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   We
are surrounded by wild heath and sail a while alongside the Bagnas pond.
Then, after passing a strange-looking boat, a mixture between a spider
crab and a mechanical digger, we reach our first lock! Mechanisms are
back in play and we enter under the plane trees forming a line of honour.
Soon we get to Agde
and its famous round lock: a large basin with three entrances, lined with
cypress trees. There’s a fair amount of traffic here and the lock
keeper’s young dog is so enthralled by everything going on that
he doesn’t miss a minute of it. Soon a very large barge arrives,
barely fitting into the dock. It settles itself comfortably opposite us,
the doors open, but just ahead, there’s a bridge. A very low one.
We begin to wonder: how will the bargee get his engine cabin underneath?
It looks impossible. The barge moves slowly forward, gets three-quarters
of its length under… and suddenly, the engine roars, smoke billows
out of the exhausts and the cabin is swallowed up. We can’t believe
it! It’s always impressive watching a professional at work.
On the
other side, after a lunch break and bike ride to digest the food, we
continue on our way. We pass Vias and an amusement park where the big
eight turns endlessly, and then something quite out of the ordinary
comes into view: the moving passage of Libron. Built in 1858, it enables
the River Libron to cross over the Canal du Midi. We sail underneath,
ducking as we do so…
On our right, we pass the Natural Reserve of Roque Haute. A secret landscape
of ponds and copses with an old volcano and archaeological site as its
top attraction (from -640,000 years to the Roman era!).
A few
horses greet us, we pass Portiragnes and its 12th century church, level
with Cers, we pass a superb old stone bridge that Brassens wouldn’t
have turned down, and we stop off at Villeneuve-lès-Béziers,
a three-star campsite. We are given a warm and smiling welcome in a
peaceful spot. A real break!
The next day, the canal narrows slightly and we decide to play a silly
game: you have to pass underneath the young branches of the plane trees
and try and take the caps off those who aren’t looking. But it’s
the wind in fact that ends up carrying away one of the caps…
Some time later, we arrive below Béziers, at Port-Neuf. It is
a large rectangular basin, ideal for those who want to visit the town,
and separating the two locks before the Orb bridge canal.
Here we stumble across our Austrian friends, who must have overtaken
us while we were taking a break. Where did they pass us? It remains
a mystery.
It’s all go at the lock. Apart from “Ayrolle”, there’s
also “Castelnaudary”, much bigger, and some forty onlookers
observing the scene. A trio of ducks, disenchanted and bored of these
human games, have their beaks in their feathers and couldn’t give
two hoots about the rest.
 It's
Campignol' turn, and there’s every reason to feel small between
the high walls! To attach our boat, there is a metal bar embedded in
the wall, behind which we pass the hawser. It slides along the bar with
the boat that rises and, at the top, you just have to pull it to release
it. The principle also works in the opposite sense, of course. Risk-free,
no need for someone to get out, what a relief…
We always have the same feeling of being in the dry inside a bath which
is filling with water. When you enter the lock upstream, you never really
know what to expect after the other gates … this is what makes
it an adventure…
In this case, we got what we wanted!…
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J-F
Macaigne
