Part 1: Notre vacance en France - le premiere semaine

Our holiday in France - the first week 

or, the Frog Blog.

Airport sign: check.

June 2016 

Two weeks in France!


Following the road trip around England and Wales, Carol had a wonderful time in County Durham visiting family and friends and the places of her childhood and teenage memories. On Thursday 26th May she drove back to Heathrow, Rach trained out and Tony flew in for a family reunion. That evening the four of us visited SkyGarden for a drink, then it was back to Kensal Green for a home-cooked dinner. Duke was safely ensconced in Brixton with our friends Steve and Meg for his relaxing stay-cation. Or so we thought... 

Friday - day 1

We landed in Carcassonne in the afternoon and took a bus to the central area. On the way to our Airbnb accommodation we saw the canal and all of the boats, where we'd be just a few days later. The accommodation was really good, and in a great location near the old city. We had a reservation at the second-best restaurant in Carcassonne that night (I'm not sure why we didn't go for number one) and we took a narrow, winding track up the hill to the medieval cite where the restaurant was located. The citadel is quite a sight to see, and you realise how daunting it must have been trying to storm the castle when you get up the hill to encounter the 10-metre high walls and turrets still above you.

Dinner was tasty. Tony and I went for the local specialty cassoulet - duck and ham/pork sausage in a beany soup, cooked for around 8 hours to get a crusty top and really tender inside. Carol and Rach shared foie gras ravioli and a spinach and ricotta canneloni.


After dinner, we walked around the cite, which is stunning to see especially against the dark evening sky. The medieval fortress is huge, one of the best-preserved in Europe - mostly due to the extensive restoration work done in the 19th century.

Saturday - Day 2 


We started the day in a typically French way - with (instant) coffee and fresh croissants from the boulangerie across the road. The croissants really hit the spot, so I went across the get us seconds and practiced my language skills, ordering completely in French.

It felt like quite an achievement but you don't really need to say a lot to get croissants. "Quartre croissants, s'il vous plais." And so began a week and a half of croissant breakfasts.

We walked back up to the cite to look at the shops and walk around more inside the walls. After picking up a few souvenirs, it was time to head out to our canal boat.

It took about a half hour in the taxi to get to Argens-Minervois. After picking up the boat and the obligatory run through by the mechanic/engineer and a quick test run on the canal, we were set free to explore the Canal du Midi on our boat Moussoulens.

We set off westwards up the canal and soon encountered our first lock - 'ecluse' in French - and navigated it nervously but successfully. One lock down, only 55 to go!

After a couple of hours cruising, we stopped at a little town on the canal called Homps. We stopped in at the maison des vins (house of wines), the wine shop and guide to local wines. That was where we discovered just how good French wine could be, and just how cheap it can be. For the rest of the canal, we spent no more than 6 euros for a bottle of wine, and each one was top quality.

We also bought some supplies in Homps at the supermarket.

Nous avons achete les baguettes, les croissants, le beurre, les fromages, le saucisse, le lait et autres choses. Aussi, nous avons achete plus de vin. Combien pour des vins? De trois euros de cinq euros pour une bouteille. En fait, le boucher dans le supermarche, il avait plus grande le choix que les bouchers dans les petits supermarches de la New Zealand.

We bought baguettes, croissants, butter, cheeses, 'saucisse' (basically french salami), milk and some other things. We also bought some more wine. How much was it? From three to five euros for a bottle. In fact, the butcher in the supermarket had a bigger choice than butchers in small supermarkets in New Zealand.

After a dinner of pasta on board the boat we settled down to relax for the night. I hadn't realised just how long the summer evenings would be. I decided to go for a walk and went out at about 9:30pm, and it was still fairly bright.

Sunday - day 3

There was a storm that night while we were moored, with fork lightning, thunder and heavy rain. When we woke, it was still quite windy which made getting out of our berth a little tricky - but we were off! The canal was really relaxing to watch go by, with some especially nice views of nice bridges and the Plane trees draped over the water.

