Trebes is a pleasant village with our mooring right in the middle of the cafe precinct, a short walk for croissants and baguettes across a bridge adorned with flower boxes in full bloom.

Lock near Trebes

Canal near Trebes

We had a great tapas lunch here at the local wine bar and cafe. This was to be 2 night stop to allow a little R & R after the last few days of lazy travel along the canal. Coming into Trebe we passed through one lock where the lock keeper fills in his spare time with a welding rod creating all sorts of figures that are spread out on his lawn. A wooden carved crocodile greets you as you start-up the lock with a tin elephant on the other bank. All his work has created a great atmosphere for boaters.

Lock keepers chickens

Trebes mooring

Being here for a day allowed us time for a good walk around. Tony and Rosemary were seduced by the offerings of an antique shop, full of all sorts of stuff. A day could be spent pouring over its contents. Allthego took a stroll down the canal for a couple of kilometres to a bridge and indulged in numerous photos of said bridge. It had been described in one of the brochures as a must photo or paint opportunity.

The Bridge

From the Bridge over the Canal at Trebes

The Canal continiues to be a great boating experience, the weather is starting to warm up and the French, Germans and Brits are taking their shirts off. Bodies of all shapes and sizes are emerging on the decks of boats as they pass us. Enough said of this.

Our next stop is at Carcassonne, the old walled city.

As we are a bit over half way through our journey along the Canal I  thought it was timely to update you on croissants. We have eaten quite a few of these now for breakfast on the boat.Tony Watt has also knocked up a couple of breakfasts of croque-madames. Althego normally goes ashore around 8 am and hunts

Croissant

the local bread shop and brings them back to the boat fresh from the oven (along with a couple of baguettes for lunch). On another occasion we went ashore in Trebes and had them in a cafe. The french seem to eat them as they come with a coffee or juice of some description. Allthego likes them with honey. We have also had them with a runny blackberry jelly. very nice indeed!

Croissants have an interesting history. They did not originate in France but in Austria. Apparently, to celebrate a victory against marauding Turks back in the 1700s sometime bakers in a town invented the croissant. It was very much in the shape of a cross though (hence the name croissant) unlike the french version which is more like a crescent shape. Anyway the croissant came to France when Marie Antoinette arrived to marry the French King, one of those Louis. The good french changed the shape in adopting it and made it look a bit more fancy. It’s a bit like what they did to the humble English potato chip creating a french fry.  I hope this information is helpful for my readers next trivia night.

Despite this we will continue to eat them along the way!

It was only one lock and 6 km along the Canal from Homps to La Redorte. We arrived at lunchtime after getting away from a Homps’ wine tasting at 10 am in the morning. Just can’t drag Homealone and Rosemary Watt away from the Chardonnay.

The Admiral

A Canal aqueduct over a small ravine. This has carried boats over the ravine since the 1760s

La Redorte is another pretty little village with a cafe and restaurant right beside the Canal. We made this our base for the rest of the day, having a couple of  french style Pizzas for lunch and then merging into dinner. Again another great sunset to see down a crepe. The moon is now getting pretty well full and it casts its pale reflections down on us illuminating the canal in the early night-light.

Another crepe, strawberry and banana ice creams.

What a great place to look at!

We took the opportunity here to find the laundromat and set it going. The Watts stayed at the cafe to keep our seats warm. We took our directions from the charming waitress who spoke a little English and combined with our little French these directions were quite clear to all. She was good at giving hand signals so that we did not get lost. She looked particularly good giving a signal to turn ‘a droite’, right.

The great right hand turn signal

La Redorte waterfront

La Redorte is more or less the halfway mark for us on the Canal and we are now heading towards the larger town of Trebes, followed by the old city of Carcassone. We are planning a two night stop at Trebes and three at Carcassone, to enable us to catch the market day there. We have been missing these along the way so far and are keen to wander around seeing all the local produce, meats and of course cheeses!