We could see through the trees that we actually had ascended to a certain height of land to reach the camping. Now we descended, not only back to the level of the canal but also back to the town of Grisolles. There we found a Carrefour grocery, not to mention instant familiarization with the bakery, butcher, post office, city hall, and hair dresser, while looking for the grocery.
Dodie left me outside to watch the bikes. This is a sure fire occasion for a French lesson through conversation with a local person. There is something irresistable about a crazy old guy in multicoloured clothes standing beside a pair of goofy little fully loaded bikes, flying a Canadian flag!
In this case, my visitor was a retired post office manager. Our topics included diseases of the Plane trees that line the canal, Roquefort cheese, the number of cousins in the family who are in Canada, where is the source of the Loire, etc.
Dodie came out with a sample of why European food is so darn good. She had fresh tabouleh with chicken, fresh BBQ chicken breast, tomatoes, mandarines, nectarine, little cheese tapas bits with olive, salmon, chorizo, and mustard toppings, plus two pudding type desserts that were unbelievably good. They were tartelet aux caramel beurre sale, and fondant aux marrons (chestnut pudding). Bits of this, together with fresh baguette, made a picnic lunch that really can not be beat. (p.s. yes, yes, you can go in a grocery almost anywhere and come out with tomatoes, chicken, and oranges, but even those basic items seem high quality here.)
Back on the canal, it's a mixture of appreciating the serene beauty of the water and the border of Plane trees and the boredom of pedalling along with not much change in scenery. To the credit of the canal authority, signs have been erected by each bordering town showing what there is to see there and covering a bit of the town's history. This makes it easy to go off route and check out a town, and we did do this a couple of times.
The canal path trees screen most of the countryside, but here is a field of sunflowers, the most common crop here.
One quite interesting on route thing was at Montech. There, there is a series of five locks. Somebody got the idea of creating a continuous water slope and then dragging boats up it. In fact the system pushes the water uphill and the boat floats along with it. It is based on two modified train engines, on either side of the channel. When we got there the system was out of operation. A sign says they are studying the situation, but no clue about what any issue is all about.
We picked up an unloaded cyclist along the way, but unlike the customary French peŕson out for a spin, this was Hennie, from Friesland. Behind him was his wife and two of their friends. Both couples had arrived by camping car, and were here for a while before heading to the other side of the Pyrenees. Their general idea is to avoid encroaching poor weather back home. Maybe a good plan for us too (i.e. should not return to Netherlands too fast). While Hennie had cycled from Netherlands through Switzerland, cycling could not be a major activity now, because his wife is not into it. However they were doing 15 km out and 15 back on the canal, which is a reasonable day's fun.
Hennie. We are on an overpass where the canal passes over the Tarn/Garonne river
We also noticed a boat in a lock with "Bainbridge Island" written on it. And yes, the people were from the island, near our home. I got to ask them the dumb question that so many ask us "Did you come over here on that?" Anyway we gave them a blog reference card, so perhaps they will read this.
Bainbridge Island! These folks also did the Northern Tier
One of the towns we stopped in to was actually Valence-d'Agen, across the canal from where the camping is. We checked out the church, as we somehow always do, and picked up a pamphlet about pilgrimages. It was like a travel brochure, proposing several in addition to St Jacques de Compostelle. There is of course Lourdes and Rome, but also the abbeys of Provence, the western saints of Brittany and Normandy, and even (get this) Israel or Poland, or others. They were signing up people now, but it was not clear what the package includes. Interesting, though.
We met one other interesting person today, here at the campsite in Valence-d'Agen. This was Patrick Zulmea, who lives partly in Bordeaux and partly in Paris. Patrick is cycling to Sete and came over to say hello. His tee shirt then caught our eye. It's part of his idea for travellers to wear a shirt that says let's talk, in the language of the visited place. Patrick hopes
that would help break down the insularity of travellers as they pass through foreign places. It's a little different for us in France, but we were still tickled to meet Patrick and now to know somebody in Bordeaux!
