Huelva and the river Guadalquivir

The Guadalquivir river estuary which separates Huelva and the Donana National Park from the coastal route south to Cadiz. This is the point at which the El Rocio pilgrims on horses and foot cross the estuary to Sanlucar de Barrameda.

Puente Genils to Huelva

Thursday 26th November.
Puente Genils to Huelva
The rain in Spain does fall mainly on the Plain – and it’s true, it rained all day as we drove from Puente Genils to Seville. Before heading for the coast we visited the Laguna de Zonar a wild life reserve and we both immediately felt a lot happier in the fresh air and countryside away from the car, the motorway and cities. Suddenly I felt rather bad about all the times I’ve scoffed at people “going away to find themselves” – this wasn’t quite the same but we realized that we knew all along what we really like.
We’d decided to head for Huelva the northern most part of the sherry region with the intention of working our way slowly south to Cadiz by the 5th Dec. in order to meet the Wells’ and their boat. But, there is a river between Huelva and Cadiz (crossable by ferry) and also a National Park (not crossable on a bicycle – whether this is because they just don’t want people in it or because there are lynx in it which might chase cyclists we never discovered) Also in the middle of the park there is a village called El Rocio. This is a typical ‘western town’ Wooden houses and stores either side of a wide street, mangy dogs, horses being lunged by macho mustachioed gauchos and the entire town covered in sand – not a trace of tarmac anywhere. So we stayed one night in Huelva, nice hotel, dining room the size of a tennis court, strip lights, TV that took up one whole wall, football and flamenco musak – such bliss!! Before dinner could be served they had to clear out the maternity class – most of them didn’t look old enough to conceive and really ought to have been still at school. The guide book had said that in Huelva they mine carbon so we thought it would be for pencils and fishing rods, but driving towards it there was an overwhelming smell of gas for about 10 miles. It is a colossal gas refinery and we were glad not to see anyone smoking nearby!

Granada to Puente Genils pics

Another view of Granada from the Alhambra palace.








Olives as far as the eye can see on the 'olive trail'










Fountain in the centre of Granada close to where we had the spectacular paella.

Granada to Puente Genils

Wednesday 25th November. Granada to Puente Genils. Frankly we didn’t really know what to do today. The pressing engagement is to return the car to Avis in Cadiz by Friday so what to do in the meantime. There is Cordoba to visit but we also want to call in on Country Cyclists in Alhama de Granada who have a good website and we hope they might be able to help us make some sense of how to ride our bikes in Spain. So we went to Alhama and actually found them and they were amazingly very kind, supportive and helpful and even sold us a £4.95 1:200k map for E12 which frankly was a bargain as that scale a) does not exist in Spain and b) anything above this only shows the motorways and dual carriageways. After them we had a bite of lunch in a really rural café in Iznazar which turned out to be owned by a lady from Shaftesbury, and we learned at last how they harvest olives – not in a week as we suspected but between now and next March and they don’t pick each olive one by one, they simply strip the whole branch off and process it through some huge chopping machine. From there we gave up on seeing Cordoba until later and settled for a room in a modern hotel in Puente Genil which had everything you need including a restaurant (definitely the sort of place you go to eat- not take your girlfriend) and a huge TV turned up very loud and showing football and tennis alternatively (not much of the latter). After traveling through France and eating in places with subdued lighting and silent couples concentrating on the food, it is extraordinary coming here. Full strip lights, TV blaring (football mostly) and music from speakers all at the same time. It is all hugely noisy, and the Spanish themselves are very talkative. At breakfast the little cafeteria was full of locals who must have come off their shift and were tucking into slabs of toast coated with olive oil and finely chopped tomatoes - or a rough looking fish paste (take your pick) yummy. All mixed with clouds of cigarette smoke as there is no ban here. Skin tight jeans or leather leggings, and high boots are much in fashion, topped with big cardigans or leather jackets. They are at least twice as big as the French. The other big difference is that whilst in France we mostly saw over-weight Labradors or poodles who were very well trained. Here the dogs have a perfectly horrid time, and I could have adopted at least 30 already. There are starving strays everywhere and lots of squashed dogs on the side of the road. They seem to know a soft touch and all head straight for me and I find it really distressing not being able to do much about it. At the other end of the scale the horses are stunning and look a picture of health, whereas in France they were mostly skin and bone and in terrible condition. And another thing about the difference between the two countries is that the French ladies are frankly ‘chic’ - office chic, casual chic etc wearing black, black and more black. On the other hand Spanish girls dress for the office as if they were going to a nightclub…. to go to church as if going to a nightclub, on a Saturday morning to do nothing – probably in the hope they’ll be going to a nightclub. And frankly they deserve to!!

