.
A large boat, manned by half a dozen middle aged ladies and gents of the British persuasion were the last to try and fit in but were turned away by the lock keeper who reckoned the lock was too full to contain them.
Disappointed, they then decided to do something strange.
Instead of reversing back and mooring they decided to turn their barge in the canal.
Their barge was in fact just about exactly the same length as the width of the canal
and so, shortly , the inevitable happened, and the became wedged laterally across the Canal de Midi.

The man at the wheel then performed heroic actions with his engine, sending up clouds of steam and burning lots of engine oil but to no avail.
Then the decision was made and very shamefaced , (the barge now had become the attraction of the locks) five of the party, men and women, scrambled down from the back of the barge on the dry land.
Then the man at the tiller tied a rope on to the bow of the boat and, after throwing it into the water several times, one of the women went on board and carried it back to the team on the bank.
I was now beginning to enjoy this very much, and Síle had started to nudge me hard as my guffaws were becoming audible.

The shore team now lined themselves along the rope rather like a tug of war team and while the skipper continued to rev the engine heroically, they proceeded to try and dislodge the barge from its transverse position.
They weren’t enjoying any obvious success.
The boat remained in the same position.
Then the captain had a eureka moment and with a shout of joy he found a bit of equipment which he had not seen before.
Triumphantly he pulled this lever and the boat just as suddenly started to turn , but unfortunately in the opposite direction of the tug of war team, and with such power that they were all dragged several yards on their tummies , protesting loudly towards the canal..

At that moment my screams of mirth were attracting as much attention as the plight of the bargees and so Madame grabbed me firmly by the elbow and steered me, weeping and weak, towards the car.
To the best of my knowledge none of the team were actually deposited in the water but they were all left in a tangled heap on the bank while the skipper, unaware of their condition gazed around in triumph at , what he saw as his successful solving of the problem..