Day 33: Carcassonne

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We woke up in the most beautiful village called du Bois du Four, population 10!! Will figured if our family moved in it would nearly double the population. It was like waking up having stayed at Nana’s with walnut wardrobes, doilies, lace curtains, wooden clocks, potted geraniums, flowery wallpaper and sparklingly clean. (should have said our house but it sure wasn’t!!) Best of all these French lodges are half the price we usually pay to date.

Locally the hills are magnificent and very like Mount Buffalo, Bright only on a grander scale. The wineries and chateaus are spread widely over the lower valleys, forests up the hillsides and rocky mountain tops wit tiny roads meandering around them, which decided to explore. Spain can wait another day. Traveling up the mountains we came level to Para gliders soaring tandem…almost eye level to us so we waved and shouted out hello but no answer mainly because they were hanging on tightly and don’t speak English!! Will definitely is going to try this sport and apparently Billy thinks he will too, although this is a kid who isn’t keen on a fly in our car!!

Kimmy white knuckled and co-piloting with her knees and the laptop GPS

Bois du Four
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We will not bother to spell out the next stop other than to say we drove up a long perilous mountain with huge rock formations, to then pay to sit on a petite train with commentary in French, to see more magnificent mountains and lookouts, and exited out onto a route with them same, if not better rocky mountains!! The stop was supposed to be of awesome rock formations which apparently look like various animals etc. Will felt less ripped off to have paid a $6.50 exit toll twice because we took a wrong turn than paying to look at rocks. But we did have fun up the back of the train doing our Australian version of how the rocks could possibly look anything like a camel or whatever…a bit like configuring a group of stars into constellations. We went from the Flintstones and but couldn’t remember what the Jetsons dog was called. That bored hey!!

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Now we headed off along unbelievable hills that went from rambling green hills with pretty resort ancient villages, fern forests like the Dandenongs to tiny one lane roads that appear to get little use apart from Australians who like to drive along sloping roads on mountain trails. Will doing brilliantly, Kimmy white knuckled and co-piloting with her knees and the laptop GPS and Billy playing Tamagotchi games. Aven Armand is a huge cavern they say you could easily fit Notre Dame Cathedral inside. We took a cable car down to see the unbelievable stalagmites. If you have been to Buchan Caves this was about five times bigger. The size left us speechless…we were planning to snap off a bit to bring back to show you but decided the implications of destabilizing anything might be catastrophic. As usual the three Aussies hung out the back of the tour group and did our interpretation of the significance of our location. Kimmy had her water bottle and did the squirt test (remember Venice canals). The squirt traveled yonks way way down and made not a sound. In fact the whole ambience of the cavern made our 5 year old sound loud and noisy so Kimmy used her schoolgirl French to say ‘Femme la bouche” hoping it was “shut your mouth”!!

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Time to look for accommodation, so we head to Carcassonne. The GPS is great in helping us navigate from town to town but it finds the most direct route which disregards the type of road. In summary, we find ourselves traveling through the minute roads alone in South of France, snaking along mountains, vineyards and through forests, past towns that have few people and no petrol stations. And that was a big problem…down to a sniff of diesel. Being very aware of how far towns are doesn’t help, rather manifests mega doubt about plan B..what will we do worst scenario? Will coasts the car in neutral downhill, ans we turned of the airconditioner and pretended to be fuel efficient. We skulked into the petrol stop with zip diesel fuel.

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Carcassonne was a wonderful place to stay. Walking distance from our hotel was a HUGE castle that functioned many centuries ago but now has a medieval city inside its walls. The gigantic walls were deceiving as inside there was restaurants, cafes, shops and boutiques located on either side of narrow cobblestoned lanes winding through the town. We plan to come back here tomorrow for a better look. Tonight Will and I had the set menu of three courses. Not pizza!! We try things we are moderately clueless at and share our successes and always order chips and bread as back-up. We started with salads with lamb and bacon, followed by pork casserole and roast duck…we did guess chicken ok..then apple pie for dessert. As yet we haven’t seen escargot (snails) on the menu or frog’s legs but we did see the farce that Aussies eat fish fingers so make no judgments on cuisine! Billy’s chips rule and he made a friend and chased each other all evening.