Wow, I'm really here. The good news is that I made my flight in Frankfurt. Cathy advised me not to waste any time getting to my gate, and as she described, I had to leave the secure area of the airport, then process immigration, then process security. On top of that, I changed terminals, and I'm sure, must have walked two kilometres in the process. I was fortunate that the crowds were light, and that probably made all the difference. As sometimes happens when I go through security, I was pulled aside for special scrutiny because the X-rays through my camera bag reveal a very complex image. This time, however, they asked me to step into a 'special' room. All in a day's excitement. It happened to be the room with the special scanning or sniffing machine. The officer swabbed my gear and then stuck the swab into the machine. It turned out ok.
The picture above is one of the new double deck Airbus 380's. It was parked beside my boarding gate. It is one very large aircraft.
I had no problem finding Cathy and Elaine at the Airport in Toulouse. We then had a 2 hour drive to Capestang where Elaine has rented an apartment for 3 months. It's a very comfortable 2 bedroom apartment in the old downtown area - very close to the town centre and the 'cathedral' - a huge church which is formed from the alter of what was going to become a cathedral, but was never finished. I'll take pictures of it tomorrow. After a 2 hour rest, we saw three local sights, a drained lake in the photo above, a canal tunnel through a hill, and an archaeological site a the top of a hill.
L'etang asseche de Montady-Colombiers is the name of a 400 hectare lake that was drained in the 13th century to provide more agricultural land. The radial shape upon the land is defined by drainage ditches that converge on a vertical shaft at the centre and lowest part of the land. At this point the drained water flows in a 1.5km dug tunnel to outlet on lower ground. Quite a feat for 800 years ago.
The photo above is part of the Canal du Midi. It was built in the 17th century as part of an extensive waterway that connects the Mediterranean Sea to the Atlantic Ocean. Clearly it is still used. Curiously, most of the tunnel is lined with a linear arch of cut stone, but one portion is the rough cut rock. I hope this is because the engineers determined the unsupported rock was strong enough to be self supporting, rather than they ran out of money to continue with the cut stone lining. I moved quickly through this portion of the tunnel. This tunnel is crossed by a railway tunnel - but it is crossed below the canal tunnel. And below the railway tunnel is the tunnel that drains the lake mentioned above. What luck that the railway tunnel, which was the last to be built, fit in the space between the others.
Our last destination for the day was L'Oppidum d'Enserune - a fortified Gaul village. The site has been extensively investigated by archeologists during the 20th century. Little has been reconstructed with the exception of the lowest part of revealed foundation walls. The settlement dates from the 6th century BCE to the 1st century CE. What was interesting was many large clay pots set into the ground to store food stuffs. These pots are up to 5 feet tall with walls one inch thick.
No comments:
Post a Comment