I was up at 4.30am, at the airport by 6am and in the air, on a half-full flight and slightly delayed flight to Toulouse. Copenhagen was bathed in beautiful sunshine, so fog in Toulouse, which caused the departure delay, wasn’t what I was expecting. I left from the new extension at the airport, which I had not seen previously.
When we landed 2 hours later, there was still very low lying cloud. We had barely exited from the clouds before the plane’s wheels hit the ground. My backpack arrived almost immediately and I quickly found the bus to take me into the centre of Toulouse. 9€ for a 10 minute ride was a bit stiff, in my mind, but there weren’t many alternatives. Last time I walked, which took an hour.
I made my way to the Saint-Pierre bridge over the Garonne, which I had crossed last summer, when I walked along the Garonne. Last summer the bridge was packed with people and artists. This time the bridge was more or less empty.
From the bridge I walked through town to the town hall square, passing a plaque on the ground celebrating the canal. I last visited the square in the 90’s and the town hall had stuck in my mind, as did a visit to an Airbus factory. It was nice to see that my memory wasn’t playing tricks, it looked just as I remembered.
The centre of town was more or less pedestrian only, which probably wasn’t the case in the 90’s. A lot of effort seems to been spent on renovating the centre of the town, which was really nice to walk around. It is easy to see why it is called the “ville rose”, with all the rose coloured buildings in the centre.
I moved on to the cathedral, where I spent a few minutes inside, passed through a park with a large fountain, before reaching the Canal de Midi at Le Port Saint-Sauveur. The canal will accompany me for the next 250km.
The Canal du Midi runs from Toulouse to the Thau lagoon, which in turn is connected to Sete and the Mediterranean, which together with the Canal Lateral, running from Bordeaux to Toulouse, connects the Atlantic to the Mediterranean. Together the two canal made it much easier, quicker and cheaper to transport goods across southern France.
The canal was the brainchild of Pierre-Paul Riquet a tax collector with a passion for engineering. Work on the canal started at the end 1666 and was open for navigation in 1682. The first convoy of 25 boats sailed the whole length of the canal in May 1681. All previous proposals to build a canal had failed due to issues of bringing enough water at the Seuil de Naurouze that separates the Atlantic and Mediterranean basins and is the highest point at 189m above sea level. Pierre-Paul Riquet invented an ingenious hydraulic system to supply water to this location, the highest point of the canal.
Today the Canal de MIDI is on the UNESCO Heritage List, and attracts many cyclists, walkers and sailors. It is no longer used to transport goods, the railway and roads taking over, but is still popular with sailors, with a lively rent-a-boat business along it. There were many cyclists, encouraged by signs stating that the cars should not overtake the cyclists and an electronic cyclist speeding sign – which showed an unhappy smiley for pretty much each cyclist I saw passing it.
I left Toulouse walking south-east. The first few kilometers the canal passed through the suburbs and I passed the Cales de Radoub, a dry dock to repair boats and one on the many Airbus factories in Toulouse. Soon I was walking through the countryside, the canal flanked by large plane (platan) trees, forming a canopy and giving a tranquil landscape. Everything was green, even the water.
There were many barges along the river, but all moored to the bank. Some were turned into cafes, open during summer, but most were turned into houseboats. Whilst there many cyclists, walkers and runners on the paths next to the canal today, I only saw two boats actually sailing.
The cloud disappeared and the sun appeared around lunchtime, and with no wind, and even better, no traffic, it was perfect conditions for walking.
I passed two locks today, at Castanet and Vic and at both the lockkeepers lodging had been turned into a cafe. At the Vic lock, a barge was about to navigate through the lock. Many cyclist and walkers stopped up to follow the process. The locks are not very wide, so just getting the boat in is no small feet. The process took about 15 minutes, before the gate of the upper part of the lock was opened and the barge could sail onward.
The canal is not straight and today there were several small bridges to pass through, so sailing along the canal was slow progress. There were two bridges after the lock in the 8 kilometers from the lock to my hotel, so whilst the barge sailed quicker than I walked, we arrived at the same time, as the boat was slowed down passing through the narrow bridges.
I arrived at today’s destination, Donneville, at 15.45, tired, despite it “only” being 25km. Hopefully my tiredness was due to the very early rise. I was met at the hotel by a sign saying “check-in at 17.00″. I looked around the village to find out that there is absolutely nothing to do or see, only a tobacconist, where I bought a bar of chocolate – and waited. When 17.00 finally came around, they didn’t have my reservation, but luckily they had available rooms. Later I found the mail correspondence I had had with the hotel, where they confirmed my reservation. No harm was done in the end.
The good news is that the restaurant is open for dinner – if it wasn’t, I’d have been really stuck.