Some 40 kilometres from Toulouse,near the village of Revels( a jolly name for  a place for a day out!)  lie the Museum and Gardens of the Canal du Midi, devoted to the great work of Pierre-Paul Ricquet, the genius behind what must be one of man’s finest achievements.The museum is next to the great dam of St.Ferréol which was built to feed the canal and was for many centuries the biggest dam in Europe.In  summer the lakeside is a great place for a picnic.

Linking the Atlantic to the Mediterranean,work began on the canal in 1665 and was completed in 1680, the year in which its instigator and builder died with just three kilometres still to be completed.He had started the enterprise in his 57th year at a time when the average life expectancy of a man was 40 years,and it took all his fortune and a debt of 2,000,000 pounds for his children to pay off.

The scale of the work is astonishing.The length of the canal is 240km,the width varies from 16 to 19m., 7,000,000 cubic metres of soil had to be excavated by 12,000 men and women. Bridges,locks and tunnels had to be built and numerous engineering problems overcome.Ricquet managed to engage the interest and support of Colbert,Louis XIV’s minister and even the King himself, although the relationship was not always an easy one.

The Museum provides an excellent introduction to this amazing feat of imagination,organisation and perseverance,and given the tools available at the time,basically picks and shovels, puts into perspective great engineering achievements of our time such as the Channel Tunnel. Website www.museeducanaldumidi.fr