Day Trips and Things To Love About France

Our time in Carcassonne is now drawing to a close as we head off on our travels on Monday, but we have had a great time and really enjoyed it.  The day after my last post we took a train to Narbonne for the day.  Having been quite chilly the previous couple of days I layered up only finding I had to peel off some layers as the sunny day reached 20 degrees at Narbonne.  It was lovely.  We walked the canal, had some lunch in the square, went to the Basilica, went to the Roman stone museum, had a drink by the canal and caught a train back through the vineyards at teatime.  Narbonne is pretty and we enjoyed our day.

Narbonne - Merchant's Bridge just behind the footbridge

The Lock coming into Narbonne

The Roman Stone Museum

The rest of that week was spent planning our travel for March, meeting up with Charles and Pam, thinking about what we need to do to get the boat (and ourselves!) ready to come to France and getting the house ready for our stream of guests.  Dave arrived on Saturday morning and we headed up to the Cite for a wander and found ourselves in a wine bar watching the rugby!!  We then had a wander round the old town and over to the canal. 

Mike and Dave posing at the canal with the Hotel Terminus (Station Hotel) in the background

Charles and Pam were out so we had a coffee in the square then headed home.  In the evening we went down to the truffle bar and enjoyed some lovely wine and some of the truffle dishes.  The truffle was quite mild, so it was almost a bit of an anticlimax, but we enjoyed the evening and the ambience of the tiny bar.

Before Dave arrived on Saturday, Mike had put together a cassoulet which was left to cook for 5 hours while we went out and about.  On Sunday we loaded the cassoulet and some booze into Dave's hire car and took it over to Charles and Pam's for Sunday lunch.  We had a lovely afternoon with them, though ONE of us had a bit too much to drink and can't remember getting home.  It wasn't me.  Or Dave.  Can you guess who??.......

Drinks in the sun onboard Xenia with Charles and Pam

Things I love about France: They have an aperitif called Lillet - snigger....

Things I love about France: The bread.  Every day. Fresh.  I've eaten tons of it, not a sign of bloating or weight gain.........

Dave left Monday lunchtime and we turned things around for the arrival of my brother John and niece, Helen and nephew Alex who arrived by train from Toulouse at 7pm.  John brought post to us from my mum, including some Christmas cards.....might keep them for next year instead ;)

The next day there was a cold wind blowing but we headed up to the Cite and went round the castle and ramparts - it was freezing!!!  After a bite of lunch and hot tea at the house, we then took a walk into town so Helen and Alex could spend some of their pocket money.  Monoprix's chocolate sales will have been up that day..... They couldn't believe how cheap it is AND the French still wrap their chocolate in foil :)

Blowy ramparts!

Things I love about France: They still wrap their chocolate in foil :)

Dinner was served along with drinks followed by chocolate and we retired to bed at a reasonable hour as we were hiring a car the next day to go to the coast.  However, during the night a couple of our party took a ride on the vomit comet........ Alex had clearly eaten too much chocolate and his body didn't like it so chucked it back up.  Despite this, when he arrived in the kitchen the following morning the first thing he picked up was the rest of the bar!!!   It wasn't just him though, John suffers from migraines that are usually brought on by too much cheese, or chocolate or red wine - so a bucket load of all three the previous night probably wasn't really a good idea.  Thankfully the migraine didn't fully materialise but he needed the morning to rest.  So we cancelled the car and chilled out for the morning.  In the afternoon we headed into town for some fresh air and went to the art gallery, which is free, one of the churches in Carcassonne which has one of the loveliest stained glass windows, and then on the way home popped into the Military Museum.  This was free too and the most surprising.  We thought it would just have a small collection of old uniforms but it had an exhibition on WWI with lots of pictures and exhibits, including letters exchanged by soldiers at the front and their families.  The permanent collection also had lots of stuff; models, uniforms, photos, newspaper cuttings......soooooo much to take in.  Much of it has been donated by local people, including one man's blue and white striped tunic, having been a survivor of one of the concentration camps.  There were pictures of Carcassonne under German occupation, which was a bit of an eye-opener for me.  I hadn't really thought about how it must have felt to be living in an occupied town, who to trust, constantly under suspicion.  There were photos of a German check point on the bridge we cross everyday here and the point really hit home.  There was a section on the local resistance people, just ordinary people whose lives were turned upside down.  So incredibly brave.  We left the museum somewhat humbled but also hugely impressed by this little museum and the lovely curator who spoke very good English.
The next day we took a long walk (6km) to Lac du Cavalyere on the outskirts.  We took a different route than planned and ended up walking alongside the road on a cycle path, so not the most attractive, but we got there, had our picnic lunch, walked around the lake, which was lovely, then went to catch a bus home.  We couldn't find the right bus stop however, and by the time we found one the next bus was half an hour away and we would be most of the way home by then if we walked.  We found a different route that took us through woodland and vineyards and was glorious!

