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Colleen & Tom's Explorations
What a lovely day - I decided today I could easily live here - the pace of life out in the country is so relaxed. Traffic is non-existent. It is idyllic.
So we decided to head off late morning to Homps (pronounced "Omps"), in time to have a nice lunch before our cruise on the Canal du Midi. First we went to the cruise office and booked and paid for our tickets, just in case it was busy. The man there commented on the length of winter this year.
We then returned a little way along the quay to La Peniche, which had good reviews on Trip Advisor. We were shown to a bistro room out the back, adjoining the garden area. We had the usual muscat and olives to start, followed by a huge salad. We had both selected the cassoulet as our mains, but alas, it was not as good as the one we had at St Jean. It was nice though. Tom had the apple tart for dessert and I had a cheese platter of 3 perfectly lovely cheeses. This was washed down with a 1/2 litre of local red wine. All at a cost of 19.50 euros each, plus wine. It became clear as the restaurant started to fill, that this was a popular establishment, hence the higher price. The other other patrons seemed to be from canal boats. We commented to the friendly waiter that it was getting crowded. He said "naw, today we sleep. Yesterday was busy - 150 people" (all in an outrageous accent). Yesterday was Mother's Day. And the accents were nearly all English!
So, feeling adequately nourished, we ventured out to wait for our cruise. This was completed on a craft that was inspired by the original barges that were used on the canal.
So the canal: officially opened in 1681; 240kms long; joins the Mediterranean with the Atlantic and was built to avoid the Barbary pirates and to shorten the voyage past hostile Spain which took a month at that time; it gets closed every year so parts can be drained for maintenance purposes; there are 91 locks, various bridges, dams and a tunnel. In the 1830s they planted 42,000 plane trees along the edges to stabilise the banks. Of these trees about 10,000 are dead or dying from a fungus they got from the canal (their roots come down and dip into the water). They are pulling them out and will replace them with poplar or oak trees (he did mention about 6 species, but they're the only two I remember).
So the cruise was lovely - we went under three bridges, across an aqueduct over a river - the one that flows through Caunes, past a flood mitigation feature and through one lock, then turned around and did it all again on the way back. On one occasion when Tom was outside watching the goings on at the lock, a group of five or six people on another boat going in the opposite direction asked him if he was English, he said "no, Australian" and they all cheered enthusiastically. Fellow Aussies I presume. There were 14 people on the cruise and I think we were the only English speaking people. The commentary was given in French, followed by English.
So after our cruise we tootled back to our cottage via a super marche (supermarket) to grab some milk (only 2 bottles to choose from) and tissues. Skip dinner tonight - too full!
Tom is enjoying our cool little car. Today he found that it is a proper automatic, or a clutch-less manual. It even tells us our altitude (no, Tom does not do low flying when driving on the other side of the road in a hire car). For such a small car, it has some pretty good additions. We had built in nav stuff (and it could see 8 satellites today).
So we decided to head off late morning to Homps (pronounced "Omps"), in time to have a nice lunch before our cruise on the Canal du Midi. First we went to the cruise office and booked and paid for our tickets, just in case it was busy. The man there commented on the length of winter this year.
We then returned a little way along the quay to La Peniche, which had good reviews on Trip Advisor. We were shown to a bistro room out the back, adjoining the garden area. We had the usual muscat and olives to start, followed by a huge salad. We had both selected the cassoulet as our mains, but alas, it was not as good as the one we had at St Jean. It was nice though. Tom had the apple tart for dessert and I had a cheese platter of 3 perfectly lovely cheeses. This was washed down with a 1/2 litre of local red wine. All at a cost of 19.50 euros each, plus wine. It became clear as the restaurant started to fill, that this was a popular establishment, hence the higher price. The other other patrons seemed to be from canal boats. We commented to the friendly waiter that it was getting crowded. He said "naw, today we sleep. Yesterday was busy - 150 people" (all in an outrageous accent). Yesterday was Mother's Day. And the accents were nearly all English!
So, feeling adequately nourished, we ventured out to wait for our cruise. This was completed on a craft that was inspired by the original barges that were used on the canal.
So the canal: officially opened in 1681; 240kms long; joins the Mediterranean with the Atlantic and was built to avoid the Barbary pirates and to shorten the voyage past hostile Spain which took a month at that time; it gets closed every year so parts can be drained for maintenance purposes; there are 91 locks, various bridges, dams and a tunnel. In the 1830s they planted 42,000 plane trees along the edges to stabilise the banks. Of these trees about 10,000 are dead or dying from a fungus they got from the canal (their roots come down and dip into the water). They are pulling them out and will replace them with poplar or oak trees (he did mention about 6 species, but they're the only two I remember).
So the cruise was lovely - we went under three bridges, across an aqueduct over a river - the one that flows through Caunes, past a flood mitigation feature and through one lock, then turned around and did it all again on the way back. On one occasion when Tom was outside watching the goings on at the lock, a group of five or six people on another boat going in the opposite direction asked him if he was English, he said "no, Australian" and they all cheered enthusiastically. Fellow Aussies I presume. There were 14 people on the cruise and I think we were the only English speaking people. The commentary was given in French, followed by English.
So after our cruise we tootled back to our cottage via a super marche (supermarket) to grab some milk (only 2 bottles to choose from) and tissues. Skip dinner tonight - too full!
Tom is enjoying our cool little car. Today he found that it is a proper automatic, or a clutch-less manual. It even tells us our altitude (no, Tom does not do low flying when driving on the other side of the road in a hire car). For such a small car, it has some pretty good additions. We had built in nav stuff (and it could see 8 satellites today).
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