Day 48 - Montpellier to Carcassonne
We've had a good run in France with the weather so far - sunny days, mid to hight twenties, no rain - but it had to end some time. We had a night of heavy rain and 7am both our phones went off simultaneously with a screeching alert waning of flooding in the area. The forecast indicated the rain would stop around 11 so we delayed our checkout until then. Sure enough about 15 minutes into our journey westward the rain stopped.
Beziers was our first stop, with the Fonserane Locks, a series of locks on the Canal du Midi that were built in the 1660's. The sun was shining as we walked up past all the locks to the top where there was a line of boats waiting to start the process of moving down 21.5 metres over a 300 metre distance. It's a height difference through 21.5 meters over 300 meters operating through six working locks (nine were built originally). We had lunch at the cafe while waiting for the locks to open, and it was well worth the wait, we were able to watch the process as each lock was drained of water to lower the boats, then opened to allow the boats into the next section, where the process was repeated.
We then drove north up in to the hills to the medieval village of Minerve. The village does not permit visitor's cars inside and we had a bit of trouble working out where the village parking was, but we finally worked it out. The village was quaint and very quiet, it wasn't as amazing as we'd hoped but this was probably due to the dry riverbed and the scorched earth, so we didn't see the village at its best.
The drive to Carcassonne was on a windy road and K has not been feeling well for the last couple of days so by the time we checked in to our cute boutique hotel right at by the main entrance to the magnificent medieval citadel La Cité we weren't up to exploring, so we had a quick dinner and a quiet night.
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