Where are Ron and Ellen?
France: 7 September - 20 October 2005
Part 2: Damazan - Toulouse, 18-25 September 2005
Ellen and Ron leaving Moissac, 23 September 2005. (Thanks to Lyda Bakker for the photo.)
Toulouse, France, 25 September 2005
Links in the text below are to individual photos or to a small group of photos. To see all the photos from the 25 September report combined on one page, click on the thumbnail at the left.
Dear Family and Friends,
We arrived at the campground in Damazan last Sunday afternoon and discovered 1) that the campground was closed (although everything said it was supposed to be open to the end of September), and 2) there was a full-fledged British cricket match going on. Seems the large British expat community has a cricket league, and play on Sunday afternoons on the field at the campground. The local club's groundskeeper told us we should go ahead and camp anyway; that no one would bother us, that the water was still on in the sinks and toilets – and that we should join them for tea between the halves of the cricket match. So we set up camp and then had an enjoyable afternoon puzzling over cricket rules and chatting with the Brits; we shared their full British tea, and then had the entire campground to ourselves after the cricket match was over.
Monday we continued on little roads beside the canal through farmland, including now huge areas of apple orchards instead of grapes. Most of the apple trees were loaded with apples, and were covered with netting, whole fields of netting, we assume to protect the apples from birds. This part of the canal is lined with London plane trees (known to us as sycamore trees), which we are told are resistant to pollution, help hold the bank in place, and have leaves that sink to the bottom of the canal and help keep it watertight. We also saw lots of places where there were plane trees planted in rows, with branches trimmed off up to 25 feet from the ground; we assume they are harvested for lumber. We arrived at the next campground, outside Boé, which several tourist bureaus and books had said was open until the end of September, and discovered that it was now a golf club and they had not had camping there for 5 years! We were a long way from any other campground or place to stay, so the guy took pity on us and told us that if we camped behind the trees along the parking lot, "I will not see you."
Tuesday morning we headed off early and reached Moissac, a beautiful town with a beautiful campground right on the river. We set up our tent right beside the river, with gorgeous views in both directions, up and down the river, and across the river to the little town. We had showers and did laundry and felt much better! At the cricket match, people had told us to watch for places along the road where truckers were eating lunch because we would get a good "plat du jour" -- menu of the day -- for lunch. We had stopped on the edge of a small town at a restaurant that advertised lunch for truckers, with a big parking lot for trucks. We were almost the first ones there, but by the time we finished the place was packed. We had soup, bread, a composed salad plate, main dish (steak and potatoes for Ron, chicken in red wine and potatoes for Ellen), green salad, ice cream, and coffee or tea, all for 11 Euros each.
Moissac has a stunning Romanesque cloister, beautifully preserved, and an abbey church with a beautiful interior and a justly famous portal with carvings depicting St. John's vision of heaven in the book of Revelation. It also has, just outside the town, a "canal bridge", which carries the canal over the Tarn River. It is quite odd to see boats going across a bridge over the river! We liked Moissac and the campground so much that we stayed there for 3 nights. We explored the towpath that runs along the canal, and found that it is very rough and rocky, so decided to wait until we reached the paved part to actually ride the canal path between towns with our loaded bikes and cart. We pedaled on via small roads to a campground in Grisolle for one night before picking up the paved canal path that brought us the 35 km to Toulouse.
Although we have really enjoyed the biking and the scenary, we have remembered that we don't like the kind of travel where we stay in a place only one night and then move on. So we are now planning to take the bikes on the train to Carcassonne tomorrow, spend probably 2 nights there, and then take the train again, probably to Sète on the Mediterranean, and spend a few days there before heading up to visit our friends in St André-de-Sangonis. We'll make some day trips from Sète to explore that area -- leaving the cart and packs at our campsite.
Love to all,
Ellen and Ron
Forward to the 26 September - 5 October 2005 report, Carcassonne - St. André-de-Sangonis
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Last updated: 27 November 2005
