A spot of French leave

CANALS RIVERS AND BOATS MAGAZINE
A spot of french leave

Gerry Mulvaney samples the food, wine, culture (and weather)aboard a self-drive motor cruiser along the Canal du Midi in South of France

Picture the scene. It's 1680, and in a small bar of Beziers in the South of France, the architect of the Canal du Midi, Pierre Paul Riquet is sitting down, enjoying a quiet drink contemplating the completion of his canal. Spotting the famous canal constructor, a young tree salesman jumped at his chance. "Monsieur Riquet that is a mighty fine canal you have dug along the 240 km from Toulouse to Sete, but surely in the summer it's going to get pretty hot for the barges and horses travelling between the cities. Now sir, I just happen to have just what you need 45,000 plane trees that will form a wonderful umbrella over the canal, reinforce the bank and line the canal bed with leaves in the autumn. I can deliver immediatly, we just need to discuss the price ?" The deal must have been done, because three hundred and thirty years later we are enjoying the fruits of his labour as we cruise along the canal. Alright, I might have made up the story of the young salesman, but the trees are the crowning glory to the Riquet's canal and in the warm spring sunshine certainly provide shade on both canal and towpath and help prevent evaporation in the height of the summer heat.
We had taken altogether more modern form of transport to get to the Nicols boats base at Le Somail, not far from Narbonne. A french TGV whisked us from Paris to the Med in just over four hours, a feat way beyond the imagination of M.Riquet when he started his canal. Le Somail is an ideal base to set out along the eastern end of the canal and we planned to explore as far as the great salt lake of the Etang de Thau. Nicols has suggested that their latest OCTO would be just the thing for our trip and we embarked on Bages, nammed after a medieval Languedoc village, late in the afternoon.

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