The first challenge of Monday morning was to break camp in Cahors, easier said than done. One of the tent pegs securing an awning leg was very committed to its job and did not want to be removed, it was stuck fast! So after various failed attempts, the use of numerous and various expletives over about half an hour, Rog finally resorted to digging the tent peg out of very compacted ground.
Challenge two of the day, drive to the local Intermarche for fuel, following Google maps for less than 1 mile, how hard can it be! Very, as it turned out, it was a very small road, which got narrower over a bridge, then throw in a couple of French drivers coming the other way, and not wishing to give an inch of road (sorry a centimetre – we are in France after all), but we got there, filled up and moved on.
Challenge three, drive from Cahors to Carcassonne, which included 2 road closures and the resulting diversions, which were sort of signposted, and a market in the main street of a town we were attempting to drive through. We also drove passed a signpost that declared that the Mountagne Noire road was open, we had no idea it may have been closed?? But thankfully it was open, as the sign also kindly told us that if the road had been closed the diversion was 103km. The Mountagne Noire road was a stunning, over the mountain the down into the valley at Carcassonne.
A nice campsite about 20mins walk from Carcassonne, we were here for a week.
The reason for heading to Carcassonne at this time was for a music festival, we had tickets for Rag n’ Bone Man (Google him! You may recognise “human’ or ‘Giants’) supported by ‘LP’ no…. we’d never heard of ‘them’ either, but a really good concert in the stunning amphitheatre in ‘Le Cite’ (the old bit) of Carcassonne.
Spent most of the week, walking/cycling around Carcassonne, both ‘le Cite” the old medieval bit and ‘la Bastide” the 1820’s grid, we walked to the far end of town to see the Canal du Midi. Nic had a dip in the campsite pool everyday at around 4pm, a lovely way to keep cool.
On Thursday morning we attempted to cycle to a local lake, however the road we were following soon turned in mountain bike trail, which was not for us, so we sat and had our coffee, turned around and headed back to the campsite.
On Friday, there was another impressive thunderstorm, which thankfully stopped in time for us to go back to the amphitheatre to see James Blunt, another really good concert, and tickets cheaper than they would have been in the UK.
On Saturday, we cycled to ‘la Bastide’ to the market, lots of stalls selling everything from cheese, olives, bread, fruit & veg, fresh herbs. It is good to see local produce being sold by the producers direct to the public. Nic was in her element.
As Carcassonne was always busy and full of tourists, on Sunday morning we decided to set an alarm for 6am to see the sunrise over ‘le Cite’, the streets were empty for the first hour, wandering about we only saw a couple of other people, we sat with our early morning cuppa (made and brought from the motorhome), in the middle of ‘le Cite’ watching the changing light on the walls of the keep, then walked over the Pont Vieux to a bakery for fabulous croissant and pain au chocolate, We were back at the motorhome by 9:30am. As Sunday was another hot day, we sent the rest of the day on the campsite.
Travurple 