Monday morning, breaking camp again and leaving Carcassonne, with only have an hour and a half drive to our next stop, we decided to see the latest Marvel film “Thor – Love and Thunder”, however the local cinema was only showing it with dubbing in French (rather than the English, with French subtitles) so we didn’t bother, heading to the supermarket instead, what excitement !
We then set off for Premian, in the ‘Parc Naturel Regional du Haut-Languedoc’, with what now seems like the obligatory road closure, that Google Maps do not know about, and a vaguely signposted diversion. After a very tight right hand turn, which we attempted, gave up, drove past and turned around, to access the turn from the other direction, we got to the campsite. The camp site ‘Camping les terrasses du la Jaur’ is a small municipal site, about £16.50 per night, on the side of a valley surrounded by pine forest, with a local greenway (old railway line) just across the valley.
The other campers are predominantly French, with the odd one from Spain or Germany. There were lots of cyclists with a couple of very minimalist campers, they had a bedroll each in the middle of a pitch (no tent, of any sort). Diagonally across from our pitch was a French family with two young children. There was lots of bickering, and that was just the parents, the kids were generally ok, just occasionally overtired, or was that the parents again!!
A relatively quiet week for us, another hot week and a few more mosquitos around, unfortunately Nic sustained a few impressive bites, which reacted badly. We used the time to catch up on boring jobs like laundry, keeping the water topped up and the services emptied.
We had a few good walks and cycled the green way, Nic has mastered the electric bike (gears and power) and can now climb steep hills, leaving Rog to pedal slowly behind.
There are forest tracks directly from the campsite, climbing up the valley, we have walked there a few times and not seen another soul.
There is lots of birdlife on the campsite, we have seen Robins (including three fledglings), Chaffinches and Nuthatches all on our pitch, the Robins were the most tame, hopping under the table finding crumbs.
The local village clock tower, once we spotted it, has one clock face, chimes every hour and every ½ hour. However at every hour it chimes the hours twice! Never heard one like that before.
On Tuesday evening there was a local producers evening market, with food and live music only a short walk away. We had a look round, then enjoyed the band from our chairs back at the van, as it was still very hot in the market field, despite being 8pm.
Sunday saw us take to the greenway again, to cycle to a market in St Pons, about 5 miles away. It was mostly car boot sale, but we enjoyed the cycle and a coffee in the town.
Travurple 