Canal Du Midi

Watery reflections ...

Shadow and shade under the plane trees ...

Canalside settlement ...

Messing about in boats ...

I've always had a secret desire to live on a houseboat ...



Cyclist on the towpath ...



Quintessence of Canal: blue sky, white bridge, green water. And the path leading on, urging, seducing you to turn the next corner ...

Revelling In The Rigole

In the morning I continued along a flat, agricultural plain between 2 chains of hills. Cows grazed placidly. Dogs ran out barking from small farms (if their tails were in the air, you knew they were friendly). I passed field upon field of sunflowers awaiting harvest, their ripe and blackened heads heads all bowing to the south (the French for sunflower is tournesol which literally means 'turned towards the sun'). Tractors ploughed fields where the maize crop had already been gathered in.

After 18 km of these pastoral scenes I reached the charming bastide town of Revel. It was built on the usual grid pattern - with a central, arcaded square and a market hall (housing the Tourist Office) in the middle of it. This market hall is spectacular. In fact it's the biggest of its kind in France. The tiled and belfried roof was supported by enormous, fissured oak beams and pillars. It originally dates from the 14th century but was rebuilt after a fire. A relaxing evening was spent in the local gîte municipale. One of the volunteer hospitaliers (he'd just got married and was about to go on his honeymoon) entertained us with a repertoire of Jacques Brel and Georges Moustaki. I couldn't help thinking he was the spitting image of a young Frank Zappa ... or possibly an incipient Salvador Dali?

Next day I followed a delightfully bendy path alongside the Rigole, a man-made watercourse which drains the Atlantic/Mediterranean watershed. It was designed by Pierre-Paul Riquet, who also constructed the Canal du Midi - one of the great engineering feats of the 17th century - into which the Rigole feeds. Just before the confluence of the 2 waterways stands Le Moulin de Naurouze:

An Englishman and his French wife had bought Le Moulin de Narouze 10 years ago and were gradually restoring the whole complex. They'd opened a pilgrim gîte in one part of it - and there I spent the night. I'd walked 30 km that day and was very tired. My feet were beginning to hurt more and more - especially in the afternoons - and I knew that my plantar fasciitis had returned with a vengeance. Next morning I made my way down to the Partage d'Eaux, where the Rigole runs into the Canal du Midi:

This whole area is fascinating if you like canal boats, canal basins, locks and such things. Which I do. So I really enjoyed the ensuing 2 days' walk by the Canal du Midi, in the plane trees' shade, as I headed towards Toulouse, La Ville Rose, 50 km away ...

Molehills And Peacocks

...You cannot live in the present,

At least not in Wales.

There is the language for instance,

The soft consonants

Strange to the ear.

There are cries in the dark at night

As owls answer the moon,

And thick ambush of shadows,

Hushed at the fields' corners.

There is no present in Wales,

And no future;

There is only the past,

Brittle with relics,

Wind-bitten towers and castles

With sham ghosts;

Mouldering quarries and mines...

From Welsh Landscape by R. S. Thomas.

I've been camping on my own in Wales for just over a week.

I wanted a break from the flat, ploughed fields of the grey-skied English Midlands, and its congested roads, shopping plazas, retail parks, industrial estates. I needed to de-stress and chill out. I craved a simple life for a while, far away from computers and hypermarkets and the niggling, ever-present problems of work and society and family life. I had an overwhelming urge to take myself off to some wild countryside and blend into nature. An ancient landscape called me, a landscape of many different margins: sea and shore, mudflat and sand dune, river and estuary, cliff and heath, rock and heather, valley and hill, sheep pasture and moorland. This was the landscape of West Wales - its coastline, and its mountains rearing up just inland from the coastal rim. From the cliff path high above Llanbedrog on the Lleyn Peninsula I was soon to see these splendid mountains in a line before me, stretching in shapely profile from Snowdon and Moel Hebog in the north, through Cnicht, the Moelwyns and the Rhinogs, to the great bulk of Cadair Idris in the south.

But that comes later. First I had to drive there. On the morning of Friday 11 April I set off with maps and rucksack, warm walking clothes and camping gear. I stopped off near Llangollen for an hour and explored the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct which carries the Llangollen Canal over the River Dee and was built by Thomas Telford (see photos). The view westwards from the aqueduct was very fine.

It was late afternoon when I pitched my tent on the no-frills campsite at Dinas Farm which is situated in the stunningly beautiful valley of Cwm Bychan east of Llanbedr. A red kite soared above me. A buzzard perched watchfully in a tree. The campsite was green grass dotted with the little black mounds of molehills. Every now and again a herd of strikingly marked feral goats (black head, white body, long brown tapering horns) would stealthily appear to crop the grass. Then they would vanish just as suddenly. I pitched in the lee of an old stone wall and some windswept birch trees. There were no other campers. Apart from the bellowing of distant cattle the only sounds were some unearthly wailing cries I couldn't quite place. It was like a band of souls being tortured in hell. Einir, the campsite owner, enlightened me. " They're peacocks," she explained, rather disdainfully. "But they're not natural. Like buzzards and kites are natural." Whereupon she zoomed off on her quad bike to flatten the molehills.

It rained all night. An owl hooted, competing unsuccessfully with the peacocks. I listened to the rain pattering down on my tent and lulling me to sleep. I love sleeping outdoors and hearing all the different sounds, registering all the changing moods of the weather. I was very happy.

