Where I live here in Toulouse at the ISAE Supaero campus, there is a canal that runs along the western fence. This canal, known as the Canal du Midi, is completely accessible from the campus through a gate, and today it is completely explorable by me: Explorer Cassie!

So first, a little more info about our topic for the day!

The Way of the Water

La Canal du Midi (The Canal of the South) is a 240 km long canal that runs from the centre of Toulouse down to the Mediterranean sea on France’s southern border. The canal was built in the 17th century and was originally known as la canal royal en Languedoc (The Royal Canal of Languedoc) until the French revolution in the 18th century when the name was changed. The canal took around 14 years to be built with its original architect dying in the meantime and never seeing their finished project.

Like most canals, the canal du midi was used for trade and transport at times before and during the industrial revolution here in France, allowing for goods to get from port towns such as Sète to big city of Toulouse with ease. These days though, the canal is used for local transport, boat homes, and especially for me: adventures!

A Hot Summers Day

The day I decided to embark on my hike was Saturday the 21st of June, known better to most as the summer solstice. The longest, and hopefully not hottest, day of the year! I’d briefly been on the canal before today, but only for a few hundred metres as I used it to get to other places.

I love infrastructure like this, I grew up near a canal back in the UK so whenever I come across one wherever I go like the Lancaster canal in Lancaster, or the Grand Union canal in Leicester. I think they’re incredibly interesting, with such history dating back to before the industrial revolution but still so well kept to this day! It makes me immensely happy that I once again live near a canal and I hope to have many more adventures on it than just day.

Speaking of, lets get back to it. My main motivation for going on this hike today is to find a way to stay in the shade! It is incredibly hot everywhere but trees have a fantastic ability of cooling down the regions around them, I want to stay on the canal nearly all day and do my best to enjoy the summer without losing all the liquid in my body at the same time!

I started my journey southwards. As predicted the path was completely under the shade of the many trees lining the canal. As I walked, I admired the scenery, the beautiful French countryside in which I now found myself. The sun climbed higher and higher into the sky as I walked, and I soon found myself wondering, as most physicists do, about how all of that movement works.

Whilst it may not be Sunday, I thought I’d spend a moment to teach about the Summer Solstice and how it works!

Orbital Mechanics for Kids

There are two main factors to consider for how things like the summer solstice works.

The first is how years work. The Earth that we live on travels around the Sun in an almost circular orbit (e = 0.02), this orbit takes about 365.25 days which is what gives us our year! That extra .25 days is added up every four years into one full day which gives us a leap year.

The next factor to consider is how days work. As the Earth travels, it spins on it’s axis (an imaginary line going through the north and south pole). One spin on this axis takes about 23 hours and 56 minutes, but with our Earth also moving around the sun, it gains an extra 4 minutes to be pointing back at the Sun again, giving us our 24 hours. The difference between the two is known as a sidereal (23 hours 56 minutes 6 seconds) and a solar (24 hours) day.

The system is far from perfect though, the Earth’s axis is at about a 23° angle to its movement orbit, meaning at different points of the year the poles of our planet move to point toward or away from the Sun.

When the north pole points towards the Sun, the northern hemisphere gets much more of a blast from the Sun throughout a day, this is what gives us summer! The south pole however points away from the Sun, so the southern hemisphere barely gets any sun and has winter! The opposite then happens half a year later giving the north winter and the south summer!

This all becomes apparent on Earth in the form of the tropics!

If you live within the Tropic of Cancer and the Topic of Capricorn, the sun will be pretty much overhead for most of the year. Places within this area have very constant lengths of days, a friend of mine who lived in Indonesia said that the sun would set at about 6:45pm in summer and 6:15pm in winter, barely any change at all!

But go outside of this zone, and the lengths of the day start to change. The lower the sun appears in the sky (so the more north or south you go) the more the length of a day will start to vary for you. As your pole points more toward the sun, the sun climbs higher in the sky. It will rise earlier in the morning and set later at night. In the UK, this happens on quite a big scale, in winter the sun can set as early as 3:30pm and in summer as late as 10:30pm, that’s about a six hour difference accounting for daylight savings!

The summer solstice, is the day when the north pole is pointing as much towards the sun as it ever will. The sun is now the highest it will be for people in the northern hemisphere and the day is as long as possible. However, the opposite is happening for people in Sydney for example, where the sun is now the lowest in the sky it will be and the day is as short as possible.

