Beziers
Trip Start
Mar 29, 2006
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72
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Trip End
Feb 28, 2007
Beziers,
France
Monday, July 3, 2006
A particularly hot one. The temperature has been rising a few degrees each day since we returned from Spain. Don't mention the fan.
We went for a drive to Beziers. By chance the day before we had seen a postcard of the nine locks at, I think, Ecluse de Fonseraines. They were situated just before Beziers and not too difficult to find. An amazing piece of 18th century engineering with nary a moving part initially. Now of course the locks are operated by electric motors. Essentially a series of locks one upon the other taking the Canal du Midi down several metres to the level of the Orb river. We walked up the towpath alongside the locks but were not fortunate enough to see any barges go up or down the slope. There was a junction at about the seventh level which took canal traffic off in another direction along another canal
Beziers cathedral
. We parked our trusty Peugot under the main square and walked in the direction of the cathedral and the view over the Orb. We were not impressed. Most of the town shops were closed (it was that time of the day) and it was grubby. Waste everywhere, badly maintained homes and rusty cars. Many dark faces in the dark streets explained some of the mess. There was a large Muslim population in Beziers into which we had wandered. The Cathedral was terrific inside...as always. [Imagine the wonderful monuments and galleries there might have been if those talented architects and designers of centuries past had been able to channel their energies into other than places of worship.] We had lunch right outside the cathedral. Sandwiches...but in that French bread. It took me forever to get through mine.
I rang Dublin from a public phone to confirm our rental car in Ireland.
We took a northerly route back up the N112 through the Black Hills to St Poms where we had had lunch on our first day in Languedoc. We then headed south to Felines along narrow forested roads sometimes as dark as night under the canopy of trees following the Cesse river. On the map it looked to be no distance at all but 40km of mountain road at 30kph took forever.
It reached 35° at 6pm after we had returned that afternoon so we rescued the fan from the bedroom (don't mention the other fan) to move the air around in our sitting room. Another evening of a late meal, some typing, some paper reading and lots of book reading.