Alhambra pics

Some of the amazing works of art in the palace, this first one is a ceiling well a bit more than that it represents stars, seven steps to heaven - all sorts and is truly beautiful. Just one of the many alcoves! A rather stupendous courtyard Plasterwork and marble and........... yours truly on the highest tower of the palace inaccessible to most Americans due to the narrowness spiral staircase!

Granada - The Alhambra Palace

Tuesday 24th November
The Alhambra Palace
Well - where do we start except to say that we were on our feet all day looking in amazement at the skill of the craftsmen 1000 years and more ago? In each room, the carvings on the walls of plaster and marble were so detailed that it was quite difficult to take it all in. They were perfectly beautiful, but it was difficult to concentrate. We had hired headphones which is usually a good thing, but in this case, (in Alec’s words) “ some ponce called Washington Irving “ was waffling on in very flowery language about columns, light, stars, the Koran, being a romantic and life in the 1830s , with no historical detail which was what we really wanted. We thought that they could have done a slightly more in depth version of how it was put together. However, nothing could really take away from its magnificence. We are the only English here (as usual with the Euro being as it is) but there are masses of Americans and it must be on their ‘European tour’. Some of them really are outstandingly large and we were glad not to meet them on a spiral staircase to the turrets. On the very highest turret there is a bell which was rung when the Catholics finally drove the Muslims out of town and is now only rung on 2nd January of each year.
Washington Irving seems to have written a great deal about all of Andalucia as most of the towns we go through, have the ‘Washington Irving route’.
We both really enjoyed the Palace of Charles Vth which was never finished and is now the Museum of Fine Art. Lots of great paintings by Spanish artists through the past 500 years. After resting up for a while we caught the shuttle bus back down the hill to try and find a map, look in on the cathedral where we interrupted a communion service and were then too embarrassed to leave and ate the most delicious Paella in a nearby square. Granada had a very festive air with a myriad of lit up fountains and the city centre was full of shoppers with Christmas presents and wrapping paper etc. It seems quite unreal that it is only 1 month away as we are still enjoying the heat. (and reveling in the fact that we are not going to send any cards etc!)
However fit we might be our legs never get used to going up of steep stairs. We were very relieved to get in to bed that night, age is a terrible thing!

Alcala la real to Granada

The fortress above Alcala la Real which was breathtakingly high and had views for miles. We were treated to a magnificent history lesson and movie which would have been all the better if we'd understood a word of it, but it was magnificent none the less.















The church originally a mosque where we can only guess they had lifted the floor to reveal the tombs shown in this picture.







.................and the outside with yet more excavations. At some stage someone had irrigated the whole place to provide washing facilities, baths, loos and even steam rooms.

