Sunday night and the church bell in the eglise next door has just sounded 9pm. Time ticks by in the evenings, by the time we've showered, done our washing, been for a walk to stretch the legs, had dinner and looked at the guidebook for a few days ahead. Time to sleep soon - we are keen to get going in the morning, to arrive in Toulouse by early afternoon. I think it will be around 25 kms, much of it again along the Canal du Midi.
It was an easy walk today, great weather and delightful to stroll along the shady path beside the canal. You may be able to tell by the photos that I'm captivated by the Canal du Midi, and fascinated by the system of locks. I think it's wonderful. The canal is 240 kms long, has 63 locks, 126 bridges and 55 aquaducts. It was listed as a UNESCO world heritage site in 1996. It's an incredible feat of 17th century engineering.
The Canal is lined by nearly 200,000 trees of various species, but the most beautiful are surely the 42,000 plane trees, featured in many of the photos you see of the canal. Sadly many thousands of these magnificent plane trees are infected or threatened by a fungus. There is no treatment which can cure this fungus once the tree is infected. After many years of inaction, and disputes between geographic regions and government departments as to who should be responsible, and who would pay, to address the problem - it is being addressed. Every plane tree on the canal is numbered - all 42,000 of them. I've included a couple of photos. Affected trees are being felled and burned to avoid contamination of healthy trees. and new trees are planted in their place. Let's hope this long term project is successful.
So, a most enjoyable day meandering along the canal, watching the locks at work and inspecting the various cruisers and pinochettes - wishing we could step inside and take a closer look! The kilometres went by quickly and by mid afternoon we left the canal to walk about 2 kms into the town of Baziege and our gite.
We are five in the gite - Domi, me, Martine, Guy and Pascale (the extremely loud snorer) . It's a very spacious gite, modern, comfortable, and managed by one or two volunteers, for a week or two at a time. There are three rooms, each with 4 beds, and a separate bedroom for the volunteers. How the gites often work is that rooms are filled one at a time, and the next room opened only when the previous room is full. This is fair enough as it saves the gite owners or volunteers having to clean multiple rooms for small numbers of pilgrims. But we have found on the Chemin d'Arles that the gite owners are often kind enough to spread us around to make everyone as comfortable as possible. So tonight Domi and I have a room for 4, same for Guy and Martine, and for Pascale. And everyone's happy with that. I think we will all sleep well!
Toulouse tomorrow. And for two nights. It will be strange to spend more than one night in the same bed, and to walk for a whole day without a backpack!
A demain, a Toulouse.
J X
