Canal Life

Try this once in your life: Stand on a boat as it moves slowly down the narrow waterway of a foreign country. The world passes by, close and observable, and you watch it with a sense of elevated station. The clarity, the buoyancy, the cushiness make you feel privileged in a way even the sportiest rental car can't. You have moved from tourist to grand marshal. I did this last June with my wife, Hania, and our friends Donnette and Graham from Chicago and their friends Dan and Barb from Melbourne, Fla. We picked up our boat from Rive de France in the little town of Colombiers on the Canal du Midi in the south of France. The port was full of what looked like pleasure boats: gleaming white 42-footers with pointed bows. Our model had two steering wheels: one inside and one outside, which is where you want to be if the weather is good. It also had three cabins and three heads.

Because both Graham and Dan were longtime boaters and their wives excellent cooks, we had no need of a crew. (Hania and I would serve as interpreters.) Once underway, a village floated by; a bridge crept up and made us all duck. The movement was as lovely as that of a ship -- contemplative and unhurried -- but with the added advantage that everything was at eye level. Those first few kilometers were a revelation, and I wondered why everyone didn't see France in this fashion.

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We reached the first town, Capestang, a little before 7, and pulled in front of a long row of boats, including a couple of old-fashioned barges. It was an idyllic spot: shaded, just beyond an old stone bridge and a waterfront cafe. This is the other nice thing about a boat: You see a fine location and you install your hotel.

The table on the open deck soon filled with sausages, cheeses, bottles of rosé. What a change from your usual arrival in a new town: the search for lodgings, the stares from locals. Dan sat back with his glass of wine (Barb had packed two wine glasses in her suitcase) and announced: "It's nice to be king."

We crossed the bridge and headed into town. It was the first in a series of quaintly drab settlements drained of life. It was hard to tell if this was the result of depopulation or simply French disinclination toward public life.

We stopped by a restaurant cave and bought two bottles of rosé from a smiling waitress.

I assumed that would be our lunch, but we stopped a little before noon at a pretty restaurant along the canal, L'Auberge de la Croisade. We were led to a table for six by the front window. Hania explained to the waiter, who spoke good English, that both she and Donnette were celiacs and couldn't eat anything that contained wheat, barley or rye.

The amuse-bouche was a delicate pea soup with a hint of mint. The delicious seafood appetizer hid bits of barley, so I had to force down two. For dessert, Hania ordered the creme brulee.

"No," the waiter told her. "It has flour."

"The creme brulee has flour?" she asked, astonished.

"Madame," he said, with an almost mock-Gallic flourish, "we do what we WANT!"

The lazy float through unsullied countryside continued. It wasn't just the slowness of the boat that transported us. (The speed limit on the canal was 8 kilometers -- or about 5 miles per hour.) We were getting a back-yard view of rural France, from which highways, factories, used-car lots, billboards -- all the depressing clutter of modern life -- had magically been deleted. The world was reduced to its ancient elements: village, vineyard, farmhouse, towpath. The straight lines of plane trees on either side painted our passage in a dappled light. It was like sailing through the 17th century, the one in which the canal had been built.

We docked for the night in the little town of Ventenac-en-Minervois, under plane trees just down from a chateau.

"It's strange to be on a boat and see trees overhead," said Dan.

"It usually means you did something wrong," said Graham.

We climbed the hill to the town hall. The streets all had two names -- French and Langue d'Oc (reminding us that we were in Languedoc) -- and no pedestrians. This seemed to be the place for those who say that France would be a wonderful country if it weren't for the French.

A short while later, we came to our first lock. Navigating it was easier than understanding its keeper. The second lock was a double, which we shared with two boats, one a sailboat whose horizontal mast threatened to ram our stern as the water surged in.

It was interesting to watch the gates close slowly behind us, and then hold tightly to the lines as a waterfall was switched on. Your world expanded from scum-stuck stone and soft blue sky to include, gradually, a tan house with green shutters, a man, or sometimes woman, standing at the controls, a flower garden, and a dog (frequently a Brittany spaniel) as endlessly fascinated by everything as you were.

Barging on

After days in rural solitude, our arrival in Carcassonne was strange and a little disconcerting. Apartment houses and graffiti reentered the landscape, though the soothing plane trees had not abandoned us. We docked next to a stand, and took turns heading into town, each couple carrying a small shopping list.

Hania and I climbed the hill, took a walk through the ancient citadel, admired the stained-glass windows of Basilica St.-Nazaire. Heading back into town, I read the graffiti on the stone footpath: "When an old man dies, a library burns."

Locks moved from an education to an annoyance to a kind of welcome interlude. They gave us something to do. I started talking to the keepers. One told me that there was more traffic this year than in any since 2001. We had assumed the real crowds come in July and August, but he said no, as the prices go up then. We were probably at the height of the season.

A middle-aged woman said that not all lockkeepers live in the lockkeeper's house; sometimes it's a family that agrees to care for the grounds, or run a little store. (Several locks sold regional products such as honey, jam, wine.) She had lived in this house -- the standard tan two-story with pale green shutters -- for 21 years and had worked on the locks for 30 altogether.

"Ask her if anyone's ever fallen into the canal," Dan said.

"In 30 years," she said, "I've seen maybe two people fall in."

Music, and dance

In Castelnaudary we docked in front of the police station and went our separate ways for lunch. In the afternoon we climbed our last lock and drifted into Le Segala. A row of two-story houses faced the canal, anchored at the far end by a restaurant. We cleaned the boat and headed to the restaurant for dinner.

The patronne was an unsmiling, heavy-set woman who spoke decent English. I had the worst meal of the trip -- tough frogs' legs and even tougher steak -- but the setting was lovely, and the darker it became, the lovelier it got. The outdoor tables filled slowly. A small band, synthesizer and accordion, played softly. Our last night on the Canal du Midi.

Two little girls in summer dresses chased paper airplanes while their untroubled parents smoked and talked. A South African couple -- the man in a straw hat -- danced a tango. Then the patronne grabbed a stout tourist -- her face red from the sun -- and they danced between the tables and out into the street. It was like watching a Piaf song come to life.