7-day beginner-friendly cycling trail through small towns of southern France

FRANCE – The Canal du Midi, entirely hand-dug and hailed as an engineering marvel on completion in 1681, offers a refreshing alternate take on French travel: a bikeable path through the towns and landscapes of the country’s south.

Traversing Occitanie, the canal gives cyclists of all skill levels access to parts of France that are rich in history, yet sometimes passed over by visitors with only Paris on their mind.

When I discovered that the canal was manageable for non-serious cyclists like me, I was hooked. Stretching from the Mediterranean port town of Sete to the city of Toulouse, the more than 240km waterway offers mostly flat cruising for the thousands of riders who take to its towpaths every year.

For nearly a week, I cycled upstream from Sete to Toulouse. I rented an electric bike and other gear from Paulette, a rental company that focuses on canal tourists. The rental cost about US$400 (S$540) in all.

I also took advantage of the group’s super-convenient send-ahead luggage service. That lightened my load to take on the canal, its large and small towns, and its historical undercurrents. I wanted to see its famous ecluses, or oval-shaped locks, and the idyllic country scenes on the way.

I did not really plan ahead. As a novice, I did not know how far my legs could take me. Given my fluid schedule, I opted to find accommodation via the canal’s abundant tourist offices after arriving wherever I chose to stay the night.

Up a canal with a rented bike

The road from Sete starts at the sea. The former fishing town, where I picked up my bike and side bags for the essentials I was not sending onwards, ranks as a low-key favourite among French and foreign visitors. I pedalled south-west out of town on a Saturday morning, the shimmering Mediterranean to my left.

Starting at one end of the canal helped me appreciate the ambition of the waterway’s visionary builder. Engineer Pierre-Paul Riquet, born in nearby Beziers in the early 1600s, conceived of the Canal du Midi as just one section of a Canal des Deux Mers – a two-sea canal – connecting the Mediterranean with the Atlantic, and stretching from Sete as far as Bordeaux.

My first day on the canal, after clocking 45km and a handful of wrong turns, I stopped for the night in Villeneuve-les-Beziers.

The town, heavy on Spanish influence, was holding a bull festival, with an event running the animals down the main thoroughfare. The stop showed me cultural elements from across France’s nearby border – an exchange the Canal du Midi has accelerated over 3½ centuries.

On Thomas Jefferson’s trail

Picking up the canal route the next morning, I rode through more than 35km of vineyards, sunshine and more heat. If I was freewheeling in a literal sense, I was also mindful not to push too far, too hard, without firm plans for accommodation, given the sacrosanct weekend hours of a French summer Sunday.

At lunchtime, I stopped in Le Somail, a hamlet that once served as a stop for canal travellers. Over a stone bridge made bright with flower boxes, I noticed a plaque in honour of Thomas Jefferson. The American founding father travelled the canal as part of a three-month trip through France and Italy, stopping in Le Somail in May 1787.

In his notes from the journey, the 44-year-old Jefferson expressed a preference for solo travel. “One travels more usefully when they travel alone, because they reflect more,” he wrote.

I was hoping for my own modest dose of Jefferson’s reflections.

The tourist office at Le Somail, with a surprisingly well-done adjacent exhibit on the canal, recommended the bed-and-breakfast Le Neptune, a few hundred metres away.

Run by Dirk and Inge Demeulenaere – a retired Belgian couple who spoke Flemish to each other between conversations with guests – Le Neptune provided tasteful, 19th-century digs with funky modern accents, such as posters of English band The Beatles and a bead screen with a likeness of Spanish artist Salvador Dali.

The couple served me breakfast on their verdant outdoor patio, then saw me off personally. I was glad to have stopped in Le Somail, for the Jeffersonian surprises and unexpectedly sweet hospitality I received.

Castles and cathars

The 55km ride from Le Somail to the next large city, Carcassonne, brought the trip’s most challenging terrain: hills, rough gravel and long stretches made narrow by weeds and overgrowth.

