lambchops

Hi
Looking for advice on canal cruising, do's/dont's, best routes /stops, who to hire from, who to avoid 🌝

Cheers
Lambs

scrubbedexpat056

This will be a bit of a long one.
The canal du midi has suffered hugely from the loss of thousands of the London plane trees that lined it, there to stabilise the banks and provide shelter to lessen evaporation. Another 40,000 are due to be cut down over the next 20 years. This means that much of the natural beauty has disappeared and in the summer months the heat can be pretty extreme (38 degrees in 2018 when we arrived in Trebes). Tying up under the trees, which we much preferred to stopping in marinas, became almost impossible for us, with the deeper keel on our sailboat stopping us from being able to moor under the few sections with trees.

For me the nicest stretch now is from east of Carcassonne where the trees have been much less affected, through Toulouse and onto the Canal Lateral. The first stretch of the Lateral is just Toulouse's industrial hinterland, but less than a day's motoring and the canal becomes pretty again. I couldn't recommend a hire boat company since I know nothing about them, but a possible itinerary would be to start in Trebes which has a famous quayside of restaurants, then head west through Carcassonne, Castellnaudary, Toulouse and maybe as far as Montauban, a pretty town and birthplace of the painter Ingres if you like that sort of thing. There are loads of nice stretches and small villages on the way. Some companies offer one way hire at a price if that's what you want to do.

One of the problems if you have no boating experience is that the training you get is very basic at best. Being able to drive a car is as much a hindrance as a help. Boats pretty much steer by pivoting in the middle and the number of turns it takes of the wheel to go from fully one side to the other is many times more than a car. This and the fact that nothing happens immediately, especially with a hire boat with no keel, means that you constantly over steer and end up going down the canal like a snake at the slightest provocation. Locks are either a source of great merriment or a pain in the a***e. No one will help you except in the marinas where they don't want you to crash into the other boats if you can help it.

Having said all that the hire boats come with massive rubbing strakes (heavy rubber strips all around) and many fenders. They are called bumper boats for good reason. Choose a company, check exactly what is covered by the insurance, and have fun. The canals are in my opinion the best way to see France.

lambchops

Thanks AlianCo - good to know about the tree situation as some of the pics make it look really idyllic so we will take on board (no pun intended) your route suggestions. Fortunately we are ok with the heat having lived in the Middle East/Med for 6yrs and we were in France last year when they had the heatwave and we were in a m/home....not pleasant

scrubbedexpat056

We lived in Hong Kong for 4 years and thought we liked the heat, but I guess our blood has rethickened over the years back, mostly in UK. When it was 38 degrees in Trebes and we were tied up to an old quay with no water or electrics we finally broke and spent 2 nights in an airconditioned hotel with a swimming pool. We have really good 12v fans onboard, but it eventually got to us.

Check the prices for what are considered the the various seasons on the canals. It used to be more varied, but now many of the companies consider everything is a long summer season and price accordingly. There used to be deals towards the end of the season and as you already know, spring and autumn are the nicest months weather wise.

The other thing I forgot to mention is the wind. With a flat bottomed boat and no keel your hireboat won't grip the water at all and if the wind is blowing, as it can, it will take you with it. All manoeuvres become more exciting. But being forewarned and having the luxury of a bow thruster you should still be able to get where you want without embarrassing yourself. And should you embarrass yourself you'll be in good company, including me. After years of sailing and navigating the canals I can still be caught out by mother nature and other canal users.

scrubbedexpat056

This was taken in 2006 about 6km from the centre of Toulouse. Happily it still looks like this as did much of the canal, sadly decimated now.

philat98

I did seperate weeks (quite a few years ago) in September in Brittany, Alsace, Burgundy and the Midi. The locks were all manned like the Thames but much better weather. I thought Brittany was the most scenic region.

BuckinghamshireBoy

I've not done any in Brittany, but have done Nivernais and Canal du Centre (or maybe it was Bourgogne), and found both to be disappointing after Canal du Midi - not that I've cruised it in many, many years. I did go and visit the Midi 'mega-lock' (Les 9 Écluses de Fonseranes) just to the west of Béziers a couple of years back for nostalgia reasons...

East of Béziers on to Agde is ok and perfectly do-able, but to my mind nowhere near as pretty as the region suggested by Alianco. We started somewhere between Béziers and Capestang and headed west taking in Trèbes, Carcassonne but sadly didn't make it to Castelnaudary as others on the team (we were eight people) outvoted us 'westerners' so we turned round and headed for the Med.

It's so sad to read about the felling of the plane trees, I'll have to see if I can dig out some (very) old photos...

scrubbedexpat056

Not surprising that the hire boat companies don't use photos like this to sell their holidays. It must be hard for them. From what I understand a lot of their business was repeat business, either from the same port or at least the same company. We heard a lot of holiday boaters grumbling about the state of the trees. Not the companies' fault of course, but they did sell their holidays using older photos.

BuckinghamshireBoy

Shame on them, I hope that they at least mentioned it.

This photo (of a photo) is from 1982, and is how I best remember it.



Somewhere around Trèbes I think.

That wasn't our boat.

lambchops

What a contrast!...so sad

Pulaski

Definitely sad, but they were diseased, so it's not like there was any alternative but to fell and replace them.

scrubbedexpat056

The good news is that they discovered there are three different varieties of London planes and only one variety carries the disease which is why there are still stretches of them among the ones chopped down.
The origin of the disease seems to be that it came over in infected timber ammunition crates from the US in the second world war, though some people have disputed this.We were told by a lock keeper that the use of the trees to moor heavy barges, now mostly gone, is what spread the disease. The heavy mooring ropes would saw into a diseased tree trunk as the barge rocked in the wake of other traffic, pick up the virus and spread it to the next trees in the evening. They are now planting a varied mix of trees to avoid any possibility of losing an entire variety to one disease.
BuckinghamshireBoy's photo is how I remember it when we lived in the canals from 2003 to 2005.

Tweedpipe

For all you Canal du Midi fans. Photos past and present. Enjoy!

https://www.canaldumidi.bike/postcards.html

https://www.francetoday.com/learn/hi...es_in_trouble/

https://www.europeanwaterways.com/bl...-south-france/

scrubbedexpat056

Tweedpipe, I enjoyed the links especially the old photos. I know the midi fairly well and can still recognise some of the features except for most of Toulouse where our boat is now. I was amused at the man's horror at seeing a homeless man peeing up against a tree in full view of all. Shame on Toulouse.
BuckinghamBoy, you mentioned the canal du Centre or the Bourggne as being no patch on the Midi. I have to assume you traveled on the centre. I haven't been on it myself, but many people have told me its dull. It's mostly used by sailors as the quickest route to the med. The Bourgogne on the other hand is beautiful, lined with trees and with the Abbey at Fontenay, a world heritage site. It also boasts a 4km long, Napoleonic tunnel. I'll include one more photo of the long entrance to the tunnel.

BuckinghamshireBoy

Alianco, in which case is was definitely the canal du Centre, as beautiful it wasn't, and I would have remembered a 4km tunnel!

Tweedpipe, thanks for the links, fascinating photos. Great to see some older shots, a propos...

Our home for two weeks, this shot somewhere near Agde.



As per one of the photos in the links, a post-upgrade shot of L'Écluse du bassin rond.



Also from the linked to photos, this is the midi crossing the Orb as seen from upstairs.



No way can I stitch the photos as well as they are done on the site, but here's a quick and dirty partial at les 9 Écluses de Fonseranes.