Carcassonne

This was another sight past which I had driven on my many trips between Bologna, La Rochelle and the UK. From the speeding freeway, the medieval city of Carcassonne with its 3 km of double walls looks ancient and romantic.  Up close you realise that it was completely restored in the 19^th century by the (in)famous architect Eugene Viollet-le-Duc. The romance of the place is somewhat diluted by the 1000’s of mid-August tourists. Having said this, we did manage a relatively private circumnavigation of the walls and then discovered an extremely pleasant restaurant under towering plane trees away from the hoi polloi. We then wandered back down over the ancient bridge over the River Aude to the “bastide" or new town.

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Toulouse

In the past, I had driven past Toulouse on my many trips between Bologna, La Rochelle and the UK. I had always associated it with Airbus and hence had the idea that Toulouse was a modern city. We have now found that this is not quite the case. It is, in fact a gloriously historic city with all kinds of fascinating architecture.

  

We stayed in the B&B “Les Douves” (The Moat) in the tiny town of Saint Thomas, 40 kms west of Toulouse. It was so small that it didn’t even have a bar. But, it did happen to have its annual folk festival underway for a couple of evenings. It was rather fun to join in with the locals at the communal trestle tables sharing barbequed saucisson and rough red. I had the impression the one or two of them had never ventured as far as the big city of Toulouse.

We dined out in the local town of L’Isle-Jourdain. On one evening the dinner was interesting and ordinary and the other it was interesting an excellent. The town had a much needed coin laundrette and also an impressive covered market which had been converted into a somewhat eclectic museum of church bells.

Toulouse itself has an abundance of ecclesiastical and secular architectural marvels. For us, the most impressive museum was the 14^th century Augustine monastery which was converted at the same time as the Louvre in 1793.

Our favourite piece of church architecture would have been the Jacobins Church, if only for the magnificent towering kaleidoscopic stained glass windows.

No visit to this area would be complete without a wander along the mythical Canal de Midi. One day, we will hire a barge for a trip along here. One day.

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Roquefort

We knew that Roquefort was somewhere nearby. It was easy to find, we just followed our noses. We did a tour of the “Societe” caves, which house 1000’s of maturing sheep milk/penicillin veined cheeses. These naturally occurring caves were expansive and very impressive. One minor delusion was, it being out of season, the cheeses on display were actually fake.

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Millau

It took us several attempts to access the freeway out of Lyon, but soon we found ourselves on a lovely series of sweeping back roads up over the Massif Centrale and across the spectacular Auvergne region dotted with “puys”, or volcanic hills.

  

Ingrid decided that we would stay overnight in an obscure little town called Millau (pronounced “mee-oh” as in O Sole Mio !!). She wondered why I was obviously a bit excited by this prospect. She eventually understood when we came around a bend and she saw this – the Millau Viaduct, the tallest bridge in the world. Apart from all of the engineering superlatives, this structure is just mesmerizingly gorgeous. 

We stayed just outside the town in a very cheap, but quite cheerful motel attached to a bowling alley. We had an aperitif in the main square and afterwards, a particularly enjoyable dinner at La Mangeoire restaurant. In the morning we found a good coffee at the covered market and then Ingrid let me drool over the bridge for another couple of hours.

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Lyon

On our way down to the south west of France, we stayed overnight in Lyon, on the confluence of the Rhone and Saone Rivers. In the rain, we were guided through twisting, steep, one-way streets by Boris our GPS, to our B&B accommodation in the former silk working area. It was ….  somewhat bohemian.

Despite Lyon being renowned as one of the gastronomic capitals of France, due to August holiday closures and slightly off directions, we ended up dining in an Algerian run pizzeria. The pizza was excellent. The next morning, whilst wandering through the old town on the other side of the Saone we came across any number of “bouchons”, local restaurants serving traditional workers fare for which Lyon is famous. Too late!

  

Having spent only a couple of hours in Lyon, we promised ourselves that we would return sometime as it is clearly a complex and fascinating city.

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