From the summer solstice onwards, the sun will start to get lower again, and the days will shorten for those in the northern hemisphere until eventually it becomes the winter solstice in December and the opposite begins to happen. This happens on a constant cycle every year and has done so for billions of years, with the change in the suns height giving us the well known seasons of Autumn, Winter, Spring, and Summer.

Hopefully that wasn’t too much information for you. I love to teach and I hope you love to learn. For now though lets get back to the adventure.

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Lunch break under the bridge

Soon enough, I came across a bridge where the canal passes under a main road. This bridge provided the perfect amount of shade from the sun, and with some steps nearby I decided it was the perfect place for a midday luncheon.

The steps were located next to a small road and as I sat to eat I watched countless cyclists pass me by. Some looked to say bonjour, others pushed harder on their journey, but my lunch continued nonetheless. I ate my apple and my tortilla, and then drank half a litre of water, and felt a great sense of peace as the world passed me by, and the sun hung in the sky.

Onwards

Lunch ended as all things do, and my journey continued on southwards. Rather than becoming repetitive, I found the landscape next to the canal often changed dramatically. At one moment I would be in the middle of a forest, then I would be next to a busy road; sometimes I’d be in beautiful shade, and then I’d be walking across a scorched dusty paved area. It occasionally felt like some places had more beauty than others as I walked, but the local artists would sound prove me wrong.

A few kilometres down the canal, I came across a place known as Port Ramonville, a place for canal barges to make port and for the sailors(?) to rest. The place is very paved over, and the sun made it feel much hotter to be here, but as I crossed over a bridge connecting the dock to the canal, I saw something interesting in the distance.

A spiral pathway connects the bridge back to the canal pathway level. It serves as not just an excellent way for bikes and other vehicles to travel, but as a canvas! Here on the walls of this spiral are some incredible artworks, graffiti as most would call it, of different characters from films, shows, and games. Most of which I didn’t recognise, I assumed they were either from a French show or something I just hadn’t come across yet, but others I did!

I know that Link is a world recognised icon. The Legend of Zelda is one of the most famous video game series ever made, but there’s still something so strange about seeing something so familiar in a place so far from home! It’s comforting in a way, like you’re never really all that far away from home.

*

Soon after, I reached my furthest point for the day, it was now about 3pm and I didn’t want to be walking too far as I knew I had to walk all the way back in the late afternoon sun, the hottest part of the day! I crossed over a small bridge just before the Parc de Cinquante (Parc of Fifty?), whilst it looked beautiful in there, I think that’s an adventure for another day!

The archway bridge I crossed over was populated by a few teenagers taking it in turns to jump into the canal below. I was envious of their confidence, I knew that the canal water was probably incredibly cool on a day like today, but knowing that water like this is only a couple metres deep at best kept my feet firmly placed on the ground. I’d spent enough time in French bodies of water lately, I’d had my fill.

The Other Side

Now, I was walking northwards on the west side of the canal, heading back the way I came but from a completely different perspective. I was still in the shade of the trees over here but even when the sun peeked through it was at my back. It was much easier to continue on my hike.

After a while of continued beauty, I decided to stop on a bench and read a bit more of my book. For those who don’t know, I’m currently making my way through the twilight series and am about 2/3 of the way through New Moon. I’m loving it so far and am torn between finishing this one so I can write my review, and making it last so that I don’t have to struggle to find the next in the series. As I paused here to read about Bella and her supernatural adventures, I found myself being slowly surrounded…

!!! Insectophobia Warning !!!

Sarcophaga Carnaria – Flesh Fly

Flies! I’ve been messing around with the settings on my camera lately, and found that I can get it to focus on some things that are really small or really far away. So now I can take proper pictures of even the tiniest creatures here in nature.

Flies like this love to hang around stagnant water, which is essentially the entire concept of a canal so there are many of them around where I was sat. Luckily, flies like this don’t tend to bite humans, so this little guy was just enjoying hanging around me on my little bench in Toulouse.

A few more steps

After finishing a few more chapters, and seeing goodbye to my new insect friends, I continued on my journey back home.

The way back felt much shorter than the way there. Perhaps I became so enthralled in the local countryside I simply lost track of time, that or I became too lost in my own thoughts.

Now that I’ve started my Sunday School series, I’ve found that I’m starting to see more and more bits of science everywhere I go. It’s becoming difficult to limit myself to just to one day a week where I teach a new topics (hence the above section about the Sun) so I hope you’re enjoying reading them and learning some new things!

My adventure for today had finished, but there are always more adventures to be had! Whether they be close to home, or much much further away!

Bonsoir!

Cassie