<i> Lazy Days in</i> Southern France

As a rule, I’ve never liked leisurely vacations, especially those dedicated to food. I like to accomplish something in my time away from work. But this year, for the sake of matrimonial unity, I had to find something to balance a two-week march through the Tanzanian bush--for me, vacation enough. Otherwise, I would likely bush-walk alone.

Which is how I found myself lolling on the deck of a luxury barge called the Anjodi, watching a bit of southern France roll by and wondering what was for dinner. According to adjective-laden Web sites, French barge cruising is the antithesis of sleeping in a tent, and the venue was conveniently en route between home (Alaska) and safari (Dar es Salaam). And so, for my wife’s sake, I proposed a cruise in France.

I drew the line, however, at Burgundian bacchanals. A week cruising in wine country, drinking precious vintages by the liter and gorging on pate and cheese, between shore visits for six-course dinners in Michelin-starred chateaux--that was too much.

I reviewed Web sites and chose a route that seemed more austere: the Canal du Midi in Languedoc, Provence’s poor cousin on the Rhone’s left bank, about which Peter Mayle has written nothing. It is a dry, rocky place where occasional villages are surrounded by vineyards with a reputation for producing passable table wines. A place, I thought, where I could resist hedonism and feast on history.

Walled medieval fortresses were carved into the hillsides of Languedoc because the people needed them to hide from the bandits, mercenaries and petty princes who terrorized the countryside well into the Renaissance. In the 13th century, for example, crusaders looking for Cathars, a Christian sect that for centuries had rejected the church in Rome, laid siege to the town of Beziers, with instructions to kill everybody and let God find the heretics among the dead. About 20,000 were killed on that mission, part of what became known as the Albigensian Crusade.

On Father’s Day, Debbie and I arrived at a repopulated Beziers, where we were to be met by the crew of the 100-foot hotel barge Anjodi.

As we waited for them at a posh country restaurant, we had ample time to spot our shipmates. “You know,” Debbie observed, after pegging the few English speakers in the restaurant lounge, “you’re going to be the only man on board.” And, indeed, of the five other passengers, two were British sisters with endless tales of the Battle of Britain, and three were well-traveled American women renewing an old friendship.

The undemanding nature of barge cruising became apparent on the drive from Beziers to Trebes, where the Anjodi was moored at the northern end of its itinerary. We covered that distance, about 50 miles by road, in an hour. It would take six days of lazy cruising to float our way back to Beziers.

A 1929 Dutch freight barge converted to the leisure trade in 1982, the Anjodi is the dearest vessel I ever will board. It has broad, sunny upper decks draped in flowering vines, and its gracious lines turn every head on the canal.

A year ago, the barge underwent a thorough interior remodel. Bunks were scrapped for a mix of twin and queen-sized beds. It sleeps only eight, in large hardwood-paneled staterooms, each with a full private bath. The lights and room air conditioners were always working, the water was always hot and the four-person crew was always around, ensuring guests’ every comfort.

Moored behind the Anjodi in Trebes was a sailboat. Its British skipper was on a three-month voyage, and that night he was in his cups. I wandered over to chat. “You know,” he said, his finger wagging aimlessly toward the village, “if you take your jug up there, you can get it filled with the local wine for five francs.”

He told me he didn’t sail on weekends because “that’s when the new people get their charter boats. It takes ‘em a couple of days before they have the slightest idea what they’re doing. Better to stay here and wait until they learn how to sail those things.”

Southern France and decent wine had robbed this man of ambition. These and the Anjodi would shortly do the same to me.

The boat’s daily regimen revolved around food. Early each morning, the crew procured a vast basket of just-baked baguettes, croissants and pains au chocolat from a local boulangerie . The craft spent mornings moored at some fairy-tale hamlet while my six companions and I were motored off in the Anjodi’s van to the walled city or market du jour.

After an on-board lunch of salad and pasta, washed down with chilled white and rose wines, the barge set sail for the canal’s next lock, or ecluse , maybe six miles away. This was when character showed: At this point in the day, it was permissible (and, among my lady friends, majority sentiment) to grab a bottle of dry Muscat and a chaise on the Anjodi’s umbrella-shaded deck and watch the countryside silently slip by until a cheery young woman announced dinner six hours later.

I could never completely succumb to lethargy, and that was where the ship’s bikes came into play. Each afternoon they were put ashore, and Debbie and I set out along the canal’s ancient towpaths, in the shade of 350-year-old plane trees. We rode to the next ecluse , arriving comfortably ahead of the Anjodi, whose speed never exceeded 6 knots.

We found that the soul of the canal lies around its locks. They are meeting places for fancy hotel barges and modest houseboats alike. There we bought local wine, fresh-picked cherries and an unpretentious watercolor of the lock from the lock keeper, who doubled as storekeeper. The locks are isolated places--usually manned by old-timers whose humor is, our captain said, regularly tested by weekend sailors grown too fond of the local rose. Many eclusiers make the lock station home, and the ecluse itself often mirrors their eccentricities. They are also fine places to people-watch, as vacationers’ rubber-bumpered pleasure craft bounce around the unsettled water inside the lock.

There are 46 locks on the 160-mile canal, and the Anjodi must pass through two or three a day as it descends toward the Mediterranean. Even though hotel barges enjoy a priority over pleasure craft, it can still take half an hour to clear a lock. And that contributes to a languid pace that will eventually grind anyone’s impatience, including mine, into submission.

