Winetasting & the Canal du Midi - June 5, 2024

 We've reserved places on a boat for a ride along the Canal du Midi. The sun is out, it's warm, we've packed our picnic and we're ready to go. 

But the boat ride doesn't start until 2:30, so we have time to do something in the morning.

Our trip starts at the Port of Homps and returns there 2 hours later. We only went a few miles as the speed limit in the canal is 5 mph.

For our morning activity Dave suggested winetasting at Gayda winery where he tasted with Judy, Dan, & Paulette. It will be before noon, but we all agree. The ride over to Brugairolles where this winery is located was beautiful. The winery itself has an amazing location that didn't get captured in photos. There are wonderful mountain and vineyard views from this very modern winery.

The view was better than it looks - we overlooked vineyards with the mountains in the background. Beautiful location for a winery.

wine tasting before lunch? Why not?

As a preview to our afternoon boat ride, we stopped at the Ecluse d'Aiguilles, Needles Lock, built in 1664, at the village of  Puichéric. We were greeted by a friendly metal sculpture and made to feel at home. 

Chris doing a happy dance with our sculptural greeter

The lock-keeper, Joel Barthes, has been creating these sculptures since 1992 and he has an eclectic collection of these which entertain boaters waiting to enter or leave the locks. 

Some characters moved mechanically

From our picnic table we watched the locks at work and then visited the charming creatures above before leaving for Homps where our boat was waiting.

Homps (pronounced omp) has a large pleasure port with a lot of moorings. Restaurants are plentiful in this village to service all the boats tied up overnight. (Locks, although all electric now, don't work after 7 pm.) 

Our tour boat, the Saint Ferréol, is built to resemble the barges that used to travel the canal commercially. Today, there were only a few travelers with us, but all seats outside the boat were taken, so we sat in the cabin - which was fine as there were no windows to interfere with taking photos.

The front of the boat had all seats filled.

The two-hour ride went under several bridges and through one lock (Ecluse Jouarres) before returning along the same route. Commentary provided along the way (in French and English) taught us about the history of the canal and the building of the bridges. Built for moving goods across southern France, the canal is now only used for pleasure boats. 

We're moving from lower water to higher, so once inside the lock, the water level is raised by allowing water in

The water fills in a matter of minutes

Once filled, the gates open to the upper side and we go on our way

You can jump off your boat to get a snack at this lock

Lockmaster making sure all works properly

The canal was lined with plane trees in most places, but a fungus called canker stain has killed off many, leaving the canal denuded of trees. Other types of trees have been planted, but some of these have also died off because of pests or inhospitable soil. Replanting the trees is a work in progress.

The canal without its famous plane trees

But two hours is probably the maximum time one could sit on the hard wooden benches, so we were happy to end the trip once more at Homps.

Home in time for aperos, tonight we tried out the Hyppocras, the old-recipe aperitif wine Dave bought yesterday at market. We all pronounced it tasty.