Marseillette; Cathars and cassoulet in Carcassonne; bam-bam-bam on the way to Bram; two nights in Castelnaudary
It was a long, long day from Homps (say “Omp“) – lock, double lock, double lock, stop for lunch before triple lock, and then the final lock at Marseillette, where we stopped for the night.
Unlike the hire-boaters we shared locks with the day before – one lot English and the other German, today we’re rubbing fenders with two lots of les Français. Audrey and Silvia were on a small and scruffy hire-boat; the other was a big Le Boat presided over by two capitains in matching hats – “Pas capitains, amiraux,” they told me.
Once we’d all settled into our lock pattern, Audrey and Silvio learnt to attach their front line to the prow of their small, light boat to keep it from swinging wildly across the lock and smacking into their compatriots. (That wouldn’t stop them writing it off a couple of days later, and getting a much better one in its place!)
And after repeated requests from the lockies, les deux amiraux eventually learnt to reverse a bit to allow the little guy to exit first.
On the way to Carcassonne
Despite an early start, we had a wait for the first lock, Trèbes, a triple. The 70-foot wide-beam barge Moët Chandon came in with us. We remembered this boat from Moissac three years ago, before Warren and Bernie bought her.
Not much else was good about the day, though. A wind gusting up to 68km per hour; and at Fresquel – a single lock followed by a double – the lockie started chucking the water at us before we were properly moored at the back; this is something we’re seeing on the Canal du Midi that we haven’t seen anywhere else. (Roy was Not Happy.)
Digby waiting at our clearly marked Carcassonne mooring was the best sight we’d seen all day. His and Allie’s Angelique was berthed right behind us, before they set off again with daughter Chantelle and her two cute boys.
At the on-the-ball capitainerie, charming Chaymay took our €20.40 per night and gave us all the info: the hourly shuttle petit train to and from Le Cité, the Monoprix supermarket just down the drag, and more.
Only late in the day did we realise that 15 August is a jour férié in France – Assumption Day. It’s impossible to know whether Carcassonne is always this thronged with tourists, so many French couples and families disporting themselves on “our” lawn.
A few Carcassonne scenes
Carcassonne’s Le Cité
You can’t come to Carcassonne and not visit spectacular Le Cité. We did the 30-minute walk there, and got the petit train back (€2 one way, €3 aller retour).
Those massive 13th-century walls – nearly two miles around and incorporating some 52 towers – were built on much older, Roman foundations, then already a thousand years old. Visigoths took over and founded the city in the fifth century. The chivalric 11th century was the fortress town’s heyday, they say, and it was a stronghold of the Occitan Cathars during the Albigensian Crusades (against the people of the Languedoc).
Sights in and around Carcassonne’s Le Cité
And if those pointy, Disney-esque towers and neat crenellations look a bit suspect for a medieval city, they are: they date from “restoration” work done in the 1850s that earned the place UNESCO World Heritage status in 1997.
Cassoulet, Round One: Adelaïde Restaurant
For lunch, we took a leaf out of Rick Steves’ France 2016 book and reserved a terrace table at Adelaïde Restaurant in Place de St Jean in the heart of Le Cité. It had to be cassoulet (€13), of course – Carcassonne is one of the three homes of cassoulet (Castelnaudary and Toulouse are the others). Made with rustic pork sausage, hearty beans and fatty duck confit, and served straight from the oven in its ceramic cassole, it was delicious – and so big that we could, should, have shared one helping. I was full for three days.
Bam, bam, bam en route to Bram
After having five locks to ourselves, we arrived at Villesque and the lockie went off to lunch. Two lots of Germans in Le Boats stopped behind us.
When the lock opened at 1.30pm, “Take the rope around,” said Roy. “What about that tree?” asked I. “It’ll be fine,” said he, but of course it wasn’t – he was looking at another, less-confrontational bush, closer to the lock entrance. So I provided great entertainment for all concerned, fighting with trees and ropes, and finally made it up the stairs and to the lock side. (No pictures taken, mercifully… )
Then, while getting ready to enter Beteille, our last lock for the day, Das Boot 1 tried to pass us into the lock, as Das Boot 2 had tried to do at the previous lock. Attendez!, yelled Roy, so they did. After that, we let Das Boot 1 exit first.