In fact, all of Languedoc seems to live under a regime of enforced indolence, giving voyagers no choice but to sit back and enjoy the sublime peace of these journeys. The few sleepy towns en route were shut tight for the prolonged midday meal that is still a birthright in France; the locks themselves were out of operation during the lunch hour.

The Anjodi’s daily excursions were similarly unassuming--all, that is, but the first. Carcassonne is France’s best-preserved walled city (the Visigoths began fortifying it in the 5th century) and a serious tourist attraction. It is besieged these days by tour buses; its stores sell plastic souvenirs. It is a bit much. But it is on the Anjodi’s itinerary because it has to be.

Minerve, which the Anjodi visits later in the trip, is more in character with the authentic Languedoc. Like Carcassonne, it is a walled city that was besieged during the Albigensian Crusade. After the crusaders cut off its water supply during that siege, the town capitulated, but 180 residents threw themselves onto a fire rather than convert to Catholicism.

In Minerve, unlike Carcassonne, it was hard to find a tourist. The town lies deep in countryside, a winding mountain road’s drive away from the tourist corridor, and thus it is preciously uncommercial. What passed for marketing here included a small, bare table holding several bottles of wine, guarded by a sleeping Labrador retriever, and a homemade diorama of the Albigensian Crusade siege that was actually rather touching.

The Anjodi’s half-day land excursions were a blend of old French history and contemporary French life off the tourist circuit, the latter epitomized by the weekly regional market at Lezignan. The fish was fresh, the melons were fat, the cheese was unpasteurized and most everything was cheap. It was a morning in real France.

Lezignan’s urban counterpart is Narbonne, a working city so far off the tourist track that none of its banks--at least none I tried--would cash traveler’s checks.

Narbonne, like almost all our ports of call, was a fertile place to practice French because nary a word of English was spoken. But one can effortlessly survive on the Anjodi speaking only English, since no one among the barge’s regular crew is French, not even the chef, who is from New Zealand.

It is natural, and probably inevitable, for passengers on these trips to obsess over the food. The four-course dinners, for example, take three hours, each minute spent in wonder at the creatively composed Provencal miracle awaiting your palate. To make it all possible, the crew scours the countryside for fresh ingredients. Toward the end of the week, for example, a crew member stole into Narbonne to pick the fishmonger clean of sea-fresh prawns, oysters, mussels and crabs. Back aboard, his catch was massed in a great seaweed-scented heap, surrounded by loaves of just-baked local bread.

After the main course came the cheese--each evening an assortment of three that, by and large, none of the passengers had ever tasted. This creative array of cheeses was, as it is in any proper French meal, the hardest of all courses to refuse--even though we all knew that some elegant dessert, usually laced with French chocolat , lurked in the kitchen.

At least four wines were offered each day, and all came from Languedoc: a white and a rose at lunch, a white and a red for dinner. And although authenticity is a mixed blessing when it comes to the wines of Languedoc, the region’s vintners are trying to buff up their image. To its credit, the Anjodi crew has, in years of sipping and sleuthing, scared up some high-quality Languedoc vintages, the dead corks of which filled my souvenir bag considerably fuller than I had intended.

I shared all this at an intimate table with six gracious women, who, as the evenings progressed, spared me the taxing courtesy of always having to be seated and served last. Wit, taste and abundance combined at these dinner tables to create a complexity that was the meal’s ultimate reward.

Sure, a Frenchman on board would have been nice; likewise an occasional Montrachet to remind us how the other half drinks. But love is blind, and I shall ever credit my shipboard romance with the Anjodi for forcing me to live like a southern Frenchman for one languorous week. Biking in the shade of centuries-old plane trees, stepping over a happy retriever to shop for wine, and buying a heavenly pound of St.-Nectaire cheese for $2 from a Lezignan cremerie are fine ways to pass time in a backwater that I hope remains ever thus.

So thanks, Languedoc. This rose’s for you.

And Burgundy, here I come.

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Guidebook: Afloat in France * Getting there: Air France and AirLib fly nonstop from LAX to Paris; there is direct service (one stop) on US Airways and connecting service (change of plane) on United, American, Continental, Delta, Lufthansa, KLM and British Airways. Restricted round-trip fares start at $599.

The express train from Paris (Gare de Lyon) to Beziers takes three hours. A first-class ticket is about $130.

* Cruising: A variety of small barges cruising in France may be booked through Europe Express, 19021 120th Ave. N.E., Suite 102, Bothell, WA 98011; telephone (800) 927-3876, fax (800) 370-0509, Internet https://www.europeexpress.com. We paid $2,990 per person for the six-night cruise on the Anjodi. Air and train fare are extra. The price goes up $100 next summer.

Abercrombie & Kent, 1520 Kensington Road, Suite 212, Oak Brook, IL 60523, tel. (800) 323-7308, fax (630) 954-3324, https://www.aandktours.com, has a fine selection of small luxury barges, mostly based in Burgundy. Prices for six-night cruises this year ranged from $1,990 to $4,300 per person.

* For more information: French Government Tourist Office, 9454 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 715, Beverly Hills, CA 90212; tel. (310) 271-6665 or (410) 286-8310 (France-on-Call hotline), fax (310) 276-2835, https://www.francetourism.com.

-- Jon K. Tillinghast