Today we met up with our host, Olivier, and our Toscana friends Craig & Tina Harris to begin our barge cruise on the Canal du Midi, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and home to some luxuriously appointed hotel barges. We have chosen the Allegria, a 100+ year old barge that has been completely refurbished and which will be home for the next 7 days. This voyage through time, gliding along France’s most beloved canal is a relaxing experience steeped in history. The Marquis of Vauban once lamented of the Canal du Midi, “J’aurait donné ma vie pour avoir construit cette oeuvre.” So extraordinary was the feat of construction that France’s most prominent engineer of the 1600s would have given his life to claim it as his own. Yet Pierre-Paul Riquet, the man behind one of the 17th Century’s greatest works of engineering—and some say, works of art— remains in Vauban’s shadow, despite his life’s accomplishment, which was classified a UNESCO world heritage site in 1996. This 150-mile long waterway was once known as the Canal Royal en Languedoc, for good reason. French revolutionaries may have removed the “royal” from its title in 1789, yet this is a canal which remains fit for a king. Dappled sunlight streams onto its emerald-green water from between the 42,000 plane and oak trees which line the canal side— securing the banks with their roots as well as providing shade for the horses which once drew trade barges. The canal meanders from the Garonne River in Toulouse— which leads all the way to the Atlantic Coast— to Sète, which borders the Mediterranean. The canal cuts several thousand kilometres of ocean travel off the route from Toulouse to the Mediterranean, which previously had to travel around Portugal and Spain to reach the same spot.
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