Thursday, June 13, 2013
Caunes-Minervois to Hompas
and Back

          What is it about carrying a baguette sticking out of paper bag in my hands that makes me think I am doing something typically French?  I make it to the boulangerie --the bread baker-- a few minutes before they close and pick up a baguette moulé --a baguette that has been placed in a mold, rather than on a rack in the oven for baking, which gives the load a more finished look.  Everything in France is categorized to a fine distinction: Morgan, the young woman who runs the bread shop with her mother, carefully explains the difference between the different loaves before I make my selection, just before she closes.  Here in the country, everything closes from 12:30 p.m. to 3:00 p.m., and in effect, everything shuts down.

          Earlier, Bob Thorp, one-half of Annabelle and Bob Thorp, ex-pat neighbors of Judith and Louis, came over to help me assemble my folding bicycle.  Bob, seventy-eight, is a keen cyclist, who goes out with a group of equally devoted bicycling enthusiasts three times a week, racking up about fifty miles each time.  Thanks to him my folding bicycle unfolds and by 12:30 p.m. I am on the road, heading south.

          I ride past the villages of Peyriac-Minervois and Rieux-Minervois and La Rotonde, passing a turn -off for Minerve, another pretty village which I would like to visit later.  Once out in the countryside, I pass bales of hay stacked on top of each other at the edge of a cleared field, then acres of vines.  All are framed against the Black Mountains behind.  As it is lunchtime, there is no one --absolutely no one-- on the local roads.  The only sounds in the landscape are the "whirrr" of my bicycle and the "whoosh" of a light wind.

          I see signs for "Olonzac" and "Homps", as well as for Carcassonne, which is thirty-two kilometers away, much too far to go, especially on a first ride after ten days of inactivity.  I turn into Homps and going over a little bridge see boats anchored on each side of the Canal du Midi.  I can go no further.  Before turning back, I pause to enjoy a refreshing Stella Artois, followed by almost a liter of Badoit, a popular mineral water, at a cafe-restaurant by the canal.

          Built by Pierre Paul Riquet from 1666 to 1680, the Canal du Midi flows 240 kilometers (about 150 miles) from Toulouse to Sète on the Mediterranean.  A canal that flows beside the Garonne, further north, extends the river network to the Atlantic, forming the Canal des 2 Mers (the "Canal of the Two Seas").  

          Until I saw the Canal du Midi with my own eyes, it was hard to appreciate the extent to which France is a ripiarian country, or to appreciate the engineering accomplishments of France's great engineers.   Among them, in addition to Riquet, are Maréchal Vauban, who built the fortifications that consolidated France's borders; and, Gustave Eiffel, who is famous for the tower that bears his name, but who made his reputation creating bridges for the French railways.  (He also built a lovely bridge over the Douro river in Oporto-Vila Nova de Gaia, Portugal.)  The dedication to precision that every great engineer has made France a great power under Louis XI, the Sun-King, and accounts for at least one half of the reason why the Franco-German aerospace consortium, Airbus, is the only real competitor Boeing has as a maker of passenger airplanes.

           Almost home, I cycle until my bottom is so sore and the wind so strong I have to walk beside the vineyards to Rieux-Minervois.  In a few hours, the wind has gone from being a gentle kiss in the afternoon to a force to be reckoned.  I get back on the bicycle in Rieux, my fingers numb to the extent of feeling as thought they have swollen to twice their size, a strange sensation.  I make it home in one piece by four-thirty and happily collapse.  

          A few hours later, Judith and Louis call.  They just arrived home in New York, having left Caunes for Toulouse at 7:30 a.m., expecting to make a Lufthansa flight scheduled to take off at 11:30 a.m.  The flight is the only flight that makes it out of Toulouse, but five hours later, at 4:30 p.m.   As a result they miss their plane from Munich to New York.  The Munich to New York flight is available only once a day, so Lufthansa re-routes Judith and Louis to Amsterdam.

          In Amsterdam, there is no flight available until the following morning at 6:30 am..  Lufthansa is swamped tending to passengers on its flights stranded by the French strike.  The carrier arranges for an airport hotel for Judith and Louis, but they check in only at 12:30 a.m. They leave on time and arrive on time in New York, but by the time they get home they have been up the better part of thirty hours, and it is 8:30 a.m., New York time.  When there are strikes at French airports, flight plans all over Europe fall down like dominoes.  Riquet, Vauban and Eiffel would be horrified.