April Holiday, Day 10

Sadly, the clear skies under which we had gone to sleep this morning clouded over during the night, and the Swan Whisperer was lucky not to get wet when he went for his run. However, it didn't start raining until he was safely in the shower.

We said goodbye to our hosts at about 10:00 and set off towards Foix. Our first port of call was a supermarket, in Perpignan, to stock up for the weekend - only apparently Monday isn't a bank holiday here, they don't transfer May Day. Thursday is a holiday, Ascension Day, and they used to have 8 May (VE Day) and Whit Monday, too. This year that will be on the 16th, I suppose - it's always  the last Monday in May whenever Pentecost is in the UK, and has been for the last 40 years or so.

Anyway, apart from fresh bread we have enough to do us until Tuesday morning.  We thought, as we were in the area, that we would go a bit further south still and visit the Château de Gudanes, which is being refurbished by an Australian family.

Nobody was at home, but I'm glad we saw it, anyway.  Then the Satnav said it was only another 2 hours to where we had tentatively planned to spend the night, if we didn't mind paying motorway tolls, so we headed off.  Not nearly such an interesting drive, of course - the first bit, while on good enough roads, had been full of hairpin bends and mountain scenery and so on.  This was just boring motorway, mostly round Toulouse (felt that way).

We are now on a farm outside Montauban, so technically still in the South of France. It is still cold and windy, and we might have to have hot-water bottles again tonight, having not wanted them the past two nights.