Lying in our French hotel bedroom, watching TV highlights of last summer's Tour de France, we kidded ourselves we knew how Bradley Wiggins felt. OK, the Tour riders that day covered 200km and climbed 4,500m; we'd ridden 38km, and pushed our bikes up the steep bits, but given our fitness (not great) and experience (er, none) we felt a sense of achievement.
An afternoon on hired bikes a few years ago had given my husband and me an idea. We love pootling around France, and the great-value food and wine in its rural hotel-restaurants. Why not fashion a holiday that, by virtue of exercise by day, would allow us to indulge by night? Why not cycle from auberge to logis, from one menu du terroir to the next?
There was a snag: we are wimps about hills. (I grew up and did most of my cycling in flat-as-flat Hull, where you have to drive to a flyover to practise hill starts.) Then I saw a trip, from walking and cycling company Belle France, along the 150-mile, Unesco-listed Canal du Midi. It seemed a no-brainer: canal towpath had to mean flat. Starting in Carcassonne, we'd spend a week cycling to the coast near Béziers, our bags magicked ahead of us. And we'd go in July so we could enjoy hotel pools after days in the saddle, and a dip in the Med at the end.
To keep things relaxed, we took the train rather than flying to Carcassonne. After a day trying out our hired mounts around the city, we hit the towpath, and met our new companion, the tramontane. Hull may not have hills, but my rides to school were often battles against a fierce wind off the North Sea. The tramontane is a fierce wind off the Pyrenees that usually blows in winter or spring. But here it was battering Languedoc in July.
The tramontane is a north-westerly, and we were heading south-east, so the wind was often behind us. But the canal twists and turns, so cross-winds regularly threatened to tip us into the water, and the towpath was littered with branches torn down by the gale.
The bikes were splendid, though, with good gears and comfortable handlebars. Knowing we had 42km before us, we had filled up on those delicious French calories we'd promised ourselves: bread, croissants, butter, jam, ham and more cheese at breakfast; foie gras, goat's cheese, cassoulet, duck and crème brulee at dinner – just to make sure we didn't fall famished by the wayside.
The canal is beautiful – pale green and lined with plane trees. (Some were felled last winter because of canker stain infection, but these stretches have been replanted with a disease-resistant variety.) There's probably no such thing as an easy cycling holiday, though – except perhaps in the Netherlands. The towpath was level, but it was often stony, even rocky in places, and bumpy with tree roots. Despite gel saddle covers, and a hovering technique over the cruellest stretches, I thought I'd never sit down again by the time we reached our first billet, in the riverside village of Homps.
We were in deepest France, pedalling among sunflowers and lavender, but this pastime is actually very un-French. This is the country that manages to make riding a bike sound like politics. Le cyclisme is a serious matter in the home of the Tour de France – to be undertaken only on a sleek racing bike, when you've attained the correct level of brightly printed Lycra. Le Tour had passed through the area just a few days before, and there were still a few card-carrying cyclistes around. They probably sneered at us, on our solid hybrid bikes with upright handlebars, but several still called a cheery bonjour.
I might have thought I'd never sit down again, but of course there was the next day's riding to tackle, and you can't stand up on the pedals all the time. I soon learned that each morning promised a moment of exquisite agony as bum hit saddle for the first time, but some anaesthetising effect would then kick in and the ache faded.
The pesky wind continued whipping the canal into choppy wavelets, but as the days went on the sun started to shine and our confidence grew. Villages were sleepy symphonies of golden stone: Bize-Minervois sits prettily astride the unfortunately named Cesse river, with a lovely swimming spot. The terrace of its Café du Midi was slightly sheltered from the wind, though it did blow the umbrella over into our excellent €8.50 set lunch – can't afford to let up on the calories with three more days' riding to go.
Cabezac, further up the Cesse, had La Bastide – a charming small hotel with big food ideas (five courses that night). Nissan-lez-Ensérune had another gorgeous hotel. The evening routine of swim-beer-shower-dinner felt 10 times as good when it felt very well-earned.
On day five some cruel person had taken the village of Capestang, our lunch point, and moved it further down the canal. Well, either that or my bike's odometer wasn't too accurate – but an extra half-hour of bumping along the towpath with grumbling belly, expecting the village around every bend … well, let's say it took gargantuan amounts of paté and baguette to restore our spirits.
Our last stop was two nights in lovely Béziers, but the point was to make it to the coast. So our final day was a 32km ride south-east to the sea. Easy, peasy, we scoffed. The towpath is Tarmac'd all the way to the resort of Portiragnes-Plage – blue-flagged, backed by dunes and, had the tramontane not been whipping the fine sand across it, perfect. More experienced cyclists would have noted that if we'd pedalled south-east to the beach, the way back would be north-west – into the teeth of that wind … Cue a cheese course as well as a fondant au chocolat that night.
The pale green, tree-lined Canal du Midi is lovely, but it is mile after winding mile of pale green, tree-lined water. The best day of the trip came when we abandoned the waterway that had been our reason for thinking we could manage a cycling holiday and took a 26km country route through olive groves and woods. To my bum's delight we were on Tarmac roads – black and smooth and even and, this being rural France, empty. There were hills – but that's what bottom gear's for. And if someone was occasionally inclined to get off and push, well, that's no ice-cream for him.
One beauty of a hill is the view from the top – on the towpath we had sometimes felt hemmed in by the banks and trees – but even better is the glorious freewheel down the other side. Swooping canal-wards that day, a laden plum orchard on one side, vineyards flowing over hills on the other, I was filled with the joys of cyclisme. Next up, cycling in the Alps, perhaps?.
• The Canal du Midi to Coast trip was provided by Belle France (01580 214010, bellefrance.co.uk); a seven-night self-guided holiday costs from £1,169pp, including three nights' half board and four nights' B&B, luggage transfers and bike hire. Rail travel from London to Carcassonne and returning from Beziers (both via Lille) was provided by Rail Europe (0844 848 4078, raileurope.com); fares start at £136.50