Alcala la real to Granada

Alcala la Real to Granada
Monday 23rd November
We were lucky to have chosen this town quite by chance as it had the most spectacular fortress above it. We spent a happy couple of hours exploring it all in the sunshine. Being a bit ignorant (and having no guide book) we had no idea that it played a pivotal role in the battles between the Musselmen and Christian leaders in the past. There had been a fortified town there and the longest siege had lasted 9 months. It was incredibly high above the valley and we couldn’t quite believe that anyone had the energy to take food provisions up there in the first place. We watched an excellent film show about it which would have been even more interesting if either of us understood Spanish! But we did understand that the whole place survived until Napoleon and his army arrived and razed (burnt it to the ground) the place.
The road to Granada was through the Sierra with lovely views (except around every corner there was more of the same) until we hit the smoggy valley and Granada itself. We then spent a very long time winding through ever smaller streets with no idea of how to get out, reverse or find a place to park. This is becoming quite a habit! In the end we made it to the Alhambra Palace above Granada, (not where we had intended to stay as we thought it would be premium rates). It was actually a good place to be as we could dump the car and catch the very efficient shuttle bus up and down to the city.
The language barrier is not so bad and sign language works pretty well. We wait with baited breath to see what arrives when we order something, and have learnt that there are at least a dozen different translations for Pork. In fact quite soon we will grow snouts and talk in grunts! Breakfast appeared as a croissant filled with ham and cheese. Lunch in the next town was a ham and cheese baguette, and tonight there was a choice of pork chops, loin, sirloin or black pudding! We have since learned that the annual cull of pigs has just taken place so there is not much else. It is delicious but I don’t think many of them have seen the light of day except a few little black ones in the wild.
We are staying in the Hotel Guadalupe which is right outside the entrance to the Alhambra Palace – all marble, glitz and Wi-Fi – only the Wi-Fi doesn’t work above the 1st floor and we are on the 4th so we have to sit in the bar to connect, ah well things could be worse! An American family (grandparents, parents and two little girls) have just arrived. The restaurant closed 2 minutes before they got here – will they even get a sandwich, naaah!!

Ecija to Alcala la Real pics

The castle at Alcala la Real at night we made the mistake of driving up this hill, it got narrower and narrower until eventually we had to reverse back out and that's not where the car was scraped either!

Castle at Almodovar del Rio which we nearly walked up to but decided to have lunch at the bottom of the hill instead. Fortunately it was closed when we'd finished so escaped what looked like a long walk.

Ecija to Alcala la Real

Ecija to Alcala la Real
Sunday 22nd November.
Before leaving Ecija we breakfasted in the dining room we’d dined in last night. General Franco had dictated that many eating houses had to offer meals for 10 euros (or the equiv in his time) so you can get a reasonable 3 course meal everywhere. This morning, some effort was and had been made to clear up from the massive lunch party which had gone on the day before. The cleaners were shooed out as we arrived at 9.15 – clearly the Spanish habit of eating late is carried forward to breakfasting. After that we went walkabout in the town, sat in on a service in the Iglesia Santa Maria, visited the Museum – religious and archaeological with some fabulous Roman Mosaics, and housing the tourist office – helpful but not particularly for us.
We then tried to get out of Ecija down alleys which grew progressively narrower until finally thank heaven we burst into open countryside and the road leading toward Cordoba. We had also seen that our hire car had a large scrape on the front side which we are sure we hadn’t done. Thankfully Alec had reduced the excess to 35E.
The plain stretches on forever, with Orange trees on either side, then changing to Olives. We tried to find some smaller roads following the river bed, which we might be able to follow by bike, but they don’t seem to exist. We came across the fantastic Medieval Castillo Almodovar del Rio so sat in the sun to admire it, feeling too lazy to walk all the way up to the entrance. We by-passed Cordoba in favour of heading towards Granada, as we will go there on our way back to Cadiz. This area is one of the largest olive oil producing areas in the world so there are a LOT of olive groves and we cannot imagine how they pick them all. I did see 2 men stripping 1 bush by hand. The temperature dropped from 23C down to 13C the higher we climbed towards to Sierra Nevada.
We have stopped in Alcala la Real for the night which is a small hilltop town full of olive processing factories. We were starving as we hadn’t eaten for hours so shot in to a small café to have a large bit of toast covered in tomatoes and olive oil, as a little appetizer before supper later. They don’t open most restaurants till 9.30.

Tarifa to Ecija pics

Iglesia Santa Maria in Ecija pretty for it's blue enamel tiles and square tower with arches in front of it!










