Had a bit of a lay in
this morning, as it was quite a late one the night before, so by the
time we’d got up at eight, then arsed around for a while, we didn’t
leave the gite until around ten, which is practically unheard of, so
we headed to the car, roundly chastising ourselves, little knowing it
would set the tone for the day ahead.
Again, most unlike us,
we didn’t really have a plan for the day, we did think of going to
see some of the finest Cathar castles in the area, but by the time
we’d have got there it would've been baking hot, and they are
quite a climb to get to. So we decided to stay around the local area
and just go for a bit of a drive.
Unfortunately as we had
been doing quite a lot of driving already (we would notch up over
1000 miles before the week's end), it meant a lot of the places we ended up
going we had been to before, either because we couldn’t remember
we’d been there, or we recognised the name but couldn’t recall
the place, so the whole thing was an exercise in voluntary déjà vu.
Accompanying us on this
voyage nulle part, were the constant clatter of the DJ’s on
the radio, who I believe love the sound of their own voices even more
than their British counterparts. And that, is really saying
something. So we drove through Villalier, which had more one way and
no entry signs than any small town has a right to, Villegly, Cannes,
Peyriac, Reux Minervois and Aaille to name but a few, sometimes
stopping to walk the deserted streets and play a game of dodge the
dog turd, which the local mutt population seem to leave in epic quantities, but mainly continuing to drive around wondering
what we could do with ourselves, all the while getting tetchy and
crabby with each other.
To give us a break from
our sulky disagreeablness we stopped for a rather ropey coffee in
Siran, a place I remember very little about, before heading to a
rather nice spot on the Canal du Midi near Quarante. This lifted our
spirits as we unsheathed our camera gear, to fire off a few shots. By
this time it was mid day and the light was very harsh so it didn’t
look its best, but it was a nice spot to be. The canal was built in
the second half of the 17th Century by Pierre-Paul Riquet
under the reign of Louis XIV, with a view to improving the movement
of wheat, wine and textiles, the main export products from the midi
region, across the south of the country.
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| A section of the Canal du Midi with its many trees |
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| And here is a black & white stretch of the same canal, amazing what they can do. |
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| And this part even has a person stood next to it with a camera and a vacant smile |
It
is one of Europe’s longest and widest canal systems, with its 64
locks spread along the 240 km stretch from Toulouse to the coast, all
under the shade of 250,000 planted trees, no surprise it was
designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1994. Of
course it no longer has any importance as a trade route, this was
taken care of once the railways arrived in the 19th
century and it was left to decay. Strangely enough though it was the
British who reinvigorated interest in the Canal, and spurred its
economic upturn, as after WWII they took to boating on it as a form
of relaxation, in a way the French never did, and even today most of
the boating companies that serve the Canal are British owned.
After that we drove to
Pezenas, a lovely little town with many old buildings, and we had a good old
wander around the medieval part, keeping to the shade wherever
possible as the day was somewhat warm, which is part of the reason we
didn’t bring our cameras out for a stroll, that and the general
listlessness that had overtaken us.
Afterwards we decided to head back
to the gite along the main roads, as the back roads would have taken
too long, and we fancied a speedy return drive. As it happened though, the
road was closed at Mazamat, which somewhat impeded our journey, but luckily for us the local transport officialdom had put in place a
diversion. Yet the word diversion hardly does this piece of
thoroughfare digression justice, it barely hints at the impenetrable
depths it contained. If their brief was to try and be as vague,
abstruse, cryptic and downright mysterious as possible then they had
applied themselves with aplomb.
We trundled back and
forth between the various outskirts of Mazamet, arguing with the sat
nav as it tried, with increasing stubbornness, to take us back to the
main road (obviously this was normal practice for Sarah, who’d even
started to carry an alarming looking cudgel to threaten the device
with, but new to me, being the trusting sort that I am), always
hoping that each new street might possibly be the one that would lift
the veil on this inscrutable puzzle we had been set. But to no
effect, we just couldn’t penetrate its arcane, labyrinthine
intricacies no matter how hard we tried, but we did get to see a
great deal of Mazamet, far too much in fact, far, far too much.
Luckily for us we were
saved by a passing local with knowledge of the dark arts employed in
such situations, and who managed to ascertain two very salient points
about us in a very short time, 1. We were tourists, and 2. We were
lost. He pointed us in the right direction and with a jaunty wave and
a thumbs up from me, which I fretted about for the next half and hour
in case it was somehow offensive in France to raise one’s thumb
into the air, and we zoomed in haste to the gite, along back roads, which
actually took us longer than if we had just taken the back roads from
the beginning. Ho hum.
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| I'm afraid this isn't anywhere we went that day, it's just, apart from the canal, we didn't actually take any other pictures, so here are a few from Alet les Bains the day before, just break up the tedium. |
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| Spotted this house for sale, might have potential. |
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| An little old road |
After freshening up we
decided to have dinner at the local eatery again, but because there
was a band playing that night, they had decided to forgo their usual
excellent dishes in favour of a set menu. This had two rather
pertinent qualities that were missing from their normal bill of fare,
in that it managed to be both expensive, it was in fact the most
expensive meal we had whilst in France, and also awful, the dishes
were half cold, tasteless and slopped onto the plate like a
particularly distressing school dinner.
Whether this was
because they’d decided that if we were going to get free music, we
should pay for it in others ways, or that, because these nights were
a bit of an ex-pat hang out, they had the solemn conviction that
British people genuinely took delight in paying over the odds for
grub an emaciated tramp would turn his nose up at, I couldn’t
really say.
But on the plus side
the band were very good indeed.
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