mcturner

Capestang in the south of France where we rented an apartment to call home for 3 weeks. We had visited Capestang when we were on the houseboat and really liked the size of the town -- small enough to feel immediately comfortable and yet big enough to have a choice of restaurants and shops. Found a place on the internet and were able to arrange to move right in. It's on a small bus ride from Beziers rather than a train line and, of course, there are no buses on Sunday which was the day we had been hoping to arrive. Our "hosts" immediately volunteered to come pick us up in Beziers (which is acutally only about 15 minutes away by car) so we were gratiously met at the station. There are many people originally from ... read more

Well, here is the last installment of the Canal du Midi story. We left Homps with the hope of reaching "Trebes" by evening. Lots of travel-a few locks but not too many. Lots of great scenery. The canal goes through some beautiful country-many vinyards, mountains in the distance and little towns with big churches!. Passed a number of Chateau's-some fairly elaborate. Difficult to say which are private homes, and which are some kind of comercial establishment. We couldn't begin to stop at all of the wine houses along the way-we'd never make it out alive!! Anyhow, arrived in Trebes in the late afternoon. A couple of locks before entering town. Tied up and walked in-checked at the tourist office then had some supper at a great little pizzaria-oh and we did taste a bit of wine ... read more

Good day all. Well, this will be the first installment of the Canal du Midi story. The short version is that Anne and I, and Vicki, (some of you know her) a friend from Ottawa, rented a houseboat for the first week of October to travel on the Canal du Midi in Languedoc, France. The long version begins a bit over 300 years ago. A bit of history on the Canal itself-just because I can. The Canal du Midi (or Canal between two oceans) goes from Agde on the Mediterranean about 240 kilometres to Toulouse, where it connects to the Garonne River which in turn empties into the Atlantic Ocean near Bordeaux, France. It effectively makes it possible to take a boat from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic without having to go around Spain and Portugal-which ... read more

So there are now many photos from the Camino de Santiago on these pages and perhaps for some of you this particular area requires some explanation. Here goes... The Camino de Santiago-to be referred to here as the "Camino," is a pilgrimage that dates back to the middle ages. I won go into a lot of detail but the short version is...the bones of Saint James the Apostle (known in Spain as Santiago) were supposedly brought to Northern Spain-the northwest corner-by his followers. About 900 years later someone found them, and built a shrine to St. James, the shrine became a church, the church became a bigger church and is now one of the largest Cathedrals in the Christian World. Since the middle ages people have been trekking to the church to worship, or just hang ... read more