Canal du Midi - to Castelnaudary

Carcassonne

Just watched a couple on a hire boat almost swept off the top of their boat as they attempted to negotiate one of the low, awkwardly angled bridges on the Canal du Midi. This canal is probably the most well known of France's waterways and is easily the most popular. A word of advice - if you are new to boating perhaps choose a different canal. The Midi is a marvel of engineering which means, amongst other things, there are lots of locks. Not only single ones, but doubles, triples, quadruples and even a staircase of 6 at Beziers. This staircase is a tourist attraction and is lined by crowds of onlookers watching the fun (on the UK canals they are called 'gongoozlers').

Beziers staircase locks with 'gongoozlers'

Hire boats in the staircase locks with us- Beziers

Looking back from the top lock - Beziers

The sheer number of hire boats means that the lock keepers pack as many boats as possible into each lock but even so, during the holiday season, there will be long delays. Sometimes 2 hours.  As for the lock keepers themselves, few are friendly and virtually none deigns to take lines.It's up to you to get yourself and your boat in and safely tied up as quickly as possible before the eclusier presses the button on his/her control closing the gates and opening up the sluices full blast.

 Someone has to go off the boat before each lock and be ready and waiting on the high lockside (going up is harder than going down) to take the ropes. Hire boats will often have half a dozen on board which makes things a bit easier but with just two of us we needed to work out a system. Eventually, I got fairly adapt at leaping ashore boathook in hand, running between locks (yes you did read that correctly - running), scooping up the ropes with the hook and so on. Rob did an excellent job of steering into the awkward oval locks and keeping away from closing gates and crashing hire boats but by the end of each day we were quite exhausted. We've seen damaged boats, injured people and listened to marriages falling apart. Having said all that, it is a quite beautiful waterway but one that is perhaps best visited out of season.

Other than the locks the canal's most recognisable feature would be the plane trees. Sadly, as you may have read, many of these are affected by a fungus which kills them in 2-3 years and which is not treatable. Of the 42 000 trees originally growing almost 12 000 have already been felled. Many of those still standing have marks painted on their trunks indicating they are condemned and we saw lots of tree cutting and burning. There is a replanting programme in progress but it will be many years before the canal landscape returns to its former glory. I am just happy that we have seen some of it before it disappears.
My last blog post began with me wondering if we would make it through the Capestang bridge, reputed to be the smallest on the canal.  Obviously we did and without mishap. In my opinion there are smaller bridge holes - the one leading into Carcassonne lock seemed a tighter fit but so far so good.

Capestang Bridge

Malpas Tunnel

Another of the many bridges - all different

We have met some great people on this canal and visited some amazing places- pretty little villages like Capestang and the wonderful (but very touristy) medieval city of Carcassonne. Like the canal itself though these places are probably best seen out of the main holiday period. We have a way to go yet and autumn seems, all of a sudden, to be upon us. Well lots of leaves are anyway. We are in Castelnaudary at the moment (world capital of Cassoulet - had one last night and I don't think I'll be able to eat again for about a week) and leave tomorrow towards the canal summit and then it's all downhill to the Atlantic. We're not going quite that far however.

Carcassonne ramparts

From Carcassonne ramparts