In A Little Hilltop Village

In 1930 the Tarn burst its banks and flooded Moissac, destroying 617 houses and drowning 120 people. I left Moissac on 3 November and my morning's walk continued this watery theme. I followed the Canal de Garonne for 12 km. This canal runs from Bordeaux to Toulouse where it joins the Canal du Midi, thereby connecting the Atlantic Ocean with the Mediterranean Sea. (The complete stretch is known as the Canal des Deux Mers.) At one point I knew I passed the confluence of the Tarn and Garonne rivers. But it was quite misty and I couldn't make out anything very much except for the occasional lone cyclist or jogger who ghosted by. From the canalside village of Pommevic (there's a nuclear power station here but I didn't see it) I headed on a quiet country road across flat farmland towards the hilltop village of Auvillar.

Auvillar was the 1st of many bastide towns and villages I would either see distantly or visit throughout the rest of the département of Tarn-et-Garonne and in the next département of the Gers. Bastides were fortified settlements built in south-west France, in medieval Languedoc, Gascony and Aquitaine, during the 13th and 14th centuries. They were normally built to a grid pattern, and situated on hilltops for defensive reasons. The photo shows the beautifully restored medieval market hall in Auvillar's central square.

At Auvillar I encountered an artist painting, in the style of Van Gogh, a large and colourful mural for the local school. As was my custom I approached him for a chat. We talked about the big influx of English people to the area. "10% of the population of Auvillar is now English," he commented. I asked if that caused any problems (we often hear the French blaming incomers for the property price hikes affecting the whole of France). "Well, house prices have gone up, it's true," he said. "But there are many reasons for that. We have nothing against the English living here. As long as they mix in and join village society. However there are some English cliques which keep themselves to themselves and won't even attempt to learn French or take part in communal village life..."

Grand Union

I've always enjoyed walking along canal towpaths. Let's face it, you've got to living in the Midlands. Big hills are far away, and you may only have half a day free... I've done the under-walked, pleasantly rural Grantham Canal (which winds from Nottingham 33 miles across the Vale of Belvoir in Leicestershire to Grantham in Lincs) and the only truly bad bit was at the Grantham end where hypodermic needles littered the path. I've also walked half the Chesterfield Canal (mmm... must do the Retford - Worksop section one day soon) and bits of the Trent & Mersey and the Llangollen (including the magnificent Pontcysyllte aqueduct over the river Dee). Not to mention the waterways of Venice and Amsterdam. But my big project is The Grand Union. It runs for nearly 150 miles from London to Birmingham and was engineered by William Jessop (1745-1814). You may not have heard of him as he was considerably more retiring than his self-publicizing contemporary Thomas Telford. It's one of those routes I've been walking haphazardly on-and-off for years. I've completed about one third of it (Birmingham's Gas Street Basin to Weedon in Northamptonshire) - sometimes doing "there-and-backs" (I don't mind at all retracing the same route) and sometimes using the train to return to the starting point. It was fun working out the logistics. Occasionally I even took a few hours off work in the afternoon - I used to be a 40,000 mile a year rep - to polish off another short stage in suit and posh shoes and with umbrella!!! Obsessed? Who, me? Anyhow, the guides to get are The Grand Union Canal Walk by Anthony Burton and Neil Curtis published by Aurum Press, or the one with the same title by C. Holmes published by Cicerone.

Industrial Heritage

This was a 7 mile walk I did a week ago, starting and finishing at the Lea Bridge car park by the river Derwent just east of Cromford in Derbyshire (OS Outdoor Leisure Map 24, Grid Reference 315561). The whole area is fascinating for those interested in canals, railways and industrial archaeology. Just a short walk from the car park is High Peak Junction, where the Cromford and High Peak Railway meets the Cromford Canal. This railway (now a leisure trail) is an engineering masterpiece. It was originally planned as a canal linking the Cromford Canal with the Peak Forest Canal at Whaley Bridge 33 miles away. But due to severe engineering difficulties and problems with water supply over the high-level limestone route, it eventually opened in 1830 as a railway. Engineered by Josiah Jessop (son of the canal engineer, William Jessop, who constructed the Cromford Canal - and also the Grand Union Canal which connected Birmingham with London), it's perhaps not surprising - considering canals were in the Jessops' blood - that the stations were called wharves, and that steam-powered beam engines hauled wagons (filled with minerals, grain or coal) up gradients, these inclines being the rail equivalent of a flight of locks. My walk took me up the first incline to Sheep Pasture, where the sun came out, and the view north towards Cromford and Matlock was very pretty indeed. The centrepoint of this view is the little symmetrical hill of High Tor, positioned on the eastern side of the river Derwent just beyond Matlock Bath. This made me nostalgic as it was this tiny, insignificant peak that sparked my imagination many years ago, and impelled me to go walking seriously for the first time. I've climbed much higher hills since then, but this one holds a special place in the memory. Then a flat section led to Black Rocks where some young climbers were roped-up and practising. The final incline eased me up to Middleton Top, where there's a very fine beam engine preserved in the Engine House (see photo), and where there's also a Visitor and Cycle Hire Centre. It seemed like a good time for a break and some lunch. But I didn't stop long as the clouds were closing in. Heading over Middleton Moor and down into the rather unexceptional village of Middleton, I found a path which skirted the rim of the noisy, working Middleton Quarry and then descended via an old green way to Cromford, where Richard Arkwright famously built his water-powered cotton mill in 1771. The rain began to fall steadily as I passed that excellent second-hand bookshop, Scarthin Books; so I put on my waterproofs and strode quickly towards Cromford Wharf, from where I took the canal towpath back to the car. This was an enjoyable half-hour stroll with wild flowers bordering the path and sheep sheltering under trees from the rain...