Day 46: Castelsarrasin to Toulouse

October 11, 2023

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We each happened on a few moments alone with Marie Helene, the current owner of Hotel Marceillac, and we independently told her how much we liked her and her approach to receiving the guests. We had earlier mentioned to each other that we loved her in a "blink", and now we told her of that Malcolm Gladwell book, Blink. She promised to find and read it, and she said she would read it in English, to get the author's full meaning. That is just one facet of Marie Helene!

It was easy to pass through the small and pleasant town of Castelsarrasin and make our way back to the canal. We paused to read the panel describing the things to see in this area. They were the street, the war memorial, and the passerelle. I have chosen the passerelle as the most interesting, but only because it was made by the same company that built the Eiffel tower. To be honest, it just looks like a miniature railway bridge.

The canal was smooth, and filled with interesting boats.

Before too long we arrived at a route barrée. That is not a remarkable feat in France, and we could compliment them for working so much to maintain the routes. But we suspect that they usually just forgot to take down the signs. And since they never say how long or well maintained their proposed detours are, we always bust through routes barrees, until they prove themselves truly barrées.

In the photo below, Dodie appears to be skipping gaily through the barricade, and that turned out to be justified, because there was no disruption to the path, none at all.

Here we are at the barree signs at the other side, about a km away. There was never a problem of any sort!

Montech is an interesting spot on the canal, where some clever engineers looked at a succession of five closely spaced locks and had the idea of dragging the boats up the change in elevation by using train engines. This was built, in 1974.

These engines pushed the boats up the water hill.

At the Montech display, we encoutered a group of about a dozen Australians, attracted to France for the rugby world cup, who had rented ebikes in Bordeaux and were cycling to Toulouse. It was an organized affair, with their hotel bookings made and their luggage being transported by road. They were a lot faster than us, but they made the "mistake" of stopping at a French restaurant for lunch. We beat them to Toulouse!

This map shows where we are, in Montech, in the French system of canals. It really is amazingly extensive. There are 6700 km of rivers and canals involved.

There are still hundreds of gorgeous plane trees along the canal, but we looked sadly at all the spots where the trees had been pulled out. Sometimes we could look at the logs (and speculate on whether it could be quality wood for furniture) and sometimes we only saw the hole in the ground.

At some points we saw where replanting had been done, in this case with oak. The white sticks are the trees. We did a bit of a census, and found that 80% of the newly planted oaks had died.

We had noticed no commercial traffic actually on the canal, but thought we had found one, when this barge passed by.

But the barge turned out to be carrying the steel shapes used to reinforce the canal bank, so that does not count as actual use of the canal.

Given the relative shortage of distraction while pedaling on the canal, we would stop at most trailside info panels. So we learned at the town of Grisolles that their favourite son was Jean Dargaties, who had been dubbed the Hercules of Grisolles. Jean had participated in the 1903 first Tour de France and came in 4th the following year. I think we can file this fact with the "Eiffel" passerelle.

The next "route barree" along the way almost did get us. They had their "building permit" taped to the sign, and I knelt down to read it. "What does it say, what does it say?" urged Dodie, but I had failed to make it out. "It says they want to "trancher" (slice, cut?) the piste cyclable (cycle way) near or beside the platanes (plane trees)" . Based on this non-analysis, we carried on.

But this time, in due course, we came to this:!

The behemoth was roaring and rocking gently. Undeterred, "we" sent me first, squeezing beside on the left. Dodie followed, later reporting that the thing began to move, threatening to go over her toe.

Viewed from the other side, we see that indeed they were slicing, or trenching, but why?

Down by the route barrée signs at the other end, we came upon two old and heavily loaded touring cyclists puzzling as we had over the situation. We showed them our photos of the situation and advised that they could probably make it. In the ten seconds that were then allocated for idle chit chat I observed that all their packs and equipment was German, but determined that they lived in France. The man proudly showed me that even his bike was German, being from Fahrrad Manufactur. He then asked me if I was German. I used to proudly observe that some French people, noting that I talk funny, ask if I am Belgian. But now I can add German to their puzzled guesses.

From this point we sailed on through to the outskirts of Toulouse. I mentioned to Dodie that as I recollected the canal would guide us through the traffic on into the centre of town. But no, the cycle path came to a crashing halt in the middle of nowhere. It just seemed to stop, and there was not so much as a Toulouse this way indication. Soon though, there were some signs, but not much help.

Not much help, unless you are from here.

Later, we did get this, but again, no so helpful.

From this bit, extracted from the track map above, you see us hit the "wall" as the path ends, and stagger around a bit before finding a way.

We came in to this scene on the straight red line at the top.

Once we were closer in to Toulouse, we were still not navigating too strongly. This was partly due to bright sun. Dodie can not see the GPS, or anything, without sunglasses in such conditions. But then the polarization of the sunglasses blacks out the GPS screen.

We now easily see that this was the Chapelle St Joseph, behind the Pont St Pierre

Toulouse is known for its red brick construction, and we certainly saw that immediately.

At last we burst into the square with the Capitolium (Capitole) building and the famous Rue du Taur. As we had come through the St Pierre district, and now here, it struck me that the whole population of Toulouse must be under 30. Dodie attributed this to the presence of many universites and lycées. The one old lady we did see came up to us and asked where to find the City Tour. We had no idea, but we did learn that she was from Edmonton (Canada), figures.

Most of the streets we had passed though on our quest for our hotel seemed a strange mix of people walking all over and cars threading their way through. Here below is one such street, as we neared our "Capitole" hotel.

The hotel was not exactly cheap, but I began to "smell a rat" as I made my way in the rickety elevator to our assigned room. We are well used by now to small French hotel rooms, but this was kind of ridiculous. Also, with the bed shoved in a corner, Dodie from her traditional position on the left side would have little chance of getting out as needed in the night.

I came back down and immediately asked for another room. Dodie at first thought I was being a crank, but here we are now in the best alternative the desk lady could offer. This is our new improved bed, and the bathroom:

The door to our room has seen better days. Not a bullet hole, I hope.

We re-read the Booking.com reviews to see if we could or should have avoided this place. Probably not - reviewers are often too kind, or are paid. One writer offered "You can brush your teeth and wee at the same time!"

If this were not in the heart of the tourist sector we would unreservedly label the Capitole a "flop house". We are here for two nights, and have managed to negotiate a very slightly better room for tomorrow. Remarkably, they have no vacancies. Hopefully we can fix that, once people read our coming honest review!

Today's ride: 64 km (40 miles)
Total: 2,414 km (1,499 miles)

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