Managed to get up quite early today (we work on French time
you see, which means things happen gently in the mornings, and meals are all
delayed by 2-3 hours on NZ times) in order to do the Balcons de Céret loop
track again before the temperatures got too high. We reversed our direction
this time, yet again being flummoxed by French signposting being ambiguous at
critical points. It’s an interesting walk
passing through varied terrain.
Had quite a chat with an 84-year old local towards the end
of the loop. He walks 8km every day and was a little disparaging about the suburb
we were passing through at the time, full of old people he said.
 |
| Michel at a quiet Bar Pablo |
Mme Delard came around for apero tonight at 6pm. She was unwell earlier in the week and couldn't come to our house warming evening on Thursday. We spent a very sociable 2½ hrs chatting away in French. She is a lovely person, 80 years old and extremely bright and cheery. She bought a bottle of dry (sec) muscat for us and we had bought a bottle of doux (sweet) muscat for her to drink. We got to know each other's tastes when we went to her place for apero a week or so ago. She is delightful and we hope to more of her when we come back next year. It is so interesting talking to her - she could tell us about the cemetery which is now the church square in front of us, the 1830 cholera epidemic which caused so many deaths, the occupation of Céret by the Germans for three years during the war, her mother used to visit the general who had our apartment building built and lived in it for many years etc etc.
It's still 28 degrees at 9pm and we've just done a short spin around town to try and cool off. John is now having his 3rd cold shower of the day. It will be really weird to have a hot shower when we are back in Nelson.
We finally got around to booking our hire car to get up to Paris this afternoon. After thinking about it a little more, we have decided to take an extra day to get from Céret, via Rochefort (research work) to Paris. We are now leaving on Friday, only five days away. From seemingly having an extra week on our hands here in Céret, with no longer linking up with Alastair in Barcelona we suddenly find we have only four more sleeps until we head north. We doubt we will now fit in another trip to the beach, or a planned one day trip to the Tet Valley. Tomorrow we will have to start working out how to rig up our bikes in the storeroom and other mundane stuff in preparation for leaving. Yuk.
