We left David and Wendy at Roquefort on a grey and blustery day. The important jobs were to buy a new gas cylinder, which is not always as simple a job as you would expect but on this occasion I had it sussed. We drove to a Total filling station and swapped my empty bottle for a correct brand of gas in a new bottle. Then we did some supermarket shopping.....always a pleasure as we walk around and salivate at all the nice food (but can’t buy it all).
We drove through a particularly nice little place called Belmont-sur-Rance with a very large church tower for such a small town.
All nice red roof tops around here. The church was surrounded by, what we thought was, a music school in nice old buildings. We spotted a lake on the map and headed for it. Our overnight stay at the Lac de Raviège was a quiet one. No other people nearby and no camping cars which was surprising because the lake must be a very popular place in the season as there is loads of parking, boat storage and a beach. We enjoyed skimming stones on the lake which brought back memories of childhood holidays in the UK. You can get a lot of fun out of selecting stones and skimming them!
Maybe no one was there because they had seen the weather forecast......it peed down all night.....very noisy on the van roof. It was still a bit damp and drizzly in the morning and we didn’t waste time moving on south again. We are starting to run out of South France! The weather started to improve as we got away from the hills. We still needed to indulge our desire to shop at a Decathlon store outside Carcassonne and add to our collection of its branded clothing.
We didn’t go into Carcassonne but found a place to stay in the Minervois wine area at Laure-Minervois, down by the pique-nique area next to a small lake.
Yes...the weather is perking up.
This morning (Wednesday) we left the van by the lake and cycled through Minervois villages to Carcassonne.....beautiful cycling through vineyards then joining up with the Canal du Midi to enter the city and its walled Citadel.
We have visited here before. We checked our records and realised that we came here two years ago to the day and we had lunch which was onion soup, cassoulet and ille flotant (meringue floating on creme anglais). I had exactly the same today, maybe we should come on the same date every two years and eat the same meal.........real dejà vu. Cassoulet is the local speciality with duck leg and Toulouse sausage in a haricot bean stew.
Of course it was washed down with Minervois wine. All consumed in warm sunshine......couldn’t be better. Carcassonne is a fantastic place. It’s probably the most complete walled Citadel in France, maybe in Europe. It was a bit of a cheat in the sense that the walls had all been ruined for centuries and was rebuilt around 1900. It wasn’t rebuilt for defensive reasons, it was done for the spectacle and it is spectacular...
Despite being rather full we managed to retrace our cycling route to our village. We called at the nearby wine producer and had a little tasting.
A couple more bottles for the cellar in the van! We are trying to make our travel plans now and thinking of making an escape route back to the UK before 31st October. I think we are probably in the best place to avoid all the Brexit drama at home....no news and no radio....I do read the BBC website but limit myself to half a Brexit page a day....it doesn’t improve whatever your preferences are!
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