2025 05 26 Day 2, Castelbouc to La Malene (20km) grade 1-2 by Sue & Colin

Up early and still looking forward to the day. With breakfast collected, we headed down to the river’s bank.

We’d (well, Colin) had spent weeks planning and arranging kit to enable us to pack light and store it in our canoe, and so we were a little quicker at getting ourselves back on the following morning. We didn’t need to ask others what they were taking; what we had was what needed to be packed. This part of the adventure was going to be easy from now on.

Back on the water, and again I marvelled at the Gorge. Several limestone towers caught our imagination as we envisaged faces and animals staring down at us while we flowed along, watching small birds darting up and across the river and listening to a most peculiar sound which I thought was some sort of wading bird. I scanned intensively at the undergrowth along the banks but couldn’t see anything. I later learnt that this squawking noise was actually from a frog! The rapids today seemed a little calmer, or was it a case that we were adjusting and becoming more confident? It wasn’t long before the shout of elevenses, and we eddied out to a beach for a snack (or second breakfast).