France eBike Day 6: Toulouse to the Canal du Midi

Another hot day on the canal, with sunflowers and locks along the way. Our snack: the last of the hazelnut sausage we’d picked up at the Auvillar market two days earlier.

We reached the point where the Canal de Garonne ends and the Canal du Midi begins. There’s an obelisk there commemorating Pierre-Paul Riquet, the engineer who designed the Canal du Midi. From here the water flows down toward the Mediterranean rather than up toward the Atlantic.

We found an excellent lunch at a restaurant nearby — an inventive gazpacho with cantaloupe and watermelon, and a very fine roasted chicken thigh on a bed of macaronnade (think compressed mac and cheese) with a garlic cream.

Then came the steep climb up to our hotel. We engaged turbo mode — yes, that’s real on an eBike — and made it up the hill. Dinner was a regional specialty, cassoulet, which perhaps was not the ideal choice given the high temperatures.