April Holiday, Day 8

This morning we woke up, rather late, in a park to the NE of Castres, and, after breakfast, decided to have a wander round.

The SW said that the skating rink was "just over there", which it may well have been, but it was across a river and the bridge had been closed as, rather obviously, unsafe. And it would have been a long way round by road, on foot, we had to abandon that idea. We wandered down to the main road and saw a bus stop and, just as we had decided that it would take us into town, up came the bus itself. What's more, it was totally free!

So we went into town and had a potter about, and I went to Monoprix to buy the shower gel I like from there, and found that has a travel-size, so treated myself to one, too.  Castres was pretty, but not desperately interesting, so we bought some bread and a couple of quiches for lunch, and then spent a little while finding where to catch the bus back to the park, and there the bus was, so we caught it, and after a last wander round the bit we hadn't seen, set off for Carcassonne.

We stopped at a lake resort to have lunch, which was lovely; we tried eating out of doors but, although it was a beautiful day, there was a cold wind, so we abandoned the effort half-way through.

We are in a camp-site at Carcassonne, as it is in walking distance of the citadel - the SW promptly went to explore, and I hope to in the morning - but we are not in a very nice pitch - very sloping, and there is a tree in the way so we can't pitch our awning. The sanitaires are horrible, too, although clean. But there was a launderette, and I had run out of warm clothes so did a load, just in case it gets much colder again as we head north. It is not seriously hot here, but lovely in the sun, and we envied those whose pitches had enough sun to sit out in!

We went shopping at a local supermarket, and a nice thing about this place is that we have been able to order bread for the morning. Supper was fish and vegetables, followed by chestnut mousse, and now it is bed time.