Looking the (ram)part...

The thing is Carcassonne doesn't actually look the part, or at least not as it did after Viollet-le-Duc restored the castle and the ramparts of le Cité, overlooking la Ville-Basse in the 1850s, and added pointy towers, because he wanted to restore it to how he thought it should have been... Some of the towers actually date from the Roman era and later it was decided to give these flatter tops (one can be seen in the centre of the shot) which the French info boards described as a 'shame' because they didn't match the rest of the restoration (despite being more authentic...).

Carcassonne was reminiscent of Mont St Michel last year - an incredibly pretty site seemingly overtaken by tourist tat, but there's still plenty there to get lost in.

Oh, and comedy American moment of the trip (there's at least one on every European jaunt) was provided while queuing for the ticket office to see inside the castle. Slightly ledger lady at the head of the queue, who moments earlier had been shouted at by her non-queuing husband to make sure they did senior citizen discounts, asked, "Is the castle furnished?"

*general miscomprehension from the ticket seller*
"Is the castle furnished? Furniture? Am-oo-blee?"
"Non. Eet eez medievale castel."
"Okay, thank you", and she leaves the queue deciding that seeing inside a world heritage site castle isn't worth it because there aren't any chairs or beds on show.

Had hoped to pop in by SooB on the way to staying with friends in Pau, but the sun was shining in Sète in the morning, which showed off its charms a bit better, and a spin round the basin beside it on the lookout for Flamingoes (fruitless sadly, though saw a nice Egret) brought the unexpected pleasure of the small town of Marseillan, which it turns out is the home of Noilly-Prat (the French version of Martini). That time taken, plus the sun shining beautifully on Carcassonne and our medieval wander taking us to after four and still ver 2 hours from Pau... Well... A coffee detour would have been fab, but just utterly impractical.

Probably just as well too. Heavy traffic around Pau meant that it was after 7.30 before we finally pulled up outside Susan and Fi's place. I used to work with Susan, and Fi (Fiachra) laid the floor in our house, and we'd not see them since they moved out here over a year ago when the company Susan and I worked for went more-or-less belly-up leaving us all redundant. Strangely felt as if no time had passed at all, but also that there was LOADS of catching up to do. Fi and I talked football and birds and politics over a really welcome and fab Thai curry, and all four of us just drank to having some British and Irish company to chat to.