The main square in Ecija where the Roman walls and buildings have been unearthed and below some Roman mosaic now on the wall in the museum.

Tarifa to Ecija

Saturday 21st November.
Tarifa to Ecija
What we really want to do is get back on our bikes and experience a bit of Spain at a snail’s pace. So far this has been absolutely impossible as the coast is all terribly built up, and anyway the coastline and most of the country itself is crisscrossed with mountains. So we left Tarifa and the coast and headed toward Cadiz and Seville but soon turned inland for Cordoba. The countryside is vast- wind farms the size of English counties stretch over the horizon (Spain produces 34% of its electrical requirement from renewable energy!) We saw many eagles and storks circling, hundreds of partridge and behind the tractors you see rows of egrets, instead of seagulls. The day got hotter and hotter and we stopped in Medina Sedonia for a coffee and a plate of rustic hamon – delicious. The bar was full of stuffed partridges and cages with parakeets and skylarks. The parakeets were allowed out so we felt rather sorry for the poor little skylarks and on seeing so many later flying above the fields had to wonder what those ones had done to deserve being kept in a cage and in a ‘smoking is permitted’ bar. Eventually all that golf caught up with me and we pulled into Moron to find somewhere to stay but it had an industrial feel to it and a lack of accommodation so we came on to Ecija where from a distance we counted eight churches. Ecija has a very different feel. The Romans came here in 200BC (only they called it Astigi) and the remains of their work can be seen in an exposed part of the Plaza about 20ft lower than the current level of the town.

Tarifa

Arcos a hilltop village on the way from Tarifa to Ecija.

Soto to Tarifa

Friday 20th November 21, 2009
Sotogrande to Tarifa
After a good week of R and R (the U.K for me, and Alec working hard at improving his golf swing in Sotogrande) we have now picked up the thread again. It is rather daunting; in France we were very focused about getting from North to South but Spain is a different challenge altogether as that doesn’t seem possible.
The mountain ranges look most imposing from the air, and from the ground they are even more daunting. We are realizing that great swathes of land are totally out of reach. However we are breaking ourselves in gently with the flattest part of the South West. (We hope)
We set off with the bikes loaded in to the back of a car and drove past Gibraltar and Algeciras en route for Tarifa. Africa was looking so close it felt as if you could reach out and touch it. It had been a little damp in Soto but after passing Gibraltar the sky cleared and it is 22 degs and sunny. Bliss. We drove into Tarifa which is one of the most popular surfing centers in the world. Not surprising as the beach stretches for miles with Atlantic rollers arriving all the way from America. It was full of young surfers and quite a few who had probably arrived in the 80s and never got around to going home. The streets are narrow, stray cats, dogs and free range children everywhere and it has a strong Moorish feel. We checked in to a tiny hotel in a back alley (after being spoilt rotten for a week a bit of penance was due!) which was spick and span, and then familiarized ourselves with the town, via a bar a good restaurant and another bar. Initially we were a rather under-awed (almost depressed) by the town when compared to the organized cleanliness of France. It seems quite African in the approach to rubbish and plastic bags but after a couple of hours we were used to it. The Spaniards are so vibrant, curvaceous (yes wow) and fun to watch so we had a happy evening doing exactly that.

Tarifa to Ecija

Sunset down a narrow street in Tarifa.









A typical town house in Tarifa - ripe for development!









Tarifa fort overlooking the ferry port.







Where it all ends, the southern most part of Spain and the northern most part of Africa.










The ferry to Tangier - which runs every two hours and where the time is two hours ahead of European time.

Jerez

You know when you have made it to Jerez, this little guys pops up on every hill top in the area. Gives Vivi that Friday lunchtime feeling!

manzanares pics

The only deer to stand still long enough for me to stop the car and take a picture, probably not something it should let happen too often!





View of the National Park from near the top.








About as high as you can get in Spain









Castle at Campanario which I found by mistake as I'd missed a turn. It took me three more goes to find the turn as the Spanish aren't very good at putting up road signs with the road number and where it goes to, 'spose if you are a local you don't need to know do you.

