Market day

To be honest, my initial impression of Saint Girons was that it is rather a sad place. This part of the Ariège is hippy central; it was a very popular destination in the early 1970s for people who wanted to drop out of capitalist society. It's a poor, pastoral area, property is cheap, and young people bought ruined old houses in the middle of nowhere with no water or electricity supply but plenty of land to grow their own food, and barter for stuff they didn't produce themselves. Many children didn't even go to school, and it was hit-or-miss if their parents found the time or inclination to home-school them. *

It's clear that Saint Girons was once a thriving market town with many impressive buildings. See the picture-postcard view. But the economy is now in the doldrums, and has been since long before Covid. Dilapidated, uncared-for buildings, dingy streets, many long-shuttered business premises. Sitting outside a restaurant smack in the town centre on a balmy Friday evening there was virtually no traffic, either passers-by or vehicles. I didn't meet a single person on my 10-minute walk back to the hotel.

But then: Saturday morning! What a transformation. The market clearly draws buyers and sellers from miles around, and as I walked there I saw much jockeying for parking spaces. The market takes up the whole of the town centre and while there were some large fruit and vegetable stalls clearly supplied via wholesalers, there were many, many more selling local produce, sometimes just handfuls of a few items. There were many craft stalls, including this basket-weaver. And most impressively, lots of traiteurs cooking food on the spot; not just the usual suspects of roast chicken and paella, but also Lebanese, Thai, Vietnamese, North African, vegan, gluten-free ... all very tempting, and I wished I had some means of keeping food cold on my journey.

I couldn't help buying mirabelles and delicious ripe strawberries, plus some freshly baked fruit croustades and even some nice juicy vanilla pods from Madagascar. So then I had to buy a pretty basket to carry everything in -- no way anyone at this market will give you a plastic bag. It really is a most impressive market, highly recommended if you're in the area. Note: I managed to get an unmasked person in this photo, but she was definitely a rare exception.

Shopping done, back to the car and I drove up through Seix to Ossèse to collect S. A beautiful drive along a narrow winding road through very typical Ariégois scenery (extra). It's all so green and fertile, and unlike our area, wild flowers are still plentiful in August. 

With great timing, S had got there just 10 minutes before I did. He took over the driving and we stopped off in Castelnau Durban for lunch, in a cafe where he often stops for coffee on the way back from the Pyrenees. What a find! It turned out to have a large dining room and the type of menu and service that was so typical of rural French restaurants 20-30 years ago. You could have anything you liked to start, as long as it was soupe campagnarde, a large tureen of brown soup laden with giant croutons topped with masses of gooey cheese. Then to clean the palate, a plate of crudités (mostly beetroot, with half a hard-boiled egg on top), not something you ever see on menus nowadays. Bavette and chips for S, couscous for me, then the classic flan and croustade to finish us off. The two staff in the restaurant (and I'm betting no more than two in the kitchen) were a well-oiled machine, handling forty or so customers with speed and aplomb. Total bill for two, with coffee, under 30 euros.

Then home, with a little dodging along back roads to avoid the Saturday traffic jams on the autoroute. Mystère was of course delighted to see us; no sulking from him.

Sorry this entry is so long, I didn't have time to write a shorter one! Haven't kept up at all with your journals, due to flaky wifi.

* Footnote: If you can read French, Djalla-Marie Longa, unschooled herself, has written a couple of books that describe the experience of growing up in the Ariège very vividly; her memoir Mon enfance sauvage, and a book of interviews, Equilibres, which as it happens I am currently reading.