There's a lot about canal boating that's photogenic. The canals themselves for one thing, especially those here in France that are lined with trees, planted in the 19th century in a forward-thinking move to reduce evaporation and erosion.

Then there are the boats themselves, many of them dating back a hundred years or more, with gorgeous lines and curves.

Add to these the play of light on water, the horizontal beams of sun at dusk or dawn, the egrets, herons and kingfishers, and you have the makings of National Geographic cover almost daily.

Today has been a photo-call day too, as we finally managed to extricate ourselves from Beaucaire after three weeks. We did, in fact, leave last Friday, but got only about a hundred metres before we lost power to the propeller. This turned out to be a good news-bad news scenario; the bad news was that our propeller shaft had parted company with the gearbox. The good news was it happened almost right outside a boatyard or chantier, into which we were waved by Monsieur Gerard the proprieter. I say "waved", but in fact hauled was more appropriate since we had no propulsion to actually move, but after throwing some ropes and explaining in our best French that the boat wasn't working because the (gestures of a propeller spinning and stopping here) we were tied up three boats out into the canal, safe and sound.

A quick inspection revealed the issue - the bolts holding the prop plate to the gearbox plate had undone themselves and fallen off with the result that the prop shaft had slipped off. "Pas probleme!" announced Gerard, and promptly disappeared for three days.

This wasn't unexpected, since we had broken down mid-Friday afternoon, the chantiers was closed for the weekend, and Monday was Armistice Day, so we knew nothing was going to happen until Tuesday at the earliest.

In fact it was Wednesday aftenoon before anyone came and fixed us, but we didn't mind since we had no rush to be anywhere, and anyway with Le Mistral blowing we were quite happy to stay where we were for a while. But today we decided to continue the journey south, and set off on a sunny ISO 100 f11 kind of day.

The aim for the next three weeks or so is to explore further south down to places such as the alarmingly-named yet apparently very pictresque Aigues-Mortes, as well as Frontignan, Sete, and maybe Marseillan (not to be confused with its bigger sister Marseille further east). Then around the first week of December we will return to Beaucaire for the remainder of the winter, but spend three weeks or so in the UK for the festive season and New Year. It seems that too many of the canals close for repairs and maintenance over winter to continue boating with any certainty, and we now know why the vast majority of boaties switch their engines off in September and go home.

But we will sail as long as practicable, and today decided just to do a very short stretch back along the Canal de Rhone et Sete in the direction of wild west St Gilles (already mickey-taken in a previous blog).

In warm sunshine and a relatively gentle breeze we tootled along to the automated lock at the unpronouncable Nourriguier, moored up in advance of it and took a stroll to see if it was still operational. It was. We continued walking on downstam to check the mooring there as a potetnial overnight stopover point, only to find a photographer with tripod at work. Now I've already mentioned how photogenic the canals can be, but this wasn't sufficient, as this photographer was focusing on a woman lying on the jetty in the sunlight.

Liz pulled me to a halt when she realised the "model" was wearing only a towel, and -concerned for my delicate disposition in such matters - suggested we didn't investigate any closer. Reluctantly I agreed, and was dragged kicking and screaming back to the boat. I mean, I like art and photography! Nothing could have embarrassed me.

On the way back we discussed whether the photographer might have been shooting a series of canal-themed photos involving the same young lady in each shot, or whether it was just a one-off "I need to try out my new camera" exercise. Yeah right.

I said he was probably shooting a series of twelve such poses on different canals, with a different model in varying state of undress in each location, and we had just stumbled on Miss November.

If this is true and his works are in the shops in time for Christmas you will each soon be receiving a copy. It will of course be called "Canalder Girls".