The Start of a Journey-part 4

As we left Paris on a train to go to our rented boat I noticed the city changes from old to more modern with suburban, industrial and run down areas.  This was not unexpected, what was unexpected was how suddenly it ended.  A line was crossed and the sprawl vanished into county side.  Again I noticed the numerous small farms reminiscent of a pastoral society of times gone by, but without a farmhouse dedicated to each.  The villages were made up of exclusively old structures that were tightly spaced together with little evidence on new construction, although some of the larger towns did exhibit some signs of expansion and new or newer construction. 

We arrived at the Castelnaudry train station, a quiet building with no traffic except the departing passengers all of which were going to have to walk the 5 blocks of rough residential streets to the marina to pick up our hire boats.  It was near lunch time, actually 1:30 pm, but the staff was still occupied with their lunch.  By 2pm the staff had returned, but it took till 3 pm to get our boat.  Lots of papers to sign, including one that indicated they were going to teach me to drive the boat and for the duration of the trip this piece of paper would serve as my Captains license.  

Their idea of teaching me to drive the boat was a little bit of an overstatement.  The staff person showed us around the boat, then in broken English ask if I needed instructions on driving the boat.  I told him I was unfamiliar with this kind of a boat and would need instructions. He in turn handed me the key and indicated where to insert it, then pressed the starter button and pointed to the power controller on the boat and said “this makes it go forward” indicated by pushing it forward and “this makes it go in reverse” he indicated by pulling it back. “If you need to stop quickly pull it all the way back”, then he pointed to the steering wheel and said “you turn it with this.”  With that we were ready to go.

We still had chores to do before we could settle into life on the boat for a week. For one thing we would need to provision the boat and considering the time of day we wouldn’t be leaving that evening since the locks close at 5 pm.  

Castelnaudary is a small old town with the canal du midi running through it and a rental boat base located in a large bay across from the town center.  The walk to the store was a little more than a kilometer since you had to walk around the bay to get into the town.  As we walked we passed restaurants, bakeries, butcher, post office and wine caves all in the towns center, enough to meet all of our needs.  We purchased the basic provisions we would need to start our journey from the various businesses and returned with them to the boat stopping by the wine cave to finish the task.  

Since the locks were closed by the time we had finished outfitting the boat for our journey we opted to eat out in town.  Castelnaudary is known for the speciality dish cassoulet, said to be developed there to support the village during a long siege of the town castle in the 100 years war.  Cassoulet is a white bean stew and due to the town legend there were numerous offerings of it at restaurants.  We chose one of the restaurants that specialized in the dish to celebrate getting our adventure underway and Lori and my anniversary.

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This is the end of the Fourth installment in the ongoing series that details our introduction to river cruising on the European waterways and to our purchase and outfitting of our own boat to for travel and living in Europe. If you are interested in being notified of future installment releases, Subscribe to this series in the sidebar on the right.

If you missed the Previous installments they can be found under the category “A New Adventure-Series”