From the Atlantic Ocean to the Med. - Day 5

Day 5: Montgiscard to Carcassonne

Day 5 was meant to be Montgiscard to Castelnaudary, but again, as we've got a bit ahead of ourselves we decided to go straight to Carcassonne and have a day off. Hurray! As we are starting off on the Canal du Midi, which obviously will be flat, flat, flat, we will have a relatively easy day and then a day with no cycling. Or that was the idea. Shaun had read a guide to cycling the Canal and it mentioned certain places where the path is less than perfect. Where we began, in Donneville, the surface was great- a proper fine grained gravel, very solid and wide.

Part of the Canal with a good surface to it

This went on for a good while. We'd left at around 8.30 into a chilly but bright morning. Lovely avenues of plane trees alongside making a cool, dappled light on the path and the Canal itself as the day began to warm up nicely. Despite Shaun's insistence that there'd be refreshments every 400 metres or so (I might have exaggerated that bit), there was very little opportunity to stop and have a coffee. We'd left our motel with just a few 'pain au chocolats' and a 'pain au raisin' with which to mop up our coffees/teas when we found somewhere suitable. Which we didn't. So we stopped at a picnic bench anyway as we were getting hungry by this time (around 10am).

Nice croissants, but no hot drink

 We still wanted a hot drink, so decided to turn off from the Canal at the next promising looking village. This was to be a place called Avignonet.

The village with no-one in it. And no café

 We could see a large church on top of a hill (we couldn't get enough of them!) so headed that way in search of a bar. After trying to scale the hill that led up to the church (easily an 80% climb!) that wound round and on and on, we came to the church. Absolutely no-one around, no bar, no cafe no nothing. We found one human being who told us the nearest bar was, of course, just a few metres on from where we'd turned off. So, down, down, down we went to 'Obelisque's' bar next to the noisiest, dustiest roadworks in Christendom. We were glad to get back to the Canal after that. At Castelnaudary we have a good meal on a moored barge. Steak haché for Barry and me and Shaun had a Toulouse sausage, washed down with a couple of ice-cold beers. It's very warm.

Our lunch stop

We switch over to the North bank of the Canal at Port Lauragais and at Col de Naurouze back to the South bank at the Ocean Lock. At this point in Shaun's book (Cycling The Canal du Midi by Declan Lyons) it states that the path is "in very poor condition" but then says that "it does improve very quickly". That is an understatement and we found it very difficult going. There are many, many large roots and ruts where the earth was obviously wet but has dried into long, deep troughs. Shaun found out the hard way exactly how tricky it was to cycle over it. WIth quite narrow tyred bikes (28 and 32mm) it's not to be recommended. Barry had slick but wider mountain bike tyres with front suspension and faired only slightly better.

He'd already mopped up all the blood before I'd got my camera out

We didn't find that it "improved very quickly" at all. In fact it got worse before it got even slightly better and then, 14kms outside of Carcassonne, it disappeared altogether, without a 'by your leave'! The sign just said 'Fin de piste cyclable' and that was it... No clue of where to go, whether it continued later on, nothing. We had no choice but to join the D33 towards Carcassonne and follow that. After a few kilometres on the busy and very hot road, we decided to look for a Canal path again. Sure enough, the next right turn took us down to the Canal again and the path. I say 'path' but it really was just a single-track dirt rut. This was very hard going and the last part of our journey into Carcassonne took a very long time. On the road we knew we were 14kms away, but following the canal we must have done at least 20. It seemed to take forever. We were very glad to get off the Canal and into Carcassonne, especially when we came over the bridge on the D33 and saw the 'Cité Medieval' for the first time. It really is an impressive sight and our photos don't do it justice.

Disneyland, I mean Carcassonne

 We found a 'Hotel Mercure' just below the Cité remparts and, as it had a swimming pool we thought it was a great choice, having decided to have a day off here. Finding a restaurant to eat at in the evening was very easy as the central square is chock full of them. We had various salads and the obligatory cassoulet with some good red wine. We slept like logs. Noisy logs, but logs none the less.

Distance: 93 kms