Canal du Midi

I love produce markets and French towns have interesting ones. But first we had breakfast in the room with the provisions that we had bought the previous day.

B bought some nuts. I don't remember what I bought, but fruits might be a good guess.

Well even if I couldn't afford to rent a boat and float down the canal we could cycle on the canal's towpath. We rented 2 pushbikes from Espace 11 and headed down the Canal du Midi.

It was a beautiful cool morning. We shared the path with walkers and other cyclists. We were so carefree and happy so we greeted everyone with bonjour!

The canal, lined with trees on both sides, was the epitome of serenity.

We talked to a British couple at one of the locks. They explained that the lockkeeper will apprise the next lock of an imminent boat.

In places the canal is higher than the surrounding landscape and is borne by an aqueduct.

The lock stations have plaques informing travellers of the distances to the next lock in both directions. As you can see, there were two locks only 105 metres apart here.


We managed 10 km down the path, although the path got a bit rough after 4 km.


We returned to Carcassonne and looked for the towpath on the upstream side from the station but there was none. So we bought some strawberries and cycled back to the first lock and had a light lunch. At 1400 we returned the bikes to the shop.

In the evening we went up to the Cité again for dinner at the Maison de Cassoulet. This was a touristy thing to do but this dish is absolutely of the region. The white haricot beans were really tasty. This was washed down with a bottle of rosé Vin de Pays Cathars between us. The wine helped cut the fat but also made us sleepy so we had an early night, because we had to catch an early train to Narbonne and then to Perpignan.