Going cruising on a canal is a wondrous
change of pace because there’s a speed limit of 8 km/h in France and every time
you feel like doing anything energetic, you arrive at a lock with a restaurant
nearby and the lock keeper has gone to lunch. Call it enforced idleness or
thoroughly dissolute behavior: it worked for us.
We drove down from Nimes to Carcassonne and
met Fiona and Robin, who had just flown down by Ryanair from Prestwick in Scotland. We all booked into the Hotel du
Donjon inside the walls of the magnificently (if slightly erroneously) restored
old city. We understand that when the big reno job was on in the 19th
century they forgot that it doesn’t snow in Carcassonne, so the turret roofs
were pitched way too high.
Robin’s pet phrase when the crowds get to
him is “show me an empty glen’’ and it’s fair to say that Carcassonne
intramuros in August is just heaving with visitors. A vignette was watching a Brinks armoured car
coming under the portcullis at 8.00 am to load up with yesterday’s tourist
dollars before the next lot followed it in. But our hotel had a magic garden where we
spent a lot of time before collecting the boat on Monday afternoon. We also
enjoyed watching the closing ceremony of the Olympics on the television but it
wasn’t as good as the opening.
The plan was to take a week, Monday to
Monday, doing the eastern third of the Atlantic-Mediterranean canal and it
worked a treat. One village blurred into another, as did the restaurant lunches,
while evenings were spent tied up beside the canal somewhere quiet. The boat
was a 37 foot “plastic fantastic” but was of neat design, with a good cabin
(and bathroom) at each end…and a fridge. Most of the photographs we took were
of the table on the back deck. Local wines, fruits, pate and cheeses were the
go plus enough bread to keep the canal ducks very happy.
Key details are that the most scenic part
of the canal (which incidentally dates from 1680, thanks to genius tax
collector Paul Riquet) runs between Trebes, just east of Carcassonne, and Capestang, which is just short of
Beziers, and we covered that. Most of the bridges were scenic plus, the towpath
was well patronised by cycling families, joggers and fishermen, and there were
old mills and other industrial archaeology wherever you looked.
And the towpath has a plane tree every 10
metres, or did until a root fungus got into clumps of them that forced their
destruction. One theory is that the steel pegs the cruisers use to moor may
carry the fungus, so we dipped ours in disinfectant in a belated attempt to
reduce the damage.
But the main virtue of a canal trip is just
letting your mind slip. The boat putters along at a slower pace than the bike
riders, many of whom turn “”bonjour’’ into a three syllable word by cranking up
the Midi accent. Big old barges occasionally provide a scare and there are of
course locks, but they are automated these days and managed by magnificently
Midi-speaking lockkeepers. There’s no physical work except managing bow and
stern lines, since the rest is done by electricity and remote control. There’s
a run of six of them at Fonserannes, just west of Beziers, which caused one
bemused tourist to ask me if they were all natural. Er , non Monsieur, but I
was nice about it. It could have been the Captain Haddock hat I bought for 3.5
Euros that caused him to find an excuse to talk to such a wise looking bloke.
Incidentally, back in 1983 they
commissioned a giant boat lifting device to get round the locks, based on a huge
long ramp and a Haulpak sized Darth Vader lifter painted blue and red, but it
was abandoned after the brakes failed on its third manoeuvre. The cynics say
that Mr Riquet’s shade must be smiling at such a failed improvement on his
design.
We also fitted in a couple of side trips down to the Med after Beziers and
before Agde, using the two bikes we had rented to good effect. Like Carcassonne
it was heaving (unlike most of the space
in between) but there’s something less stressing about being cheek by jowl on
the beach and in the water with people who speak a different language.
The canal there is much more Camargue type
country, if you ignore the fun fair and the monster truck demolition derby
being set up nearby.. You know you’re in a popular French beach resort when the
traffic’s jammed, there’s dust everywhere and a bloke in a loudspeaker van is driving
about spruiking tonight’s big ”spectacle’’ to which punters are invited to come
in numbers. He had to do without us, but good luck to them.
For all that we were very sad to give the
boat back on Monday morning, to resume getting about in our little hired Polo
which carried four adults and their luggage about 20kms back to Beziers. We
were also rewarded with a traffic jam, to bring us back to earth. It was also tough
saying goodbye to Fiona and Robin in Beziers after such a magic week, but
Barcelona and our friends Lynne and Dave were firmly calling.
