From Marseillan to Villeneuve-des-Beziérs, “wild”-moored at Colombiers, braving the low, low bridge in Capestang, Ventenac-en-Minervois, Homps

From Marseillan port, we set off at 8.30am back into L’Étang de Thau and to the start of the 240km Canal du Midi that will take us all the way to Toulouse.

Short History of Le Canal du Midi

Excavating a canal to link the Atlantic Ocean in the west with the Mediterranean Sea in the east was something the Romans dreamed about doing, as did various rulers after them. Built by order of the Sun King, Louis XIV, it took the genius, drive and financial investment of visionary salt-tax collector Pierre-Paul Riquet to make it happen. From 1666 to 1681, he oversaw its construction – and died just three months before it was officially opened. It’s been called “a miracle of engineering” and “a natural work of art”, and in 1996, it was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Bagnas was our first experience of the Canal du Midi’s famous oval locks. From there, it’s a short stretch along the Hérault River to Agde‘s enormous, semi-round lock. We had it to ourselves.

 

First impressions of le Canal du Midi

Not all great, to be honest. Numerous tatty boats are moored alongside, some even semi-submerged.

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This first stretch of the Canal du Midi (from east to west) is not the prettiest…

This is what the Canal du Midi is supposed to look like, right? – fortunately, we’re about to find that a lot of it still does

At Portiragnes lock, waiting for the 12.30pm to 1.30pm lunch-break (standard on the Canal du Midi) to end, we were delighted to see our Capetonian neighbours from Marseillan port, on Angelique.

Last to enter the lock, Karanja got stuck against the canal bank for a while – the boat-hook proved utterly unhelpful – but Roy managed to extricate us with some judicious reversing; and the lockie, unexpectedly, waited for us to come in. Squeezed in along the straight wall at the back, and within inches of the boat in front, it was all a bit hairy. (And so it would often be during the days ahead.)

We moored directly in front of Angelique at Villeneuve, paying the €10 fee at the adjacent camping site – Camping Les Berges du Canal, which has a useful little épicerie (for fresh bread, milk, drinks, cold meats, cheese and so on).

Jeremy, Connie, Digby and Alison came over for a drink, after which we all crossed the bridge into the nice little town of Villeneuve des Béziers. A party was underway in the central square, with a big bandstand, a big band, trestle tables and chairs laid out for the public, various food and beverage outlets doing a brisk trade in pizza, beer, sangria and more, plus a funfair and various other activities for the kids – and fireworks at 10.30pm.

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Hanging out with new Capetonian friends on “Angelique”: Roy and Digby; Allie and me; Connie and Jeremy; setting off to the party in Villeneuve town square; being serenaded on the street

 

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Views of Villeneuve-des-Béziers – our mooring, view of the opposite bank, and a gorgeous mural in the town square

“Wild”-moored in Colombiers

We followed Angelique to Béziers, where Connie and Jeremy would be leaving the boat a couple of days later. Digby and crew prepared the way for us at the first écluse, Villeneuve, and Ally kindly helped with our ropes; at the second one, Arieges, I failed dismally, embarrassingly and twice to throw the waterlogged long ropes around a bollard. They were simply too heavy for me – and having a raptly attentive audience didn’t exactly help, either. Fortunately, the lockie eventually relented and gave me a helping hand.

At Orbes lock – just us alone in this one – Roy realised we’d be in time for the morning upstream session of the Fonserrannes Staircase, a flight of six locks. (Going upstream, it’s open from 10am to 12.15pm and from 4pm to 6.45pm. If you’re going downstream, your windows are 8am to 9.30am, and 1pm to 3.30pm.)

This was a hectic experience: you go straight from one lock into another, in our case montant (going uphill) all the way, and the route was lined with spectators in holiday mood on a lovely day. I got off and tended the forward line from the lock-side, and then for the remaining five locks climbed the stairs, line in hand, “leading” Karanja like a horse. It was good to reach the top and receive the traditional round of applause.

 

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Admittedly less-than-brilliant photos of Fonserrannes Staircase – it’s not easy to hold onto ropes and take photos at the same time, plus the mode dial on my Lumix camera moved itself (I swear) to “retro”

Colombiers

Arriving in Colombiers, we found a wild mooring on the port side that turned out not to be so wild after all. Just as I was about to start banging pots around, Roy remembered a restaurant recommendation from Simon Piper – Au Lavoir (au-lavoir.com; it’s listed in the Michelin Guide, and it’s a B&B, too). Once we’d scrambled up the bank, me in my cream wedges, it turned out to be no more than about 150m from the boat.

In Au Lavoir’s atmospheric courtyard, we were superbly served a couple of kir royales, a bottle of an excellent local viognier-chardonnay blend, a lobster amuse bouche, hot foie gras on a bed of green beans for me and a cold foie gras terrine for Roy. Then rack of lamb for both of us, and we shared a soufflé Grand Marnier with a couple of coffees. (Total, €109.) And yes, I more-or-less slid back down the bank by the light of my iPhone torch.

