Sunday 15th - Tour de France at Quillan

We slept well again. Think the music was even louder tonight and the duvet/wardrobe door combination between our shutters and windows wasn’t quite enough, but we still slept fine.

We had to be up early this morning because we had a long way to scoot today. We were away by 8am and headed in the direction of Quillan. This is the closest the Tour de France gets to us. Quite by chance, we had long ago quite seriously looked at buying a place in Quillan. It was the old railway crossing man’s cottage, right beside the railway line (only one train per day) and set in a gorgeous large garden and orchard. The cottage is the typical quaint two-storey railway building, with red bricks on the corners and cream walls. We were very tempted but our Googling on Quillan suggested it was probably too quiet, in the back-waters and sited on the edges of a dry plain.

Puilaurens Castle

Queribus Castle

However, after a ride through stunningly green country, and then into beautiful rocky gorges we arrived in Quillan with a totally different opinion. We met up with our Aussie friends at the railway station as already planned, and had time for a quick coffee. They also had friends with them for the day – a woman originally from Auckland and her Italian husband. The place was rapidly filling up with cars so John and I took off on the scooter to do some scouting to find a good place for watching the cyclists climb up the hill out of Quillan. 

The start of "The Caravan"

More Caravan

A small part of the support train

The Peloton!!

We had Googled a local winding road we could take and easily got to the top, while everyone manoeuvred around trying to park on one side of the narrow road and walk the rest. The Aussies weren’t keen to try and drive up so John and I stood roadside here while the caravan of cars and floats associated with the Tour went by over the next 45 minutes. All sorts of goodies were thrown out on the road – keyrings, bars, leaflets, caps, banners etc. We scored a few goodies.

Hopped back on the scooter and back down the hill to find our friends and after a little walking up and down the road spotted Ross waving his huge Aussie flag. We had a small pleasant picnic lunch on the roadside in the sun before the arrival of 5 helicopters overhead, and an increase in officials cars zooming up the hill alerted us that the cyclists were approaching. In the end it was all rather an anti-climax. They were all in one bunch and whizzed by in the space of around 10 seconds. Hmmmm. Oh well, we can tick that one off the list. 

It was fun to be in amongst it all and see the caravan, official cars and support vehicles and all the other paraphernalia associated with the event. Ross and Liz had an Eski with their picnic lunch back in the car, so we agreed to all meet up at a roadside picnic place on the road out of Quillan. It was actually quite cold when we got there so a quick bite, photos taken, flag waved at passing traffic, and back on the road to home.

Gorge through Cathar country

Towers in the evening

The country we passed through was just magnificent. Unbelievable castles sited on the tops of ridiculously high ridges. We are very keen to come back and spend some time trekking up to the castles and looking around them. It is only an hour’s scoot from Céret so we could do it as a day trip, or maybe stay somewhere overnight.