A little way down the canal, before our overnight stop in Bram, Das Boot 2 asked to go ahead of us “to be with their friends”, Das Boot 1, so we let them pass. Much drama ensued: they were going too fast, too close to us, not understanding that doing so creates a vacuum and pulls the boat you’re passing into you. A loud smack, a horrible smell of crunched fibreglass; then they swung around, crashed into the right bank, then into the left, and headed off looking studiously forward.
Slow-motion, excruciating embarrassment for Das Boot 2
Next day…
Another difficult day. After 11 locks, including an altercation with a dozy and then petulant lockie at the last one, we found a wild mooring under the shade of the plane trees not far from Castelnaudary, and settled down to recover our equanimity.
Day One of Two: Castelnaudary
Just one double lock 700m from our wild mooring, and then the quadruple lock that takes you straight into Castelnaudary’s Grand Bassin – today’s was a well-deserved short and easy run. We’d settled into our mooring for two nights (€28) and paid for it by noon, with the rest of the day – and the whole of the next – to look forward to.
Perrine at the capitainerie explained that the festivity I’d seen on my run past the port on the previous evening was due to the Thursday night market; today, the Quai du Port was quiet and peaceful.
We walked up into town to look at the sights, stopping in at the Collegiate Church Saint-Michel and then at a bar for a couple of pressions, trying to save our appetites for dinner at Chez David (restaurantchezdavid.com), a 350m walk from where we’d moored directly opposite his sign.
Cassoulet Round Two: Chez David
For purposes of comparison with the cassoulet we’d had in Carcassonne, we had to have David’s cassoulet formule (€25) – green salad, cassoulet and crème Catalane; we washed it with a bottle of Fitou, a local red blend.
It was fabulous – tender meat (the côte du porc was gorgeous, the duck confit a close second); separate, slightly chewy beans and a clear, not-too-fatty stock full of jelly from the pig’s trotters that form part of the recipe.
Rather than the usual three hours, David’s recipe calls for four hours of cooking; it’s left to “rest” for another two and then reheated. The crackly bits on top come not from breadcrumbs – “sacrilege!” according to this chef – but from the caramelisation of the pork jelly that rises to the surface, is periodically cracked and is then re-submerged into the unctuous mix.
From TripAdvisor, it seems that everything on the menu is brilliant too – we’d better come back next year, that’s all.
David was born in Toulouse, and his father too was a chef. Having refined his father’s recipe, he says, David regards himself as a champion of the real cassoulet. He denounces as “shit” the mass-produced stuff sold here in tins, bottles or even fresh in traditional ceramic cassoles. They could do it better, he says; they care only about the money.
How I regretted us having bought a large bottle of cassoulet in town a few hours earlier. Not so the bag of dried beans, and definitely not so the beautiful local olive oil. (I made cassoulet once before in Singapore (where a small bag of the authentic haricots cost an eye-watering S$38 at La Cucina in Dempsey), and maybe I’ll make it again in Durban for our friends.
Day Two in Castelnaudary
A lovely day in port, which I started by giving Karanja a good cleaning. American yachtie Larry Cipich stopped by to introduce himself and chat about cleaning materials: bicarb, white spirit vinegar and Savon de Marseille are his holy triumvirate; why to laugh at Donald Trump (so you don’t cry); and how it’s hard to get crewing work nowadays unless you’re gay, Jewish or South African. Funny guy!
Later, Roy and I took the short walk up to the Spar and stopped for a pastis and a panaché (shandy) at Le Grand Bar on the way back.
As evening started to fall, an itinerant guitarist with his little dog occupied the pavement right outside our wheelhouse and did a set of what sounded like great old French standards – like the Georges Brassens classic “Le Chapeau de Mireille”.
Our next visitors were Caroline and Paul, a couple of interesting Aussies who’ve spent much of their lives on yachts and are now living in France on their lovely barge Riana. While we were having drinks, live music started at one of the restaurants just down the quay.
Later, we wandered down with a drink to watch as the parents listened to the music, the girls danced and the boys hurtled around on scooters at the water’s edge. You wouldn’t see this in Australia or the UK – what about ‘elf and safety?
Very much enjoying your French posts Verne XXX
A really fun blog with photographs of two happy people enjoying the fact that their boat has sailed into their dreams. Carcassonne I remember from travels with my family, long before I left school. It was sunny then!