Narbonne

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When I looked out our bedroom window this morning Andy, or perhaps it was Julie had already set our place for breakfast in the garden. This BnB has been the pick of Europe as far as we’re concerned. A beautiful old building that has been tastefully decorated in period furniture. The breakfast was more English than we’ve had with proper toast and BUTTER.

Thanks Guys. It was hard to leave.
Everywhere you looked there seemed to be vineyards or fields of solar panels

So apart from tourism I guess the biggest income for this area must be wine and electricity. I was fascinated by this machine pruning two rows of grapes at once

Sallèles-d’Aude. I love the old fashioned gas station. The cheap petrol is € 2.05 . ( $3.33 nzd)
It’s the village we were aiming for ,to put us on to the Canal de la Robine. It will take us to Narbonne where we have a room booked for tonight

This canal comes from the midi canal and enters the sea at Port Nouvelle

Uh oh , this is not good . Bumpy but at least it’s a tail wind today

All of these canals down south were lined with huge plain trees several years ago . They got a nasty disease which was killing them so they have ALL been removed.! What a job ( and Ash is thinking ‘ what a lot of firewood ‘ )

The village we’ve just left looking back . Not a lot of steering to do on the hire boats !

At this point the canal drops down to use a section of the Aube river. We had to cross on the old railway bridge.

Talk about rough ! Not a thing has been done for cyclists and it’s just like the day the trains stopped running
Just a rusty old steel plate to walk over on
You can see from the bridge how the engineers used the Aude river to form the canal .Letting the natural water flow , go over that dam and down the river bed
Getting off the bridge was the next good trick. The ramp was so steep that Christine refused to take the bike down
We’ve just seen the first sign for Barcelona so we can’t be lost.
Replacing all the old trees are the new strain of Plain Tree. What a great project
Narbonne. The old buildings all seem to have some form of art on them
The old jail and dungeons are decorated with flowers. The building next door is the Mairie ( council office )
The cathedral next door to that ,was built on the same lines as Notre Dame in Paris with the flying buttresses letting the building go higher ,while allowing space for the very high stained glass windows .
I could just see the organist behind the lower pipes as he/she did a bit of tuning. I was blown away by the richness of the sound. Those top pipes must have been at least 5 metres tall
The main body of the church is over 40 metres tall. You can see why they needed that light up there. Started in 1272 it took less than 200 years to complete. ( a rush job ? )
The monastery is attached . You could easily imagine black robed monks wondering around the cloisters
This bridge over the canal
Is just a street with shops on either side, leading to the old city quarters.

Our hotel is 4 kms out of town , not a big deal but the road was busy so we stayed on the footpaths. I’m afraid we were a bit spoilt at Le Somail

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Published by Wallis Don

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