Canal du Midi (France)

We took a late summer holiday on the Canal du Midi one year.  The boats had been shipped over from Norfolk and so had a familiar feel to them.  The Midi is one of the oldest canals in the word.  Unique feature include oval shaped locks (same principle as brick arches) and locks arranged in staircases rather than as individuals.  The traffic is primarily wide beam cruisers (Connoisseur Cruisers, Crown Blue Line, Locaboat) or the occasional converted generic Dutch Barge.  As this is France, they were probably peniches.  We did see just one or two narrowboats.

Not that there is much traffic.  Outside of the major towns such as Toulouse, Carcassonne, Castelnaudry, Narbonne and Beziers, this part of France is very rural and remote and so the English technique of stopping at canalside villages for supplies does not work too well (there are almost no shops at all)

Establishing a pattern that was adopted by the canal builders in England, bridges are as narrow and low as possible. I can't remember where this is - I think that it is a small artistic community between Homps and the junction for Narbonne.  I'm sure someone knows and they can email me.

Allegedly, the oldest canal tunnel in the world.  The rock is as soft as it looks and most of the tunnel is not lined.  The thing that looks like a telephone pole is a telephone pole.  Canals were widely used as a routing for telecommunications from the inception of the electric telegraph up until the middle part of the 20th century.  Going full circle, British Waterways are part of a consortium called Fibreways that has laid optical fibre along much of the canal network in England for modern high speed digital communications (it is quite possible that these images are being conveyed along Fibreway).

A novel approach to filling a 3 rise staircase lock!  We drove into the bottom lock which, at that time, had its top gates closed.  The bottom gates were closed and its top gates into the middle lock were opened.  We could then see that the next set of gates were also open and Monsieur L'Eclusier proceeded to open all the paddles in the top set of gates.  This cascade then ensued.  When the bottom lock was filled, we were waved forward into the middle chamber and the next set of gates closed.  Finally, we moved on into the top chamber.

Finally back at Trébes, just outside Carcassonne.  Notice how, being unfamiliar with the ways of the canal, we have tied up to a couple of trees with the ropes across the towpath.  The journey home started here - a taxi into Carcassonne, train to Toulouse, bus to the airport and a flight home to England.  The flight was a bonus - all six of us were upgraded to Club Class which was even more of a surprise since we were travelling on free Air Miles tickets