Manzanares to Seville

Unlike yesterday where I followed mountain paths and river valleys, today began on the Spanish Plain which is completely flat and stretches for miles in all directions. Interspersed with what may be but I don’t know volcanic plugs, upon which generally sits an abandoned fort. After Cuidad Real I turned south at Pueblo de Don Rodrigo (wonder who he was) Almaden, Penarroya and then the countryside really changed as I entered Andalucia went through Alanis and the mountains just got bigger and bigger, the road turned into a gravel track and if I was a Doug N-J I would have really enjoyed the next hour and half of terrifying hair pin bends with awesome drops and the sun dead ahead (so at least I knew I was going the right way). This is the National Park and there are deer everywhere but very shy. I suspect they appear on the menu on a few of the bars around here so getting a photo of one standing still was tricky, there are pigs too loads of them eating the acorns under the stunted oak trees. Anyway just when I thought going up would never end I remembered my goddaughter has just reached to summit of Mt Kilimanjaro only throwing up 21 times due to altitude sickness. All of a sudden riding a bicycle from the Manche to the Mediterranean looks a bit tame but I reckon if I’d had one of the oysters on offer on the Ile de Re I could have matched her on the vomit stakes. So well done Nannabel and just as soon as your mother shows me how to find you on Facebook I’ll look into sponsoring you!! xx

Anyway on I went to Cazalla de la Sierra where the weekend traffic was building up for their return trip to Seville, where everyone knows the marmalade oranges come from and they do too they aren’t grown by the acre or hectare around here the orange trees stretch for sq mile after mile. So I joined the Q and chugged slowly into town. I had forgotten how big Seville is and how hard it is to find anywhere to park so in the end headed out towards Cadiz and am happily settled in the Dona Carmela.

Very excited about tomorrow as I will finally make it to Soto to stay with our old mates Anthony and Jill where as ever there will be stogies, copious amounts of chilled white, amazingly good food and all I’ll have to do to earn this is listen politely to A’s repertoire of limericks (days not hours), his Postman Pat and Mrs Goggins joke, the Snake and the Elephant playing snooker joke and let him win at golf. Well it’s hard but someone’s got to do it!

Lleida pics

Now that's what I call a big wind farm and this isn't all of it by a long way.








Lleida where I stayed Friday evening.
Please note blue sky for anyone at Aller on Saturday!

Lleida to Manzanares pics

A Sun Farm some of them cover as much as a 100 acres all individually seated on sun tracking plinths.







Now I know why those steps in Rome are called The Spanish Steps - obvious innit!








The town of Corbera d'Ebre - yet another marvelous view!









Little place called Asco where the rocks towered above the houses. Bit like living in the Piddle Valley!!







Ebre river at Flix.

Beziers to Lleida (In Spain)

