The Swan Whisperer went over to the convenience store across the road first thing and bought croissants for breakfast, which were nice. After breakfast, I went over and got what we needed for the day, and then the SW went for a walk, which he enjoyed. We decided to drive to Quillan and have lunch there, and a walk round the town. But oh, it is such a sad little town. It is very pretty, with a river running through it - and a notice for anglers explaining where the town beat was, which fish were in season when, and that it was catch-and-release exclusively. Apparently the river was used to float logs down to the mills - we saw several of the lorries that now perform this function during our day.
Anyway, the sad thing about Quillan was that almost all the shops were empty. I saw a convenience store, a pharmacy (of course), whose window display made me smile,
a second-hand shop and an English bookshop, the latter only opening two hours a day. Later I did see a post office and a gendarmerie, but where we walked was empty shop after empty shop, so sad, so depressing!
So we came away, and drove up to Atax, where there is a little railway that you can hire pedal-powered machines to go on. The Swan Whisperer would have quite liked to, but the first free slot wasn't until tomorrow, so we didn't. Instead, we drove along the lovely D117 to Perpignan, and then to Mas Alart. They do seem to have partly, at least, built the faster road to the coast, and the poor Satnav had serious indigestion about it! It is so new that not all the signs are up yet, and we did turn left where we arguably should have turned right, but ended up in Cabestany, although we had missed most of the roundabouts!
I don't know whether the Belmas' are away at the moment, but it was the son who welcomed us and who sold us our wine. For once, we are the only outfit here, which is nice. We decided we would stay here for the night, and although the SW did shake out the fidgets, we have been here ever since. I had to frog a bit of my knitting (not too disastrously), so have been trying to catch up on that, and also reading. I made shakshuka for supper, which I hadn't made for awhile, and it was delicious. In a bit, it will be time for our Lent Bible Study. We are a day ahead of ourselves, and not quite sure where we will fit in another day, but I expect we'll find something. France is such a lovely country, and we can either revisit places we know we like, or try new ones! Or, indeed, a mix of both.
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