Manly Ferry To Carcassonne

Our destination today was Carcassonne, but before that we stopped off at Trebes to check out the Canal Du Midi.

We first spotted the canal a few ks outside of Trebes ...

And the first boat we spotted ... a narrowboat!  This was NB Amethyst ...

There is a staircase lock just outside of the village.  Three boats were waiting to go up but they had to wait until the lock keeper had finished his lunch at 13.30 ...

He was 10 minutes late, but it seems that in France having a nice lunch is more important than work!  As an aside, the worst time to drive in France is lunchtime when they all drive like lunatics to get home for lunch! 

The third boat had an unfortunate name! 

Watching the lock keeper at work was amusing and I use the term 'work' very loosely.  Basically, he operates the lock by remote controls around his neck.  He stood at 20 metres away from the lock the whole time, chatting to his mate.  He didn't check on the boats once!  If a boat had gotten hung up then it would have been bad luck.  He shut the gates without checking the boats were fully in the lock ... pretty crappy I reckon compared with the lockies on the Thames ...

Even though the water rushes in far faster than any lock I have seen in the UK the boats don't appear to get buffeted at all ...

Trebas was a lovely little town but they have closed down the Aire, so we moved on to Carcassonne only 12 minutes up the road. 

The Aire at Carcasonne is a huge motorhome/coach park ... 

It's in a good spot though as the walled city of Carcassonne is only a 5 minute walk up the road.  It did take us a lot longer than that though as Elaine has a sore toe....she dropped a bottle of mustard on it last night!

It is, as expected, a very impressive city ...

Apparently the Romans installed this ram to keep out the Visigoths! 

No prom poses today, she can't walk! 

OK now this is a strange one for you ... as we were sitting scoffing ice creams a lady tourist from Calgary asked if we could pose with masks of her son and daughter ... so she feels like they are on holiday with her!!  'Kin nuts but we did it with a smile, plus her daughter back in Canada loves little dogs!  She obviously took one with her own camera to send the shot to them, but we asked her to take a shot with our camera as well, just for a laugh ...

Back to the Cite as they call it here ...

We went into the church.  It said 'no dogs' but we believe that out little dogs are equal creations in the eyes of our Lord, so basically 'piss off we are taking them in'!

The stained glass was mightily impressive ...

It is a most impressive sight and we are so glad we have changed tack and headed inland for a while ...

The Cite looks most impressive by night, not that I would know as I am sitting here typing the blog up, so I nicked a pic off the web ...

Finally, back by popular demand (Andy!), is the extremely low-tech-where-we-are-now-map, along with fluffy pen ...