Carcassonne to Narbonne: our last day on the canal

October 30, 2009

Weather: sunny and warm all day

We left le Jardin de la Cité after another good breakfast with the folks from Rugby. Our room had been very nice except for some sort of plastic mattress cover that made us sweat. There seemed to be a lot of moisture in the air and not enough ventilation in the room, because it took ages for hand-washed clothes to dry.

Once again the weather was warm enough to wear cycling shorts for the whole day's pleasant riding through more villages and countryside and two crossings of the canal on small bridges. To start out we returned to the Canal du Midi cycle path for 14 km to Trebes. The path was not paved and a bit bumpy in places, but fine for riding a short distance. In Trebes Al picked up a couple of sandwiches at a boulangerie while Eva waited with the bikes on the canal bank where some kids were throwing bread to ducks. Suddenly an extended family of what we thought were river otters appeared going after the bread as well. Al came back just in time to see them and we both got photos. (We found out later they were nutria or ragondin in French.)

The canal path between Carcassonne and Trebes.

Although unpaved and a little rough in spots, the path along the Canal du Midi between Carcassonne and Trebes was quite pleasant to ride. At Trebes we left the canal path and followed very quiet roads on a more direct route to Narbonne.

A family of aquatic creatures (nutria, or ragondin in French) swimming in the canal in Trebes.

It felt good to be back on a paved road again after Trebes. In spite of the sandwiches, we stopped for lunch when we saw our first restaurant in Puicheric after about 35 km, since we had no idea whether there would be another one later (there wasn't). The restaurant/bar had a covered porch where we could sit outside in the shade. The meal was okay—salad, chicken and spaghetti--but the nice young waiter brought out canned fruit cocktail for dessert. We hadn't seen that for years! Al's great route-finding once again kept us on quiet roads with very little traffic. Close to Narbonnne we decided to ride an extra 5 km, up and over a hill through the village of Moussan in order to stay on small roads and avoid the main highway into the city.

We stopped for a simple, but filling, lunch in Puicheric, served on the warm, sunny patio.

We found our hotel, La Residence, with no problem just before 5:00. The nice Welsh woman at the front desk opened the garage for us to park our bikes, and then showed us to our ground floor room. Since this was to be the only 3 star hotel of the trip, I was expecting great things, but the room was one of the worst we've had. There was a poky bathroom, with no place to hang towels or anything else, the room was small and dark with a dirty carpet and everything very worn. The only useful part was a fridge/minibar where we could stash our uneaten sandwiches. After cleaning up, we went out to explore the downtown.

By now it was completely dark, but we walked a few blocks along the broad, tree-lined boulevard fronting the Canal de Robine, which links Narbonne to the Canal du Midi. In a central square in front of the archbishop's palace, we saw some kids playing in a recessed area that looked like it might be an empty pool of some sort. When we walked over to investigate, we were surprised to find a section of the old Roman road, Via Domitia, which had been constructed in 118 BC at the time of the founding of the first Roman colony in Gaul. Narbonne was a crucial strategic crossroads of the Via Domitia and the Via Aquitania, and it was an accessible, but well-defendable, port at that time. A section of the roadway about 2 metres below today's pavement level had been exposed, and we couldn't resist walking around on the ancient paving stones. This seemed to be the most interesting part of downtown Narbonne. The rest of it was crowded with traffic and not particularly nice.

It was too dark to take our own photo of the section of the 2000 year-old Via Domitia uncovered in the Narbonne square. This photo by Clemensfranz is from Wikimedia Commons.

By 7:30, when the restaurants open for dinner in this part of the country, we were very hungry, and since it was Friday night, many places were booked up. We finally found seats in the bar of a reasonable-looking establishment and had a delicious entrée of scallops creme brullé served in the shells. After dinner all those kilometres caught up with us, and we we returned to our room for an early night.

Today's ride: 72 km (45 miles)
Total: 443 km (275 miles)

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