Day 45: Agen to Castelsarrasin

October 10, 2023

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The promise of bacon at breakfast came true, and the rest was fairly good as well. We also noticed on the wall a bit of a menu touting local beef - the Blonde d'Aquitane. We take this to be our favourite (to look at) cafe au lait cows.

Out in the street we noticed another phenomenon. The (American) multinational showing quite a bit of local adaptability. So instead of the Whopper, Burger King is offering whatever these things pictured are. And they take care to specify that they are made from French meat and cheese.

We didn't spend much more time in Agen, which had somehow failed to impress or intrigue us. We did take a shot down to the end of our street, revealing a possibly scary hill. Also scary - no bike lane in the street!

All this was quickly behind us, as we embraced the overriding fact of the canal routes ahead of us, for the next several days. We would find, at least until boredom might set in, a refreshing lack of cars snorting down our backs.

We set off on the Canal Laterale a la Garonne

Since it's a canal in France, it has fishermen.

Signs along the way gave us a chance to reflect on where we had come from and where we were heading. In general, although there may be other "veloroute" names floating about, the one that best describes what we are about now is this one:

The two oceans that they are talking about are the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, of course. (How many other oceans do they have lying around here?). Generally this route involves canals, but you can't exactly join two oceans with a canal (unless it's Panama, or Suez?) so the route is a bit more complex than that.

We began by noting, a bit ruefully, that from Villeneuve/Pujols we could have cruised bikeways along the Lot until jumping onto bikeway along the Garonne, and into Agen. Instead, we took the overland route Pujols/Prayssas(Lussac)/Agen and paid the price in climbing and then traffic.

Easy and hard ways to join Villeneuve and Agen.

Now that we are on the Garonnne system, we will take advantage of canals all the way to the Med. The Garonne itself rises in the Pyrenees and flows to the Atlantic at Bordeaux. But from Toulouse there is the Canal du Midi. We recall that that the path along the Canal du Midi is decent, until Carcassone, though that memory could be faulty! Still looking at this rather fuzzy map, we are currently near Moissac, on the Tarn. That is downriver from Albi and where the Classens are Poking About. Hi Classens!

Carrying down the canal route, we are reminded that 68% of electricity in France comes from nuclear. So different from Germany, which has closed its plants.

The power station looks harmless in the cartoon.

Another well remembered feature of the southern canals is the Plane trees. The ones shown here look good, but we recall lots cut down on the Canal du Midi to control disease.

Beyond trees and power plants there may not be so much to look at while cycling the canals. Well, that isn't quite accurate. There are locks and boats and people and plants. Have a look:

This is one of the larger hydrangea clumps we have seen.

And look, palm trees are beginning to pop up.

As for people, we have for example these Camino walkers. Why are they coming towards us? Because the shortest route to Santiago is back to Bordeaux (behind us), down the coast to Bayonne, and into Spain. When I mused about this question, Dodie was less than complimentary about my sense of direction!

Dodie noticed, sort of suddenly, that he canal level was awfully low - with at least three feet of bank exposed.

These boats seemed grounded by the low water.

But after we passed one particular lock, the water level was back up. We surmised that the level had been lowered to facilitate clearing lots of fallen branches from the water, but we really don't know.

This stack of signs is a helpful menu of exactly where we are going next and what the distances are. From Castelsarrasin where we will stop tonight to Toulouse is a flat 58 km cruise!

Across the canal there appeared the shell of the St Martin church, which is claimed to be one of the oldest in France - 3rd century. It was active mainly until the 7th century, but we were interested to learn that it has a 10th century graveyard thought to be used for St Jacques pilgrims. It may be a fairly tough walk, but a whole graveyard for them here seems like it was really tough.

A photo from the info sign. We see that it says liberte, egalite, fraternite on the front, placing the photo at after the revolution. That makes sense, since the oldest surviving photograph is from 1826. The inventor of photography, by the way, was French.

The Tarn, coming down from Albi and those Classens, joins the Garonne near Moissac. We crossed the Tarn on a pont-canal a bit up river, but first there was also the Napoleon Bridge, closer to Moissac. There had been a bridge in this area, but it was ruined in the 14th century. It took a visit from Napoleon I to kick start construction of the present structure.

Back in the day you could herd your goats over the bridge.

I spotted another bug, like the yesterday's green stink bug.

Our canal crossed the Tarn on the Cacor canal bridge. The walkway of the bridge was rather narrow and made of stones. We clung to the not-water side!

Castelsarrasin named its port area for Jacques Cousteau, and put up this "Calypso" themed sculpture. But I checked and Cousteau was not from here, so they were just going with his general fame.

Our place in Castelsarrasin is the Marceillac Hotel. According to a plaque outside this was built in Art Nouveau style in 1912 by Pierre Marceillac, and his descendants are still running it.

We found the lobby and rooms of the hotel to be charming, and so too the lady that we take to be Marie Helene, the latest in the line. It was in fact one of those "blink" situations. She was so gentle, clear, and helpful that we both just loved her, immediately.

We spent and hour of so recharging our internal batteries, but ones like that in the GPS, before stepping out for a look at the town. It is not big, and most of the businesses seemed to be closed. Yet it was pleasant, with a lot of that Toulouse red brick helping to create a certain unique style.