Sally Andrew
quote from Chapter 13: In retrospect, perhaps our weirdest summer ever was the one we spent cruising the canal du Midi in the south of France. It’s the canal most travelled by people on hire boats and there is a reason for its popularity – the weather is great, the canal has fewer locks to navigate than, say, the Burgundy or Nivernais canals, and many stretches of the canal are close to the sea. This means you can moor your boat and bike to Mediterranean beaches and swim in the sea if the spirit moves you. Our summers in France truly epitomized “big life on a small ship” and “living in the slow lane”. We lived in the present tense. We had our feet, we had our bikes. It's a zen way to travel. So why was our summer in the south so weird? Normally, we would leave our car behind in Roanne and for six months our entire world was the canal and immediate environs. Our cruise in the Midi was one of the few times that we travelled with both the car and the boat. We found the car useful for shopping since there seemed few shops in proximity to the canal and, for a change of pace, it allowed us to get off the beaten path and drive to and hike in places that ordinarily would’ve been a bit too far to reach by foot or bike. Spain, the Pyrenees, the Atlantic coast ... With the car we could truly explore a vast area without going far! The only downside to the “wheels and keels” combo was that we (READ: me, myself and I) had to move the car every day. Why? Because we moved the boat everyday. This meant I ended up travelling the length of the canal du Midi six (yes, 6) times from the Med to the Atlantic and back again. Or nearly. Let me explain. Each day, we moved the boat forward a dozen kilometres, enjoying the view from the water, travelling slowly. Then, after mooring Vagabond to the bank somewhere, I backtracked by bicycle to retrieve the car from our previous night’s mooring. I would then throw my folding-bike in the back of the car and the three of us (me, the bike, the car) w
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