13th November 2009.
Bit of an early start today as I had to drop Vivi off at Beziers station to catch the TGV to Lille and from there on to London. Incredibly this can be done in 8 hours and that includes 45 minutes in Lille. Anyway the train left at 7.35am so there was a bit of a rush but we made it and had breakfast, so all was well. After dropping her off I had another breakfast which got me up to 8.30am and then I suddenly realized that I had nothing to do until 10am when a taxi was coming to take me and the bikes and the panniers and rucksack and bike boxes to Barcelona. Time drags a bit when you are on your own waiting. Anyway I survived, the taxi came and off we went to Spain. The weather having been fantastic yesterday had turned decidedly damp although this may have been because we were passing the Pyrenees where it’s always dank. Once past them it cheered up a lot and Barcelona was positively bright. I picked up a hire car at the airport stuck a pin in the map and headed to a place called Lleida. It is bigger than I’d anticipated and having not driven for 9 weeks it was quite daunting in fact I sweated more driving than I ever have cycling.
Saturday 14th
Left Lleida at about 9 and heading for Ciudad Real. Within 20 minutes I’d stopped the car 3 times because every corner I went around produced another stunning view and I just had to take a picture. Actually seeing them now they weren’t as stunning as I’d thought. The citadel in Lleida which looks as though it’s a ‘must see’ is in fact nothing more than a ruin probably built by the Saracens and knocked down by the Crusaders and no one has been up there since to see whether it’s worth restoring.
My journey, and for the man with the map it went thus Lleida, Flix, Alcaniz, Montalban, Teruel, Torrebaja, Motila, Tomelloso, Manzanares – where fortunately the tourist office was still open so without the aid of a phrase book yet I managed to be booked into a hotel.
The remarkable thing about Spain is a) it’s huge and b) there doesn’t seem to be anyone in it. And another thing they really have got renewable energy down to a fine art. They have Sun Farms – not just a few panels on your roof, acres and acres of them and wind farms – I thought Pendogget Wind Farm was big, these guys have a thousand at a time!
Anyway apart from the sites I’ve seen it’s been a boring old day, I’ve wondered what everyone is up to, can’t wait to hear what the bag was at Aller, texted Vivi twice and now I’m having supper on my own!! Nah – it’s great really. Except I’ve just made myself a whiskey and what I thought was soda is cunningly disguised own brand lemonade only they call it soda. Only the Spanish could play a trick like that.

Portiragnes pics

Locks at Beziers where the canal drops tens of feet in a very short distance.







Paul Riquet - the genius behind it all.

Portiragnes

Add Flamingoes at the nature reserve at Portiragnes.caption

Bez - Portiragnes pics

really horrid tan marks on our feet after 9 weeks of cycling shoes. Wet feet from our paddle in the Med.








Reckon we must nearly be in Spain!








Allee Paul Riquet who designed and built the Canal du Midi. Thanks to him crossing France has been made a 100 times easier.







Ah a bit of glamour - celebratory pics of us upon arrival at the Med.

camp bloke!

Beziers to Portiragnes

Thursday 12th November
Beziers to the Med
We decided to abandon the luggage today and stay another night, so we could cycle to the Mediterranean and have a celebratory picnic on the beach at Portiragnes. It is really sunny and warm so back to shirtsleeves. We dipped our toes in the sea before allowing ourselves a bottle of champagne followed by a snooze.
1565 miles in all - we felt we had deserved it.
Now back to the drawing board to decide how best to tackle Spain.

Olonzac - Beziers pics

Massif Centrale from the Languedoc.

Olonzac to Beziers

Wednesday 11th November, Olonzac to Beziers Our host definitely had a worse headache than us, but managed to give us a bit of breakfast. All the other old men in the village were in the bar by 10 a.m having glasses of wine, sympathizing with the amount of clearing up he had to do. They informed us that Armistice Day is a Bank holiday in France so everywhere was closed. Another excuse for a day off work but it did mean no heavy lorries on the roads. We have rather given up on the canal and set off cross country through very attractive wine growing land. We are now in the Languedoc region which is a lovely mix of undulating hills covered with pines and oaks and vines. It is much warmer as we near the coast . We clocked up 40 miles and made it to Beziers as dusk was falling. We had to go that far as everywhere else was shut. It is quite spectacular coming in to the town with the Cathedral on top of the hill, but we didn’t hang around to look at much as it had very dodgy inhabitants. We had to push the bikes up very steep cobbled streets and thought we were going to get mugged. A group of Algerians or similar crowded around us in a slightly hostile way but backed off when they saw how tired and muddy we looked. Luckily we made it to a great hotel in the centre and heaved a sigh of relief.

Carcassonne to Olonzac pics

Vivi's little friend! Pont de Canal somewhere near Homps.         Another of our mates! Suddenly the scenery changed from French rural to Mediterranean an olive grove the first we had seen but by the end of the day they were old hat! Admire silver, green yellow and mountain!!

