Rodez Monday

This post has a different format to the previous ones. The blogging software I use has given up. Reinstalling and installing the latest version doesn't work. Spent about 3 hours trying. Hope this one looks OK.

After a couple of nights broken by loud voices, we were ready for a good night’s sleep last night. The hotel room was very cool to start, but too cool, so we adjusted the airconditioning by a couple of degrees. Bad move. Much too warm during the night, the aircon was obviously touchy and a couple of degrees adjustment seemed to change it by a lot more. Headache material. Excellent breakfast outside at the Kyriad hotel.

We spent the morning exploring the old part of Cahors and enjoyed it very much. We wanted to visit tourist info and get some paracetamol for the headache from getting too hot during the night, so went into a car park, found that the first hour was free, but didn’t realise that we had a 10 min walk. After waiting for a while at tourist info, and not having parked where we really wanted to, Rick raced back to the car park, realising, just near the car park, that he didn’t think to get the ticket, from Gill, to get out of the car park. There was an attendant there, but he spoke no English and Rick’s  French was not quite enough to explain the situation. Fortunately there was a man at the other end of a button who spoke some English. When he understood what happened, he remotely printed a ticket and Rick was able to leave the car park. drove down and picked up Gill, who still can’t walk fast or for a long way, and found a better car park. No indication of parking charge. Some great little laneways, old buildings as you’d expect. Coffee in one of the smaller squares. We also stopped at a fascinating clock. Love things that move and do stuff. There was a supermarket next to the car park that advertised one hour free in this carpark if you bought something from the supermarket. Well, we always need wine, so a bottle of rose later, we were out of the car park, saving almost a whole 2 Euros.

Passed through the edge of a very attractive, very small village, Vers, and had to detour down the (main) street, not sure that there were other streets.

“She” recalculated our route after this detour and, right on queue, found a short cut back to the road she wanted us to be on.

Figeac was on the route, with this east-west route crossing the north-south route we travelled when we went to Montreal and Figeac was the crossing point. We accidently found a parking spot across the river from the old town, found that we could have half an hour free parking, and did a quick circuit of the other side of the old town to the side we visited over a week ago.

Conques was the next stop. We didn’t know much about this village, except it was reputed to be one of the “beautiful villages”. Wow! was it just that. Built on the side of a hill, it is obviously a very popular place to visit. So many cars, so much parking, but still hard to find a parking space. We found a pile of gravel dumped over 2 spaces and squeezed in sideways over the 2 spaces. As they say, a picture is worth a hundred words, so there must be thousands of words here.

We’re now settled in to our hotel in Rodez, finished eating, had a couple of wines and almost ready to flake out.

Cahors Sunday

 

 

 

Another great meal and music last night. We had Moules & Frites with white wine and rosé, all with unlimited quantities. The brass band really pumped out a great range of music and over powered the canned music that was playing at the cafe across the square, much more effective than a few nights ago. It was the Kanaris’ (the band) 50th anniversary. The big photo below is from the internet. There are many instruments not in the photo, including 2 sousaphones.

 

 

 

 

The canned music went on well after the official meal/music stopped, but fortunately not as long as a few nights ago. The loud discussions outside our window stopped very quickly when someone from the house across the road had a few loud, stern words. The street is only a bit over 2 car widths wide, so windows are very close to the road.

 

We left Joan & John this morning, sadly, but it was great spending a very relaxed time with them. It is probably fair to say that we all “tasted” a little more wine than we usually do, but it was all for experience, at least that’s our story.

As often happens, we set the GPS for our destination and were distracted. Being a beautiful sunny day, when we took a wrong turn in Agen and saw the canal with boats, we thought we really should have another look (we visited the aqueduct 4 years ago, but we didn’t see any boats). We were amused to see a hire boat almost sideways in the canal before the aqueduct. Not really sure what they were trying to do, but it took them a while to straighten up and move towards the aqueduct. There were lots of boats going both ways, over the aqueduct and through the lock. It was easy to spend time just watching.

The aqueduct is 539 metres long and was opened in 1849. When Rick finally had (almost) enough, we obeyed “her” and got back on the back roads to Cahors.

 

 

Another distraction! We saw a bastide village, Tournon d’Agenais, off to the side and just had to detour. The original bastide town was built here in 1270, but there is very little of the original town left.

 

 

 

 

At the foot of the hill were a lot of wildflowers, the extent looked spectacular.

 

 

This time we let “her” guide us to our destination for the day. We have been to Cahors previously and headed to the area of the 14th century bridge, an attractive area to sit with a coffee. Very peaceful in the shade, looking over the river to the cliffs and downstream to the old bridge. We then walked over the bridge and watched “things not going quite right” with one boat trying to straighten up in the lock. Not sure what was so difficult, suspect the “boat people” were very inexperienced. Of course, the more people watched, the less things went to plan. So easy to spend time just watching.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Montreal Saturday

Had dinner last night with friends of Joan & John’s in nearby Nerac. Good night with 10 people. There was another meal and concert in the Montreal square, so when we got home around 11 pm, we walked up and had a look. There was a junior brass band with about 15 musicians playing. They were good. Unfortunately, across the square, there was a cafe with their own disco stuff competing and overpowering the brass band. Doubt that it was part of the organised fete, they shouldn’t have played the canned music so loudly while the brass band was playing. We went home soon after and went to bed. The brass music stopped around midnight, but the canned music went on for a long time after, followed by very loud conversations and arguments outside our window until well after 4am. The street cleaners were hosing down the streets by 7am, so none of us got much sleep. It seems that the main disturbance was from one very small group. The cafe owner was out cleaning his outside bar area early and didn’t seem too impressed with the mess. It’s great being so close th the village square, but on odd occasions like this it’s a disadvantage. Fortunately this was a rare occurrance.

