Our Blog - Cordes-sur-Ciel, Montauban, Gaillac, and canoeing

So this blog has a little bit of everything. Soon after we moved here, we were walking through Square du General de Gaulle and there were lots of tents setup with tourist information for the surrounding areas. At one of them, they took our picture (which was terrible since I had just thrown my hair up in a ponytail) and when it printed, they told us we had won something. We had to take it to another booth, where they congratulated us and gave us a free coupon for canoeing at a place called Saint-Antonin-Noble-Val, which is about an hour NE of Toulouse. Well, it expires next week, so we decided to go ahead and book our little canoe trip plus a couple other villages. Unfortunately, the heatwave is no longer here and it was actually a bit cold on the trip.

So where did we go? We first went to the city of Montauban, spending the day seeing the sights and staying overnight. The next morning we headed to Saint-Antonin-Noble-Val and did the canoeing. We had planned from there to go view a chateau, but ended up skipping that and going straight to Cordes-sur-Ciel (explanation on why to follow). Then overnight in Cordes-sur-Ciel. The plan was to then spend most of the 3rd day in Cordes-sur-Ciel before heading home, but instead we left before lunch (yea, I'll explain later as well) and we decided to stop in Gaillac on the way home.

Each of the towns has their own link here, and then canoeing just below

• Montauban
• Cordes-sur-Ciel
• Gaillac

Canoeing

So here comes the "comic relief" for the blog :-). We have been in a canoe before, although normally in individual ones. Here, there were both of us in a plastic canoe. Plus, thinking back on things, we were very unprepared. We thought enough to take the waterproof camera but that was about all we really did well in this. First, we took our swimsuits but then didn't wear them, opting instead for shorts, t-shirts, and sneakers. This wouldn't have been a problem, except that we also didn't bring a second pair of shoes, not contemplating that our shoes would get soaked. We also didn't bring towels, so when we got wet, we had no way to dry off. And I'm guessing most of you are now saying ... why were you wet? Okay, so we got to the starting point and parked, and after putting on our life vests, we went down and he basically told us to sit in the canoe. Okay, Susan in front, Tom in back. Then he was like ... ready? Okay, then he basically shoved us down a ramp and we splashed into the river. And splash is the correct word ... so now Susan is pretty much wet from the waist down. Once we got over that shock, we started heading down the Averyon river, through the Gorge of Averyon. As you can see, it truly is a gorge, passing through these tall, tall, tall white limestone cliffs.

Here you can see a nice, pleasant little river. However, it wasn't this way most of the time! Soon after we started, we had to keep to the left (which he had told us) because there are these dam's on the river and there is an opening for canoe's on the left side. So we made sure we maneuvered our way over to the opening and .. whoosh ... down this 45 degree ramp we went, with a HUGE splash down at the bottom ... so now Tom is also wet and Susan is even more wet. There were also sets of small rapids all along the way and these rocks. I don't know if the river level was just abnormally low or if it is like this all of the time. But a couple of times, we got stuck on the rocks and had to push ourselves free with the oars against the rocks and bottom. We didn't feel too bad a bit later when we saw another couple behind us who also got stuck a couple of times on the rocks. At one point, we both got stuck in such a bad state that the ladies (who were both in the front) ended up out of the canoe and working the canoe free from within the river itself (so yea, shoes were totally soaked).

And a couple pictures to end of Tom (the first one has a bit of me on the side) with the white cliffs of the gorge in the background. So, will we do this again? Yea, I think so .. it isn't too bad once you get the hang of it, and next time, we will be better prepared with extra shoes and towels.