Walking round Lac du Cavalyere. 

Past vineyards on the way home.

Birthday cake for the weary walkers as Helen celebrated her 16th birthday!!

Next day we picked up the hire car and headed for the coast; Port Vendres (where Charles Rennie Macintosh lived from 1925-1927) and Collioure where a lot of the other artists hung out, Matisse to name one....

At Port Vendres they have a Rennie Mackintosh trail of his pictures where they were painted.

The pretty port with Rue du Soleil in the background.

Collioure

The weather at the coast was fantastic and showing the Med at its best

On Saturday morning we dropped John, Helen and Alex, and their chocolate, at the station at 6.30am.  They went off to Toulouse airport for their return flight and we went back to bed, waking up again around 11am.  It was a lovely day so we headed over to Pam and Charles' for a cuppa and then went for a drive with them up the Montagne Noir taking in Las Tours, Mas Cabardes and managing to pick up an ice cream in Cuxac Cabardes on the way home.

Climbing up a bit of the mountains to the sun - I saw a tiny snake on the way back down!!

The next day we went back up and over the mountains through the town of Mazamet and to Castres.  The drive through the mountains was glorious, but the towns were fairly average.  We were scouting out potential areas to live once we've finished with the boat, so it was useful to  eliminate these areas from the process.  We came back via a pretty town, Puylaurens.

The riverside of Castres, which reminds me of the Ouse at York at the section heading to Lendal Bridge.

Monday dawned damp and miserable, so we headed out in the car again, picking up Charles and Pam this time and headed south of Carcassonne, through Limoux and to the very pretty town of Mirepoix.  En route we passed by the village Sonnac sur L'Hers where we stayed for a few days in 2012.

Mike and his best friend/drinking buddy Charles in the pretty square at Mirepoix.

We then headed to a small hilltop village called Fanjeaux, which was very pretty and we decided that this area would be a potential to live in.  On the way back we stopped by the port at Bram and had some boat chat before heading back to Carcassonne.
On Tuesday we picked up Elaine from Carcassonne airport.  Wednesday we took the train to Limoux, had coffee in the square and then headed to Domaine Gayda - the vineyard Mike fell in love with in 2012.  Unfortunately the 20year old waitress Verity he also fell in love with was no longer there and had been replaced by a rather attractive young lad that Elaine and I enjoyed resting our eyes on during the meal..... It was a gorgeous day, with lovely food, wine to die for in a fantastic setting - we didn't want to leave.  But we had to, so we came home to find it was warm enough to sit out on our terrace and end the day with some more wine - lovely!

Mike jumping for joy at being back at Gayda.  He is actually a foot or so in the air, but the perspective would have you think otherwise....

Domaine Gayda

Mike had his last French lesson on Thursday morning, so Elaine and I went for a walk around the Cite.  We then all headed into town to browse the shops and have a coffee. In the afternoon we headed to the airport to drop Elaine off and hand the car back to Alamo :(
Since then, we have been more or less housebound, making last minute reservations for hotels for our month of travelling and starting to tidy the house and do last minute laundry.  We're sad that our time at Carcassonne is over, we've really enjoyed it and we will really, really miss our lovely friends Charles and Pam - we've had such good fun with them.  And while we're looking forward to getting back to Quaintrelle in the spring, our heads are now well and truly in France and it seems strange to be thinking about boating in the UK for another season, when we really just can't wait to get her over to France!!!  Part of our travels in the next month will take us to Auxerre and Migennes, where she can get craned in, and which would mean missing out the commercial stretches.  We'll speak to the Capitain at Migennes and we may bring her over at the end of this year.........watch this space.....