The Canal Du Midi - Andrew Smyth

Deep in the heart of Languedoc, hidden in a tunnel of plane trees, the glorious Canal du Midi meanders through the south west of France, as though insulated from the world outside. In its time, the Canal was one of the most ambitious civil engineering works ever undertaken and the pride of seventeenth-century France. It achieved a dream of centuries: a link between the flat expanses of the Gironde estuary on the Atlantic coast, and the city of Sete on the blue waters of the Mediterranean. Now by-passed by modern trade, the Canal offers a pastoral idyll, barely changed in more than three hundred years. This book will appeal to anyone interested in boats, canals, or travel in general. It offers a revealing introduction to one of France's oldest waterways and can be used as a guide, pilot book and travel story. It is indispensable for anyone thinking of visiting or using the Canal, or simply wanting to learn more of this extraordinary passage.