After the exorbitant mooring fee at St Gilles we left, determined to somehow lower our average per-night spend, and we did.

It's only about 20 kilometres (just over 12 miles for those using old money) to Beaucaire, our next destination, and these days the end of the line for this particular canal. For quite some years now the lock at Beaucaire that accesses the Rhone has been closed off due to a "barrage" or weir constructed just beyond it.

But for all that Beaucaire seemed popular as a place to winter over, to visit, and to enjoy. It seemed from the guide book to offer more than St Gilles, and certainly the journey there started off promising.

The canal was pretty - helped by sunshine and almost no wind - and for once we didn't have to radio ahead to the lock keeper because it turned out there wasn't one. The one and only lock en route was self-operated, but not in the English get-out-your-windlass-and-wind-up-the-paddles kind of way. No, this was automated, but we didn't know that at first. Liz hopped off in sight of the lock to investigate, which we could see was showing a red light, meaning it was busy or full... this would also our first lock where we would be going uphill instead of down.

In a few moments she came back along the path smiling and said, "There's no lock keeper... the lock keeper is me!"

Turned out the wee shed beside it contained push buttons which filled or emptied the lock and automatically changed the traffic light system according to which gates would open. Liz had pushed all the right buttons (as she always does, at least for me) and we could see water churning around the bottom of the gates as the lock emptied in preparation for us. Eventually the gates swung open, the light changed to green and we sailed in, repeating the process to fill the lock and raise us four metres to the next level.

All very sophisticated, but it is another nail in the coffin for the eclusiers, the lock-keepers. This dying breed became extinct in Britain many years ago but cling on in France largely due to the continuing existence of commercial barge traffic; the huge locks we'd encountered to date are no place for amateur operation, and because many of the smaller canals are hugely busy in the high season from May to September, lock keepers maintain a degree of order and control. But, it was interesting to see on the official French waterway website a call for people to adopt old lock-keepers' houses (that's old houses, not houses of old lock keepers... although...) which gives us something to think about. Do we want to take over an old eclusier residence beside a lock? Sounds romantic, but come summer that same bit of water outside our front door would be full of lager-swilling young people (ugh!) on hire boats, getting their ropes tangled and causing mayhem. Hmmm. Maybe not.

Meanwhile, with the top gates open we emerged in stately fashion and within 300 metres had decided to greenbank. Greenbanking is basically tying up for free somewhere appropriate but unofficial. The guide books call it nature mooring, and all it really means is finding a place where there's enough depth to park your boat laterally to the canal bank, enough solid ground to hammer in your mooring stakes, and voila! Bob est ton oncle: free mooring.

Of course there's no power or water, but Liberty has a great battery bank and can hold 600 litres of l'eau, so that wasn't a problem. We sat on the aft deck (I know you're getting tired of this) with a vin blanc and enjoyed the peace and quiet. I think we slept all the better knowing nobody was going to ask us for €21 next morning.

It was a bit of a mission extricating ourselves - the stern had settled into the mud during the night - but we did it. It did mean however I had to leave Liz behind as she was on the bank pushing me off, so she had to walk alkng the path, but only until we came to a spot where she could hop on. (When I say "hop" it was more a sort of one-legged dance with much huffing and the odd swear word as she tried to swing herself onto the bow. Very entertaining... for one of us)

And so on to Beaucaire, in more warm sunshine, with a fox who came trotting onto the towpath full of bravado - until he saw us - herons, a flock of elegant white birds of unknown breed, and dragonflies that seemed to want to fly in formation alongside us.

Idyllic, or it would have been except that the closer we got to Beaucaire the less attractive was the canal, with one particularly ugly factory to the left, overgrown trees, weeds and a generally dishevelled appearance that made us think we were about to meet St Gilles' uglier sibling. At the approaches to the town there was even a sunken boat off to one side.

Was Beaucaire French for Take Care?