Carcassonne to Olonzac

Tuesday 9th November Carcassonne to Olonzac The canal route improved a bit in so far as it was now dry but the roots and the leaves are still a formidable hazard. Getting out of Carcassonne was fairly easy and we soon stormed into Puicheric where originally we had thought we’d spend the night. Other than seeing Kingfishers, Egrets and hundreds of ducks biking along the canal is getting a bit dull. We still get excited by Red Squirels but are beginning to realize that they are very common here. You can’t see over the banks a lot of the time and if you do look for too long at any view there is a danger you will go off the track or hit a root. As it was only 3’ish at Puicheric, we decided to push on for Homps, a place the guide books told us had 2 B&B’s and a hotel. Homps it turns out has all of these but they were closed for the winter, but someone kindly informed us that at Olonzac there are plenty of B&Bs and hotels. So off we went again a little concerned by now as cars are starting to use headlights and dusk is approaching. Olonzac is an unprepossessing sort of place but on entering the village there was a bar cum hotel so we dived in and Alec made probably the biggest mistake of his life by accepting a room which had no curtains (but it did have shutters) and a (really skanky) shower – we couldn’t have a room with a bath because it would have been too noisy. Now we should have asked ‘why’ but we are still new to this game and it wasn’t until we had paid for the room up front that we learned that tonight the bar had an evening of three heavy metal bands playing, starting at 9.30pm and going on until possibly 2am but we were assured by our congenial fag smoking host, not later than 3am. There was a certain amount of discussion about moving elsewhere to a B&B of which there were many but we’d been taken in by the first siren’s call so missed them all. We dallied as long as possible in a pizzeria which did an exceptionally good veal escalope, salads etc and returned as the bands were just warming up at about 10.30pm. Heavy metal would not have been our first choice in music and it was spectacularly noisy with audience participation in the form of shrieks, grunts and other Neanderthal sounds. Fortunately they packed it in at about 12.30 so it could have been worse.

A Day in Carcassonne

Monday 8th November Carcassonne Hysterical breakfast where we were lined up by a young (and only) waitress before we could start and were told what our options were. It began with cold drinks, hot drinks, egg boiling machine, yogurt and went on all the way around the room. The prunes (from Agen) were last and when I took them to our table to mix into the yogurt I was severely rebuked as this was strictly forbidden. 3 men (English) then wandered in obviously having a wicked weekend and looked suitably jaded, and immediately fell into the same trap. They all had that Land Agent look about them and one it transpires had a house up the Piddle Valley where his wife lives and he spends the week in London. Politeness prevented me from quizzing him further but we’ll work him out in time. After breakfast we set off up the hill to the fort, it was drizzling and there was a bitterly cold wind (we have now learned that it is called the Cers, straight from the snowy Pyrenees) but we were full of excited anticipation and the view from outside the castle walls was full of promise. The ‘castle’ or defended city really is huge and spectacular possibly too huge to appreciate, and it had a very turbulent history. The Romans, Goths, Catheres, (local religion denounced by Rome and massacred in the XVIIIs), followed by the Sarrasins all put their stamp on it and our own Black Prince burnt it down. 1500 years after the Romans, an architect by the name of Monsieur Violett-Le-Duc , without the aid of computer imaging worked out just exactly how it had first been put together and presumably with a substantial grant from the public purse, re-built it as it had originally been. After two hours of fairly intense culture it was time for a hot choc followed by a glass of the local red and then the best bowl of pumpkin soup ever at the restaurant Le St Jean which as luck would have it also had wi-fi so we caught up with a lot! It was too cold to do much except hibernate after that so we finished our books. We have embarked on an internet Spanish course, (a bit too late probably) so we practiced a few of the more important parts of lesson no 1. ie where is the loo, soap, shower, bank etc. We met a couple of fellow travelers from America and an amazing looking couple who were from Scotland, the man wearing shorts of all things, he was probably a postman. We have all our clothes on in layers at the same time. 

And so ended a day of physical recuperation.

Villepinte - Carcassonne pics

The view of the old city of Carcassonne from the roof top bar of our hotel, bit too cold for a drink.











Old city entrance.








Now if your address wasn't what it is wouldn't you just love to live here!









Obviously not waiting for a quick get away.