Day 11 - Homps to Le Somail

Better day today weather wise so we set off about 9.30 for Le Somail. According to the guide it should take us about 3 hrs and only 6 locks.

From Homps we passed through some very quiet and pretty villages. We originally planned to stay the night at one of them but changed our plans and decided to push through to Le Somail.

1st village - Argens Minervois is overlooked by the square towers of a 14th century chateau. There is a small grocery store, a cafe-bar and a restaurant. So you can see why I mentioned quiet villages.

     The Chateau courtesy of the net.

I took some great pics along the way but unfortunately I stuffed up transferring them to my iPad and lost the lot.

Next we passed Roubia, not much here besides an old stone church and tower and an old working Oil Mill that extracts the oil from the olives.

Next, Paraza with its chateau where wine is produced.

And the last lovely village was Ventenac-en- Minervois. This tiny village is noted for its waterside wine cellar in the attractive canal-side Chateau de Ventenac-en-Minervois.

We only had one stop before making it to Le Somail and that was when we had to wait an hour for the lock keeper to have his lunch even though we got to the lock 10 minutes before the scheduled break time.

We arrived in Le Somail about 3pm after another long day of locks and small bridges. You would be amazed our talents now as when we arrived there were not enough posts for us to moor the boat both front and back so we had to use a mooring stake and hammer it into the bank(did have a pic of this but not any more). Next the gangplank came out for the first time due to the steepness of the bank.

Le Somail is a beautiful little Languedoc village, home to some nice restaurants, a couple of artist studios and a grocery barge.

    As I lost the pics of this lovely village I decided to get a few images from the net. This is the view down the canal from where we were moored for the night.

    This is another view the other way of the grocery barge from the bridge. Our boat was moored a little back from the one on the left.

    Le Somail was one of the prettier villages on the canal.

We had a good walk around, dinner and early to bed.