Three nights in Capestang

The lovely medieval village of Capestang is dominated by its 13th-century Saint Etienne Collegiate Church. As you can see from the photo below, this ancient Gothic structure has weird dimensions – in essence, it’s improbably high for its base – and that’s explained by the fact that the existing building was originally planned to be merely the choir of a much, much larger cathedral.

Apart from the glorious stained glass, if the interior looks distinctly “unrestored”, that’s probably because nobody nowadays would want to tamper with its evocative remnants of 13th- and 14th-century murals. Some of those images – an elegant bridal couple (representing Christ and his church, apparently), a naked lady being swallowed whole from both ends by a two-headed monster (a popular Medieval representation of hell), a windmill (representing wealth), and many more – were featured in the outstanding and free son et lumiére spectacle (sound and light show) projected against an exterior wall of the church, that we were to see the following night.

Free Wine

The words “free wine” lured us back to the capitainerie at 6pm that first evening, where the friendly Dutch woman whose family owns the local Vanho wine estate presided over the wine-tasting. Also on hand was a snack-woman offering onion marmalade (just up your street, Carrie!) and other jammy products.

After some tasting , we settled for a bottle of delicious dry muscat and drank it there on the quay, while a three-piece band played on the stern deck of Anjodie. Anjodie, by the way, is the boat on which British chef Rick Stein spent much of his time during the making of his TV series on the Canal du Midi.

 

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More scenes from the medieval village of Capestang

Run from Capestang

Overcast, cool and windy weather made our first morning in Capestang a good one for a run – my first along the Canal du Midi and my first in a week. That can fairly be blamed on the recent three-day heatwave, dubbed “Lucifer” in the media. (Late nights with South Africans both in Marseillan and Portiragnes might also have had something to do with it.)

Cursed with the directional sense of a bumblebee in a glass jar, I try to stick to the towpath. Happily, I did manage to find my way over the small hill that’s pierced by the 160m Malpas tunnel and back to the canal without getting hopelessly lost.

Then I saw these workers watering the new plane trees that have been planted, along with other varieties, as part of the current Canal du Midi restoration project*.

 

To Ventenac-en-Minervois

We’d felt no absolute certainty about safely getting under the low, low bridge at Capestang. (Piper Boats uses the ability to sail under this bridge as one of their design parameters for our sort of boat – but how can one really be sure?)

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The low, low bridge at Capestang – it’s the lowest in France, they say

However, we braved the wind, we held our breath, and Roy sailed us perfectly straight under the Capestang bridge – without a scrape. Crouching at the prow, I even saw a few inches of air between the bridge roof and the sides of the wheelhouse.

No locks today – there’s a 54km lock-free stretch between the Fonserrannes flight and Argens, our first lock the next day.

Our mooring at Ventenac village entailed either a trek along a slippery bank to get around the fence (Roy), or a short climb up the same slippery bank and an ungainly clamber over the fence (me). The inelegant slide back down the bank after dinner at La Grillade du Chateau, just across the road, was mercifully performed under cover of darkness.

The ambience at La Grillade was a delight – rustic, wood-fired oven in an open space sheltered by the thick, ancient and well-trained foliage of a dozen or so trees. But, as happens fairly frequently, much of our food was average and/or not served hot the first time. Best of the lot was my salade gésiers – my first go at eating gizzards (on purpose, anyway); these ones came as warm, tender, still-pink bites tossed with crispy lardons and a lot of greenery and topped with melting chévre (goat’s cheese) on toast.

The real highlight? Several plump fowls with gorgeous plumage strolling around in a quest for scraps from the diners – most of whom (the guests, I mean) knew each other, judging from the inordinate amount of kissing going on.

To Homps

One of those gorgeous mornings for winding along the Canal du Midi! Our first lock was Argens, followed soon by the double lock at Pechlaurier.

We shared these with Norbonne, a péniche-type Minervois hire-boat with a family of sulky Brits who managed to block the path of a descending boat of Americans, among other annoying manoeuvres; and a lovely, forgiving German family whose Le Boat we got within a lot more than kissing distance of.

I wish I’d taken a photo of the English sheepdog trying to round up the boats in the lock – doing a better job of it than its master, actually. The lockies here tend to leave you to get on with it; not always ideal with so many newbie hire-boaters.

As it happens, we caught up with the other two boats at Ognons, another double lock, where we all moored up to wait for 1.30pm and the end of the lunch-break. At our final lock for the day, Homps, we moored up just after the bridge – and ended up with Narbonne right behind us.

Note: Apart from our good, safe mooring (and ultimately free, too, as we made no overtures to the capitainerie and they made none to us), from the passerelle to the Le Boat / Canalous harbour there’s quite a long stretch of decent mooring to port with strong wooden stakes that you can tie up to.