Toulouse to Villenouvelle

Toulouse to Villenouvelle Friday 6th November. Toulouse is a very beautiful university city in fact the original part of the university dates right back to Shakespearean times. The canal through the city was built in 1666 – same time as the Fire of London! It is all built (the old part) with thin pink bricks which give it a warm glow and it is known as la Ville Rose. So Friday morning we wandered off and looked at the Place Capitole (town square) and the Basilica St Sernin which is huge and the first one I’ve seen with ‘relics’ which are small glass cases beautifully decorated and containing the (alleged) body parts of local erstwhile saints. One actually had the molars of a saint who died in the 900’s. Parts of it were very old and it had a lovely atmosphere. The interior walls in the local churches are painted instead of being made of plain stone which gives quite a different feel. The Abbey in Moissac looked as though it was expensively wall-papered, but was actually painted hundreds of years ago. There is an alpine feel to the place which is a mixture of the cold winds blowing in from the Pyrenees and the crepe vendors on the streets. We spent our usual frustrating amount of time sorting out the night’s lodging and then set off along the Canal du Midi itself. Unlike the canal from Bordeaux there were no signs to help and several other canals running through the town so it took ages to actually get started and we had been going for at least 5 miles before we really knew that we were on it, going East as intended. The weather was kind and it was all quite picturesque. We were booked in to stay in Villenouvelle, a small village about 25 miles so an easy ride. Our hearts sank on arrival at the B and B when we were told there was a fault with the heating but all was well. They put us in the attic of an enormous town house which was quite cosy with beautiful views of the Pyrenees and Andorra covered in snow. They were from Dublin and left our supper for us as they were off to a wine tasting. We spend a lot of time guessing what our hosts do and these 2 were particularly fascinating as they were quite young, rather beautiful and had photos of various well known pop stars dotted around. Ie David Bowie, Sinead O’Connor and others we didn’t recognize so we think he was in the music business, but who knows as they gave nothing away and he didn’t appear to work.