Coucou les amis,
It is been a long time since I wrote this blog about our travels on the canals and rivers in France, and since we left our winter mooring, and are on the canals again for the spring it is time to stop being lazy and start blogging!
We spent a great winter in the lovely city of Toulouse. We are so glad that we chose to spend the winter there, and we think that it is now our favorite city in France. It is a large city, the fourth largest in France, but it has the character and feel of a much smaller city with distinct neighborhoods, and very well maintained and preserved historic districts. La ville rose, or the pink city as it is called, is made mostly of brick, hence its name. It was never attacked in any of the major wars, so its history and old buildings remain intact. For me Toulouse rivals Paris in the lovely architecture of its public and private buildings. There were so many great restaurants that there was never enough time, or money to try them all even if we had stayed there ten winters, and there were so many cultural venues, and events that there was always something fun to see or do. We also had a great community of people staying in the port for the winter, and made good friends with a British/ American couple who organized weekly meetings at a local bar, lunches in restaurants, as well as yoga classes in the capitainerie. We also met a Swiss couple, a French couple, and a fellow American woman living on her barge alone and others. A very interesting and fun crowd that made our time truly enjoyable. If we had not been accepted for the port of Paris for next winter we would really have considered returning to Toulouse, even if it meant having another go at the current on the Rhone River!
It is been a long time since I wrote this blog about our travels on the canals and rivers in France, and since we left our winter mooring, and are on the canals again for the spring it is time to stop being lazy and start blogging!
We spent a great winter in the lovely city of Toulouse. We are so glad that we chose to spend the winter there, and we think that it is now our favorite city in France. It is a large city, the fourth largest in France, but it has the character and feel of a much smaller city with distinct neighborhoods, and very well maintained and preserved historic districts. La ville rose, or the pink city as it is called, is made mostly of brick, hence its name. It was never attacked in any of the major wars, so its history and old buildings remain intact. For me Toulouse rivals Paris in the lovely architecture of its public and private buildings. There were so many great restaurants that there was never enough time, or money to try them all even if we had stayed there ten winters, and there were so many cultural venues, and events that there was always something fun to see or do. We also had a great community of people staying in the port for the winter, and made good friends with a British/ American couple who organized weekly meetings at a local bar, lunches in restaurants, as well as yoga classes in the capitainerie. We also met a Swiss couple, a French couple, and a fellow American woman living on her barge alone and others. A very interesting and fun crowd that made our time truly enjoyable. If we had not been accepted for the port of Paris for next winter we would really have considered returning to Toulouse, even if it meant having another go at the current on the Rhone River!
We left Toulouse about a month ago, a little earlier than usual because the Canal du Midi opened on March 17th rather than April 1st like other canals. We thought to get a head start, and make it to the Rhone before the snow melt in the Alps because then the current becomes too strong for our little boat to make any headway. Things have not worked out as planned however, and we don’t know if we will make it in time. How does the saying go about best laid plans? First of all the weather has not cooperated. We have had so many days of heavy rain in April which also contribute to heavy flow on the Rhone. Then we have had a few other mitigating circumstances that have made it hard to keep up with our plans.
I developed a tooth infection not long after leaving Toulouse, and I took a train back to Toulouse to see the dentist that I had found there. I didn’t want to find just any dentist along the canal! It turns out that my tooth died and I had to have a root canal, which involved four separate trips to Toulouse on the train, and since we continued down the midi and got further and further from Toulouse, the train ride got more expensive each time. I swelled up and looked like a squirrel with a mouth full of nuts, and was a frightening sight, so I would cover my face with a chic scarf as I manned the lines going through the locks. Before leaving Toulouse we also had to schedule a surgery for me to remove a mole that is pre-melanoma at the end of April, so that will involve another trip back to Toulouse. We should have just stayed there until the end of April!
We had a few engine problems too which set us back, a leak of our hydraulic fluid in the steering system, and some water hose leaks, which have to be expected with the boat sitting all winter and being 10 years old. Luckily we have a good mechanic on board!
Since we had already spent last May on the Canal du Midi and we knew many of the ports and sites along the way, we didn’t plan on staying anyplace too long. We wanted to make it to the Rhone after all.
We did however stay awhile in Carcassonne where we met our Swiss friends Helen and Charles from Toulouse who had left before us, and we took a side trip on the Canal de la Robine to visit Narbonne because we had never been there. We stayed a week since there is a train station there to head back to Toulouse for my many appointments, and we really enjoyed our time there. Narbonne was a prosperous Roman port for transporting wine from the Languedoc region to Rome and its territories. It is also home to the bishop’s palace, and the tallest cathedral in France which was never completed due to the plague and lack of funds. It has one of the most beautiful and lively covered markets we had ever visited. We had a great lunch there at a grill where the chef called for the meat he needed over a megaphone to the butchers and delis that surrounded his restaurant, and they would neatly package his order and launch it over to him. After Narbonne we had a brief stop in Capestang, where we again met and visited with our Swiss friends on their electric boat. Capestang is famous for its very low bridge where we had to duck to pass through, but we have seen many bridges just as low and narrow on the Canal du Midi.
We have enjoyed seeing the major engineering feats along the Canal du Midi for our second time. It is truly a masterpiece in engineering created by Pierre Paul Riquet in the 1600’s, two hundred years before any of the other canals in France were constructed. He was commissioned by King Louis XIV but was never reimbursed for his work, and went bankrupt creating the canal. It was created to form a passage from Sete on the mediterranean to Bordeaux on the Atlantic. It connects to the Canal de la Garonne at Toulouse which brings you to the Gironde, and Bordeaux. The oval shaped locks of the Canal du Midi are definitely different, and Riquet sought the input of women in charge of irrigation canals to determine that the oval shape would be more durable than a rectangular lock. The chain of 9 locks near Beziers, les 9 ecluses de Fonserannes, is amazing, as well as the many epanchoirs or methods of allowing overflow water to escape the canal. The way water was fed into the canal is ingenious, too through a system of manmade lakes resting on higher ground with creeks and rivers flowing from them to the canal.
After saying our final adieu to the Canal du Midi we headed across the Étang de Tau, a scary adventure for me since I prefer the calm, peaceful canals to the large salt water lakes with choppy waves. We then crossed the Canal de Rhone à Sète with my nephew, Nicholas from California and his friend. This canal is so different from the Canal du Midi since it is very straight, traveling through wild and untouched wetlands. It cuts a narrow path with etangs, or salt water lakes and wetlands to one side, and the Mediterranean sea on the other. I felt as if it was a canal going through the Assateague island, or the Outer Banks in North Carolina. On this canal you see a great variety of sea birds, as well as flocks of pink flamingos, and also beautiful white wild horses of the Camargue.
I'll write more about this next time. Cross your fingers that we can go up the Rhône soon in time to leave for our son Alec's graduation at the end of May!
À bientôt mes amis!
P.S. Since I waited another week to publish this, we have started our voyage up the Rhône. We have traveled for two days against current of about 5 to 8 kilometers an hour which has cut our normal canal speed in half, but it hasn't been too bad. I'll let you know how it goes and if we meet our destination before our son's graduation!