We had a slow morning, wonder why. John & I spent a lot of the morning levelling and adjusting a simple but attractive long case clock and managed to get it working and keeping good time. Not sure why, but the hour chimes sound twice. We’ll see how it sounds at midnight when we get 24 strikes.

Joan & John took us out to lunch today for a joint birthday lunch for us. As none of us were home in Aus for either Gill or Rick’s birthday, this was a nice surprise on Gill’s birthday today

 

Tonight we are going to a moules frites night in the square. Moules-frites is a popular main dish of mussels and fries originating in Belgium. There will be a large local brass band, whom we heard a few years ago when we were last here, and are very good. Looking forward to it. We expect that there will be a bit more control over the late nighters. We can hear the band practising now.

We’re sorry that we have to leave tomorrow (Sunday), it’s been great fun being here with J & J, but we’re all moving on to other sights and places. It’s been very relaxing for the week and we now have to get back in our own car.

Montreal Thursday

Joan & John had booked a wine tasting with appropriate food samples at Magnaut winery. A chef from a good restaurant was there to prepare the food samples. The Vigneron gave the chef 3 bottles of wine and asked him to prepare dishes that would complement the wines. Until now, Rick (not Gill, who is better informed) thought that matching wine with food was a little pretentious. Got that wrong. When we got onto the reds, Rick tasted a red that he didn’t like (as per many reds), then tasted the food sample that the chef prepared. What a great combination. The wine was much gentler and tasted good. Big lesson. We had a tour over the winery with detailed explanations of the process and then a 1 hour tasting. A great and informative morning.

 

 

 

 

Stunning blue sky. No, not a storm cloud in the corner, but something on the lens that I can’t get rid of.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back home to recover, before going out to the opening night of the Montreal fête in the village square, about 100 metres from home. It was a paella and wine night, starting with Floc aperitives, melon entree, paella main course, eclair desert & coffee, with an unlimited supply of vin rouge. For a non red wine drinker, Rick did pretty well. Bit slow the next morning though. There was a fantastic local brass band, La Bonne Nouvelle, lots of Jazz and other rousing music. Here is a link to a bit of video of the band. https://youtu.be/acQFg1nfXa0. Still very warm and light at 9pm.

Montreal Wednesday

 

 

The morning was spent planning the week after we leave here, we’re due in Chamonix on Friday week and have 6 days to get there. Booked most of the accommodation. Lunch inside today, it was too hot to eat outside. This afternoon we went to Eauze to visit the excavated ruins of a large Roman Villa, then on to the village square for a cold rosé before heading home.

Montreal Tuesday

 

 

There’s this stuff called Floc. The Floc de Gascogne is a regional apéritif from the Côtes de Gascogne and Armagnac regions of south west  France. It is a vin de liqueur fortified with armagnac, the local brandy. Today was a big Floc tasting day in Condom. We were told that the best time to tast is around 10am, when the palate is clean and fresh. So we did as were told. The tastings were at a number of venues and were often associated with samples of other local products. The first tasting turned out to be a competition between 8 Floc makers, so the tasting glasses were lined up and we had to vote on which one we thought was the best. We were the first “tasters” this morning so had the undivided attention of the “presenter”, or did she of us?

 

 

We eventually moved on, to cocktails beside the cathedral. We had 3 choices, also all based on Floc.

Down the main street then, to another tasting with local meats. One little problem that the shop owners thought that the Floc festival was tomorrow, so wasn’t ready. She quickly arranged tastings and sampling for us and presumably she realised her mistake and was ready for the next visitors.

By the time we left there, it was time to book for lunch at nearby restaurant. Just time to try couple of floc / icecream combinations before going back for lunch. Condom is on the Santiago de Compostela pilgrimage route, originating in the 9th century. The pilgrims follow the trail marked with scallop shells and usually have a shell on their back pack. The pilgrims usually are on foot, but we saw an unusual modern way to travel.

 

 

Back home for a bit of time out before going back to Condom for a great organ and soprano concert in the beautiful cathedral. The cathedral was built in the early 16th century. More Floc cocktail tastings and the announcement of the winners of the competition we first tasted for. 3 of the 4 of us picked the winner.

There was a producer’s market and music behind the cathedral, so we went there for a while. Click to see a short video clip of the action. Back home for dinner. Still clear sky, 23 degrees and very quiet.

Montreal Monday

John & Rick spent a lot of the morning working out how to use a new Karcher high pressure spray to clean the patio pavers. Finally worked out that detergent only worked with one particular wand on a particular setting. The pavers look great. Joan and Gill made a peach tart with peaches from yesterday’s market trip and most of a raspberry something. Both patio and raspberry stuff to be continued next time we have enough time to spare in the next day or so.

After lunch, we went for a drive through Le Puy, one of the many attractive villages, then on to Chateau Monluc, where we had a tour of the cellars and a history of the Armagnac based liquor, Pousse Rapière. The recipe is a closely guarded secret and blends with the Vin Sauvage, Traditional Method. Then there was a wine tasting which included the Pousse Rapière. Tastes pretty good.

We then went on to St Orens-Pouy-Petit, another very attractive village. The Château de St Orens (sixteenth century) forming part of the fortified village and now containing the Salle de Fête (a function and exhibition space) and Mairie (mayor's office). Many of the houses have painted ceramic decorations on their front walls.

Back “home” for a good coffee and break then on to Fources, one of the prettiest villages in the area (our description) for a wine tasting of some local wine.