After a couple of hours we decided to stop and explore a little on our bikes.



We rode to Puicheric, a tiny little village 5 minutes away from the canal. We rode up the hill to the little church built in the 1400s, and got some more croissants and baguettes for lunch. It was interesting to see these little villages on the canal - they were all very quiet, almost deserted, seemingly with no children in them.

We carried on for a few more hours on the canal, and reached our spot for that night on the canal in the village of Marseillette. By this time we'd started to get our little routine sorted: a visit to the boulangerie for croissants, baguettes and milk (for tea or coffee), and a lunch / dinner of bread, butter, cheese, olives, saucisses, cheese - with red or sometimes white wine.

A standard lunch / dinner on board the Moussolens

After the trip to the boulangerie, Rach and took the bikes for a ride along the canal.

Marseillette

Monday - day 4

By this time, we'd nailed down the locks pretty well. And on Monday I really enjoyed being on duty running ahead for locks all day. The process for going up a lock is:

• as you approach the lock, you let one person (in this case, me) off on to the bank - that person then walks to the lock
• once the front lock gates open, you take the boat into the lock, often accompanied by one or two other boats going through at the same time. 
• The crew on board throw the ropes to the person on the bank who secures them around the bollards, and the crew hold the ends of the rope on board.
• once everyone's in, the lock-keeper activates the system the gates start to close. Later on, there were no lock keepers, and someone had to push the right button to set it going.
• once the lock is filled up, the back gates open, the crew cast off the ropes, the last person hops back on board and you're off.

An action shot in one of the locks.

You also get some interesting stuff at the locks, like this odd art installation.

As we were waiting for the lock, we met an Aussie couple who were ditching their boat early. Neither of them were experienced with boats, and they said they dreaded going through each lock. We sympathised with them - it felt like a minimum of three people was needed to get through the locks, and it wouldn't have been easy to navigate the locks without someone experienced on board like Tony. It was very entertaining watching some of the other canal-goers navigate the locks!

Around lunchtime we arrived in the town of Trebes, and walked around a bit and picked up some more supplies from the boulangerie, epicerie and fromagerie.

We headed on through to Carcassonne, and en route I had my first go steering the boat. It wasn't the easiest, you constantly need to work the wheel, and there's quite a delay in movement before the boat over-steers.

We all took turns steering - some of us more casual than others.

Berthed in Carcassonne.

We docked in Carcassonne at the place we saw a few days earlier from the bus and set off to explore the town. We wandered around and found some cafe au lait (coffee with milk) and glace (ice cream) in the main square, and got some supplies from the Monoprix supermarche.  We had some really had good supermarket pizzas for dinner - they were really outstanding, as good as at a pizzeria - accompanied with more red wine. We biked through Carcassonne to the cite after 9:30pm, got some nice evening photos and biked back to the boat.

Tuesday - day 5

The day started quite cloudy. We went back to the main square for markets in morning, picking up cheese, fruit, vegies, and a heap of saucisses. I also spotted a sign saying "la viande de cheval" and took advantage of the opportunity to try some. I fried the steak up with a bit of beurre and it was actually really good - tender, tasty and juicy. I could definitely eat horse again.

Bram, from the air. Obviously not taken by me.

We tied up outside the little village of Villesquelande and biked in to it, but there was nothing to see there.

We continued on and stopped near the town of Bram. We biked in and looked around the town, which is one of the few surviving "circulade" villages in Europe - these are villages built in a circle around a church with the roads going in rings.

Pictured: a family of criminals enjoying the fruits (literally) of their theft.

As we biked into Bran, a man gestured excitedly at us under a tree, holding out cherries. We took a few, and he pointed up at the tree, which was hanging over a fence onto the pavement. Turns out he'd hit on a handy tree to steal cherries from and just wanted to share the discovery with us. I got up on the bin next to the fence, and grabbed a couple of branches worth of cherries.