In places the canal doubled back on itself, winding hairpins through fields and throwing off stop-and-gawk views from the waterway’s raised embankments.

Despite the hard slog, the arrival in Carcassonne, and the mediaeval castle from which the town has enjoyed centuries of fame, made the difficulty worthwhile.

A settlement predating France’s Roman era, Carcassonne expanded during the 12th and 13th centuries via massive fortification projects, a response to wars between the kingdom of France and outsiders like the Albigensians and Aragonese.

The walled mediaeval city, whose old town is still inhabited, benefited from major conservation efforts in the 19th century. The result obliges every castle cliche, with teeth-like crenelated ramparts and towers with roofs shaped like witches’ hats. Tour guides in costumes enhance the effect.

I left Carcassonne with a fresh understanding of French history and places well outside the country’s more-touristed zones.

A quest for cassoulet

The next day required a shorter, 40km ride to the town of Castelnaudary. I had motivation to get there quickly: “Castel”, as locals call it, is home to cassoulet, France’s peerless pot of pork, duck, sausage and steaming white kidney beans.

Between a lockkeeper outside town and the attendants at Castel’s tourist office, a restaurant called Chez David came recommended twice in an hour. I knew where I was headed for lunch.

The restaurant’s head chef, David Campigotto, could be dubbed the Guy Fieri of cassoulet. With a rock ’n’ roll aesthetic of piercings, tattoos and a goatee, he has a style that is as bold as his gastronomy. I arrived at the restaurant as raucous blues music was playing from speakers overhead. Photos of guitars hung on the walls. Each table’s water jug was a repurposed bottle from Kentucky’s Bulleit bourbon distillery.

When my cassoulet came, the waiter ran down a well-polished summary of the dish’s process and ingredients.

Even before the cooking begins, he said, the kidney beans soak in bouillon overnight. The pot then matures in the oven for six hours – “at least”, chef Campigotto told me, in a conversation after my meal. The meats and beans stew in their own juices and bring the dish to a coherent, and transporting, unity of flavours.

The chef and some of his staff travel to Chicago most years for events with prominent local chef and restaurateur Paul Kahan. Chef Campigotto said he loves the city, where he plays the part of gastro-diplomat to scores of Chicagoans. He travels with his own kidney beans.

Towards the “Pink City”

Leaving Castelnaudary, I rolled through sunflower fields and cooler weather on my final day, combined with a quick train ride – regional lines accommodate bikes and weary cyclists – for the final 63km to Toulouse.

Along the way lay a geographic wonder: the Threshold of Naurouze, the dividing point between the Atlantic and Mediterranean watersheds. There, about 180m above sea level, the Canal du Midi’s water flow changes directions.

A feeder stream from the Montagne Noire keeps the water even on either side. The last lock before Naurouze is the ecluse de la Mediterranee; the first after it, the ecluse de l’Ocean, meaning the Atlantic. In this way, the Canal du Midi captures a sense of France’s geography, and its breadth, between two seas.

Called the Pink City for its red stone and brick buildings, Toulouse, France’s fourth-largest city, often goes overlooked, perhaps given its distance from Paris. For cyclists from the canal or elsewhere, Toulouse is an eminently bikeable town: dedicated lanes for velos run everywhere, with myriad signs and arrows to help.

Paulette’s Toulouse office accepted my bike earlier than scheduled, with no fee or questions asked.

Now bike-free, I took in Toulouse for its sunny – and indeed, pink – splendour.

The narrow Rue Saint-Rome greeted pedestrians with brick facades and pastel-painted shutters. The Place du Capitole hosted restaurants and grand cafes, and had a street market on the day I visited. The Capitole building itself, with its red stone and white columns, houses the mayor’s office, as well as the Toulouse opera.

Walking the city that evening, I saw in a state of happy fatigue the brilliant Capitole and other buildings. Toulouse, and the points of interest since my start in Sete, made cycling the Canal du Midi worth every pedalled kilometre. NYTIMES