The Canal du Midi has a reputation for being slow, and the stretch within Toulouse is no exception. The canal was dug in the seventeenth century by Pierre-Paul Riquet, a tax collector turned engineer, who spent most of his fortune and the last years of his life on a waterway that joined the Atlantic to the Mediterranean through the pass at Naurouze. He died in 1680, a few months before the water finally flowed all the way through. Today the canal is a UNESCO World Heritage site, its banks lined with plane trees whose branches meet overhead.
You meet it here in a city of more than 430,000 people, near the railway station and the canal's basins, where towpaths host joggers and cyclists and old barges are moored under the trees. Fuel is close by, in any direction, and the narrow streets around the canal are full of small cafés. The quiet stands out against the busy streets: you can walk down the stone steps to the water and be alone with ducks within a minute.
For a rider, this is more start than destination. From here the roads lead southeast along the canal toward the Lauragais hills, a country of rolling wheat fields and sunflowers, where the Black Mountain rises in the distance and the corners start to flow. The towpath itself is not for motorcycles, and signs make that plain, but the parallel roads often run within sight of the water and allow glimpses of locks, bridges and old keepers' houses.
Toulouse is hot in summer, with afternoon temperatures that make helmets uncomfortable, and in the cooler months fog and drizzle can come off the Garonne. Spring and autumn are best. The pink brick of the city glows warm in the evening, and the canal reflects it. After a day on the road, an evening here, with a table by the water and a glass of local red, is a very French way to finish.