Hi All, we have wifi again at last! Trying to find anywhere to connect up drove us both potty. We seemed to spend half our time trying to find somewhere we could communicate from and it never seemed to work properly. We had a lovely time at Trebes near Carcassone, on the Canal du Midi. Don’t you just love the French though? Twenty-nine degrees, a full campsite, so what do they do? Close the bar and restaurant for the winter and shut the swimming pool for two weeks for maintenance!
Many of you will have heard Ann complain that the last time we were in France we had a ‘difficult’ day canoeing when we ran out of water. She’s now moaning because we went for a gentle bike-ride along the Canal du Midi and at the furthest point from home the heavens opened and she ended up doing one of the best imitations of a drowned rat I’ve seen for a long time. Steve (who knows these things) tells me that the Canal is a world heritage site and that they are very worried because the trees all along the banks have some American-imported fungus and are dying in their hundreds. There were certainly a lot of gaps and newly felled bits. Carcassone was brilliant. We had lunch there with Tom and Sam and went back a couple of days later to have a proper look around.
We finally took the plunge and drove down into Spain a couple of days ago. The trip down was fine although very windy at times. We chose the day the Catalans were having their independence protest to travel, and there were people waving flags everywhere. ‘The Beast’ continues to cope with everything asked of it. Mike Stafford at MJS did a really good job of putting it in good fettle before we left, and the money we spent on it is well worthwhile. We’re now at a very well-appointed campsite at Roses (which grows on you). The town itself is very touristy but clean with a lot of good restaurants and a great beach. We went to a nice little town called St Pere el Pescador for a swim and a laze on the beach today. Ann is rather more partial to sand than I am! Jelly-fish season is just starting and we both got stung, Me in the armpit and Ann somewhere much more painful. We will probably be here for a week before moving on to Tarragona. Hopefully we can follow the sun South and end up somewhere near Jalon at the end of the month. Have written a couple of poems which I’d like to post, but need to work out how to copy them into the blog.
All the best. Andy.
ann and andy lawrenson 