Wednesday 7th August
We have now left Toulouse, a city we thought was very pleasant. It is called the Pink City, not for any gay reasons, but because many of the buildings are built using very narrow, light red bricks, rather like those you see in Amsterdam, which gives them a pink hue.
The city is very cycle friendly, there are lots of bike pick up points and every street has a cycle lane. These do not follow the normal direction of traffic so you certainly have to look both ways several times before crossing even a pavement.
We were reluctant to leave the city as we knew that we would have to get through “The Big One”.
The patron saint of the Canal du Midi (Riquet) often used two locks close together where he needed to gain height quickly, a lunatic in the Waterways department, probably someone who has never had a boating holiday, thought it would be a good idea to extend all the locks by 10m and to merge the double locks into one mega lock.
The process of this modernisation started from Toulouse and lasted three locks by which time the number of injuries or deaths to holidaymakers became so high they stopped. But that still left three big ones and in particular a huge lock just outside Toulouse.
Coming down on Sunday was easy, going up is challenging.
We stopped before reaching it and walked round the beast to come up with a cunning plan A and plan B if that failed. I can't throw a rope vertically 40 feet so we devised a way of Gill collecting it at low level and climbing some service steps, over a few obstacles and onto the quayside.
My driving skills have improved sufficiently that I only smash into one side of the lock, hopefully the same side Gill has tied the rope.
I am pleased to say it all went to plan A and we were very pleased with ourselves. Such overconfidence is always misplaced, later in the day I had my worst lock collision when I was caught out by a current, fortunately only two small children were watching. At some locks we have had some quite large audiences, we seem to be the only narrow boat on the canal so attract quite a lot of positive attention.
Smoking v Mobile Phones in Restaurants.
Mrs Lucas and I have a disagreement; in the UK no one smokes in a restaurant but many use their mobile phones at the table whilst in France many smoke at the table but very few use a mobile phone.
Using a mobile phone implies the people you are with are less important than others, this is as rude as rude can be. Smoking is revolting to non smokers.
Gill thinks smoking is the worst sin, I think it is using a phone – both are of course beyond the pale.
We have yet to see anyone committing the ultimate sin - smoking whilst using their phone, does such a bad person exist?