Best laid plans

Clive Edwards enjoyed an eventful cruise along France’s Canal du Midi with his wife and friends, plus two Westies and a Cockapoo…

MY wife, Lois, and I had previously enjoyed a very enjoyable cruise on the beautiful Canal du Midi from Le Somail to Agde on board a cruiser hired from Nicols Boats, and so we decided to do a similar holiday with our Lifeboat Station colleagues Malcolm and Jill (and our Westies and Stanley the Cockapoo).
Our original passage plan was to travel from Port Lauragais south-east to Carcassonne, but a late change meant we were starting from Le Somail. Our new plan was to cruise north-west towards Carcassonne, which we realised was likely to take in a rather prettier and more interesting stretch of the canal enabling us to visit the very attractive and strategically once very important port of Homps.
We spent the first night of our week’s cruise on our Confort 1350 moored at the very attractive village of Le Somail. After loading all our gear we took advantage of the opportunity to get in some practice manoeuvring the 13.5m long boat fitted with a bow-thruster, which none of us had experienced using before.
With such a large cruiser operating on a canal, which in places is no wider than the length of the boat, the bow-thruster proved to be invaluable, particularly as in early October, although the weather was warm, there was often a brisk wind. On a couple of days it approached almost gale force, which called for very careful steering, especially through the several narrow bridges.
Le Somail, with its old hump-back bridge and quintessentially Languedocienne old stone buildings is arguably one of the most attractive villages along the canal, and in the 18th century was one of the staging posts for the passenger barges that plied the canal on the four-day trip between Agde and Toulouse; in those days passengers had to change boats every time they reached a double or triple lock and carry their baggage up the steeply sloping towpath past the lock – no less than 25 during the four-day trip.

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