Rach had been looking forward to arriving in Bram, as she'd heard a rumour online that there was a place that sold wine by the litre, allowing you to fill your own vessels. We stumbled upon the place as we biked through. I asked for the best wine - 'le meilleur vin' - and he pointed me to the AOP Minervois, a tasty, well balanced red for the princely sum of 2.30 euros per litre which he filled from a vat using a funnel.

We biked back to the boat after we realised that there were no restaurants in Bram and no supermarkets open. We had dinner at a fish restaurant right on the canal called, strangely enough, Ile aux Oiseaux (Isle of Birds), good quality and a nice change from the bread, cheese and saucisse diet we'd had for several days. Presumably the fish wasn't from the canal which the Locaboat staff had told us not to swim in as it contained sewage!

Wednesday - day 6

It rained all day Wednesday. We'd heard there was a market in Bram that morning, but Rach and Carol didn't feel like braving the wind and rain to get back in to Bram so Tony and I biked in. And it was well worth it, the markets were much bigger than Carcassonne's, varied and full of great food. We stocked up on olives, white asparagus (asperges blanc), fruit, paella, bread and croissants. And paid a return visit to the cave (in French it literally meant "a cellar", but a term used generally for any wine shop). We filled up four bottles with top quality wine (rouge, blanc and rose) for 8.40 euros. The bottle for the vin blanc was filled using a petrol station-style pump.

After lunch we set out again on the canal. It happened to be a lock-heavy day that day - 15 locks in total - and I was on duty hopping off the boat. Some locks were so close together I biked between them without bothering to get back on the boat. By the end of the day my feet and shoes and all of me was drenched, but I really enjoyed the work!





We arrived in Castlenaudary early that evening. Castelnaudary is probably the biggest town on the Canal du Midi apart from Cascassonne and Toulouse, and the town sits on a huge basin of water making it quite picturesque. We picked up a few more supplies from an epicerie and walked a little around the town in the early evening.

Castlenaudary

As we walked around the lake, we noticed something swimming through the water with its head above the surface - and it wasn't a bird. As it came closer, we thought it was an otter - then even closer, we thought it must be something else. We eventually found out they were some type of water rat, and "tres mechant" - very mean and nasty - if you get too close to them.



Just like Carcassonne, Castelnaudary also claimed cassoulet as a specialty dish - in fact, Castelnaudary calls itself the "cassoulet capital of the world". So of course we had to have more Cassoulet - Tony and I took a particular liking to it. So we had dinner at Chez David, based on some pretty stellar Tripadvisor reviews and had some amazing cassoulet. It was better than in Carcassonne (I thought), with the duck in particular really tender and rich. Rach had some spectacular chicken which rivalled the cassoulet, and Carol had some tasty foie gras. She'd developed a taste for foie gras before learning how it was made and swearing off it - only to lapse and eat it again a few days afterward. It was really good that the chef, Gary himself, came out to talk to us and explain how the cassoulet was made. When we were back on the boat, we agreed that Harry was a great chef and did a good cassoulet. We could definitely make a return visit to Chez Barry.

Thursday - day 7

Post-croissant (ordered and delivered to the local harbour master's office), a cloudy Thursday morning was spent biking around Castelnaudary and finding a suitable patisserie to supply us a surprise gateau (cake) for the following day's anniversaire (birthday - Carol's).

One of the automated locks

We left Castelnaudary around midday and lunched not long afterwards outside a lock waiting for the lockkeeper's lunch to finish at 1:30pm. Out in the country, a lot of shops and services closed for an hour or two for lunch including the locks. It may have been a slight annoyance, but you have to commend the French for their commitment to work-life balance. Anyway, once it hit 1:30pm, the locks didn't open so Tony went for a walk to the lock to figure out why no one was letting us in - only to find that it was an automatic lock with no lockkeeper!



