Argeliers to Colombiers

Today we have no locks to go through, so as long as we're settled in by dark, there are no time constraints.  After breakfast we took off during a misty, cloudy day.  Both Michael and Barbara took turns as captain and by about 10:30 we had reached our first town of Capestang.  We wandered through this quaint town, and admired the beautiful stained glass windows of the St. Etienne church.  Then we stopped in the town square for some cafe au lait and Croque Monsieurs.  Then we crossed a bridge to the other side of the canal where we found the Tourism office and bought tee shirts and other souvenirs.

Dog sitting on a chair

                                         This video is where we sat in the square.

Back on the boat, we immediately had to pass under the lowest bridge of the entire canal.

This is the lowest bridge on the canal (above) and (below) is another boat passing through.

An hour or two after Capestang, we came upon the small but beautiful village of Poilhes where we walked around a bit, intending to get lunch.  But, there were some things we really wanted to see coming up, and we still had a trip to go, so we decided to forgo eating out and had a lovely lunch on the boat.

Around Poilhes (this and next 5 pictures)

Our boat in Poilhes

Lunch on the boat

We soon entered the Malpas Tunnel, the oldest canal tunnel in the world.  There are actually three tunnels - a small water tunnel which is deepest, a train tunnel, and the canal tunnel.  It was very cool to go through!  We docked right on the other side of the tunnel, and then hiked up to the top of the Oppidum d'Enserune for amazing views.  On the way we met Borg, who is originally from Germany, but has lived in Yugoslavia and France, and plans to spend the winter in Spain.  She said she travels along where there's nice weather and nice people to meet!

Borg

Barbara and I hiked all the way up to the top where we could see the Etang asseche de Montady-Colombiers (dried lake of Montady-Columbiers) which is kind of a land bowl where crops are planted in wedges.  The view was spectacular.  Then we visited the Malpas Tunnel Museum where we learned all about the construction of the tunnel.

You can see that this large circle is made up from wedges of crops

View of our boat from above - the Tunnel is directly below where we're standing to take this picture

View of US from the boat!!

A model of the Tunnel - you can see the canal part that we went through (small red boat at top), the part of the tunnel where the trains pass, and a small waterway on the lower right

Minutes after leaving that area we arrived in Colombiers, our docking space for the night, where David performed an amazing job squeezing the boat in a tight space without even touching another boat!

We wandered around Colombiers for a while, mostly looking for the Chateau de Colombiers that I'd read was also a restaurant where the kind and queen of Sweden like to eat.  However, when we got to the Chateau, it was a broken down old building that was clearly not open for anything anymore.

On the street in Colombiers

Looking to the right of our boat

Taken from the top of our boat.  You can see how tight the space is.

Waiting for us to get ready for dinner.

Tonite we ate dinner at a nice restaurant right next to our boat.  The food was "complicated", and sometimes we couldn't identify what dish was what!  The food was pretty good but the waitress was very sweet!