Saturday 10th August
We are working our way back along the canal and are now moored outside the only canal side restaurant in 30 miles, needless to say on a summer Saturday night it is very busy but we have managed to book a table.
Last night whilst moored in the centre of Castelnaudray, quite a big town, a coypu swam along the line of boats looking for scraps and was then racing ducks for bits of bread. We were terribly excited and took lots of photographs but the locals were uninterested.
This morning a swan came past, we ignored it but the locals all had their cameras out and it was their turn to be excited.
I am sure you will all be delighted to know that I have bought a book about the history of the canal so I have all sorts of “interesting” facts with which to bore you.
I previously mentioned it was started in 1666, the year we set fire to our capital, and only took 14 years to build. The very idea of the canal was thought so outlandish and politically suicidal that 20 years earlier a treaty was passed banning any feasibility studies or research into the project.
To overcome these worries Pierre-Paul Riquet had to first prove to a committee that he had a solution to all the problems faced and had to build, at his expense, the infrastructure needed to collect water to feed the canal to prove his design.
Eventually he won round the government and they became shareholders part funding the enterprise.
Some towns were looking forward to the arrival of the canal but others, notably Narbonne, were annoyed because they were being by-passed and ran campaigns to discredit the project.
One major obstacle was a hill near Béziers called Malpas where Riquet decided to dig a tunnel. When work started it was found the earth was crumbly subsoil, the Narbonne campaigners forced the government to call a halt to the work as they claimed it was too dangerous.
Riquet agreed to comply with the ban but instead got a team of trustworthy workers who dug the 165m tunnel in secret within a week, once it was done there was little the campaigners could do.
One of the unusual features of the canal are the curved locks, this makes the walls much better in withholding the earth packed up behind them, straight lock walls would be prone to collapse and anyhow they look better in photos.
Whenever you see pictures of the canal it is always of avenues of plain trees (in the sunshine of course). This is not just one picturesque section, the trees were planted (45,000 of them) all along the canal as their roots stabilise the banks, a much greener solution to steel or concrete and gives the canal a special atmosphere.