We proceeded through as the weather cleared up and went through several more locks. There was a delay on one lock though - Carol accidentally pushed the wrong button and for some reason the lock simply stopped working. I called the assistance number and asked "parlez-vous anglais?" (do you speak English?) He responded, "non, parlez-vous francais?" so I struggled my way through an explanation which didn't make any sense to the guy. Luckily another boat with a French speaker pulled up and managed to explain the problem to the guy on the line, and a man in a canal-branded van arrived not long afterwards to fix the system.

The next lock was our first downwards lock (meaning it would take us downstream) . They'd all previously had been upwards locks - meaning we'd reached the top of the canal. We tied up and went for a short bike around the area.

I thought I'd mention at this point just how impressive the Canal du Midi actually is. It's 240km long, and was built from 1666 to 1681 to help transport goods, mostly wheat, by linking the Mediterranean with the Atlantic. It was recognised as one of the most impressive feats of engineering of its time, as it goes from sea level to around 190 metres above sea level at the Seuil de Naurouze where we first headed downwards. It's one of the oldest canals in Europe still in use, and also a UNESCO World Heritage site.

We continued along the canal for a bit, and tied up for the night in a picturesque, tree-covered area away from any towns.



We saw a couple biking along the canal path, one of whom was wearing a New Zealand branded shirt - only to find they were an American couple biking around Europe and other parts of the world who'd really liked New Zealand.

We'd seen a nice-looking village called Montferrand on top of a hill earlier that afternoon, so after dinner I thought I'd get some exercise by biking to to it. I managed to get there, but had a weird feeling about the place once I got there - that might have had something to do with the larger than life-size Jesus on a Cross that loomed over me in the evening gloom as I approached the village. By the time I got up into the village, it was too dark to find a path right up to the top of the hill so I biked back to the boat.

Friday - day 8

We had a lazy day on the Friday. It was Carol's birthday, so Rach and I had spent the night before decorating the boat with balloons and we sang her Happy Birthday on the canal. The cake from the patisserie was top notch, a chocolate and peach number.

After breakfast we took the boat upstream for a half hour and biked to another nearby village called Avignonet-Lauragais which sat perched on top of a hill (like so many other French villages). It had an impressive 14th century church despite only having a couple of hundred inhabitants at most.  After more - you guessed it - bread and croissants we headed back to the boat.

Avignonet

Also Avignonet

Yep, also Avignonet.

We carried on to the next stop for the night, near the village of Gardouche. We decided to head in to the village to find a birthday dinner, and had some really good food at a local pizzeria. It was quite surprising just how popular pizza was in France. And to switch things up, had beer rather than wine to accompany dinner.

It was one of only 5 shops in the town, making Gardouche much bigger than some of the villages we'd seen so far. Unfortunately there was no epicerie or supermarche so no further supplies.

Saturday - day 9

We got up early to try and get the boat back to the drop off point in Negra by 9am but got in late at 10am, receiving a bit of a reprimand from the engineer.

Highlights from Rach:

• Walking round the ramparts of Carcassonne at night
• Cycling round Carcassonne the second time 
• Listening to great music and chatting about everything and nothing
• Mum's funny walk through the supermarket!
• Drinking 2.87 euro wine
• Fresh croissants for breakfast (rinse and repeat most mornings)
• Fresh bread, buerre, cheese and wine for lunch (ditto)
• Every lock
• Watching the others struggle with the locks
• Each day blurring into one big baguette
• Poo-gate (don't ask: the less you know, the better...)
• Being 'fully insured' (*about to hit the bridge* "Don't worry - we're fully insured!")
• Crunching into bridges (see note above)
• Cruising in the sun
• Picking (read: stealing) cherries in Bram
• Wine by the litre
• Chez David/Harry/Gary/Barry... whatever his name was...
• France's finest Cassoulet
• Playing bumper boats in the locks
• Water rats
• Mum's birthday!
• Setting up the balloons then watching Mum pop them with matches when we needed to clean up
• French birthday cake
• Weekend pants & weekend pants dance
• Cycling around Avignonet - Lauragais
• Watching the people I love read in the evening sun

And so ended notre premier semaine en France - our first week in France. Read on for le deuxieme semaine!