Monday 29th July.
Greetings from Trèbes, getting that è was a bit tricky, on a lovely sunny day. The picture above was taken after going out for essential supplies, wine and cheese for lunch. Although hiring a boat is quite expensive it does made for a good value holiday as breakfast, snacks and lunch are taken on board, we normally just go out for an evening meal.
I touched on the canals date of construction yesterday (1666) but you may have thought this was a typo, it isn't, the Canal du Midi is one of the engineering wonders of the world and a UNESCO heritage site. It was the brainchild of a chap called Pierre Paul Riquet, a tax collector who became very rich. He thought he could make even more money by building a canal between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean thereby allowing boats to avoid going around Spain. .
Work started in 1666, 12,000 people were employed in construction, mostly women. They built 63 locks, many bridges and aqueducts and even relocated a church which was in the way. The overflow weir and bridge pictured dates from 1693, we gingerly cycled over the top. Riquet died seven months before the work in was completed in 1680, and was close to bankruptcy but his heirs made a fortune from the canal once it was complete and the toll charges started rolling in. This is 150 years before canal mania hit Britain and most of the engineering was original designs by Riquet himself. 14 years to complete something which had never been done before, how long will we take to build HS2?
Now of course it is used by pleasure craft, many of the big barges have been converted to floating gin palaces and it is also used by sailors as a short cut to the Mediterranean. They take down their masts in Bordeaux, pay their €100, motor through the canal and re-mast when they get to the Med.
Either tonight or tomorrow we will arrive in Carcassonne, the biggest city en route to Toulouse; stand by for pictures of the castle, one of the most popular tourist attractions in France.