Castelsarrasin to Toulouse

Thursday 5th November. Castelsarrasin to Toulouse It was still raining but we put our best foot forward and Alec having wrapped his gloved hands into polythene bags, set off either for St Jory or Toulouse itself. Our only concern was that if we stopped at St Jory that would mean another day before we got to Toulouse and since we don’t like cities anyway it seemed a pity not to get it over with. After counting 7 kingfishers and being soaking wet we gave up and tried a station – which was closed so we tried a bar. The bar was open but not doing food, so we hung around and eventually they said we could have bread and cold meat – fine and two glasses of red wine please. A pichet arrived which was more than we were expecting but who cares, it hardly touched the sides. Fortified we tried the station again and to our amazement right at that moment a bus arrived and offered to take us to Toulouse – free because we didn’t have a ticket. It was 22 miles and we did it in 40 minutes, now that’s traveling! We gave the driver 10 euros which ingratiated us so much he then became our self appointed tour guide. We stayed in the centre of town and had dinner in a very trendy bar which was full of models who were very stylish but did not appear to eat anything. Definitely not worth the pain!