One section of the GR7 – Grande Randonnée 7, one of the French long distance footpaths – passes along an edge of the farm on which we are staying. This section of the path looks like a good habitat for…

Or, at least, it would have been had we bought a better example of the main ingredient. After several pleasant, sunny days, this morning dawned dull and overcast. A few spits of rain fell. As a diversion, Francine decided to…

We awoke to Guillaume’s roof echoing the sound of the water droplets of our morning shower. There is perversely something vaguely cosy about the sound of rain on a caravan’s roof. After stirring ourselves into lethargic action, our morning shower…

We have another wild flower lover on our campsite in the form of Kees (pronounced “case”), a regular visitor here from Holland. We’ve known Kees and family for several years as a result of our paths crossing, as they frequently…

For some reason best known to a psychologist (probably), at the beginning of this trip I had a hankering for French gastronomic speciality called andouillette. Every time we went shopping, I scanned the shelves and boucheries [butchers] for this particular…

A few kilometres to the west of us, between Fanjeaux and Castelnaudary, is an area called the Lauragais, named after what I’d call little more than a village, Laurac. Laurac is overlooked from the south at a height of about…

We hear that the accursed Jet Stream, that high velocity, high altitude wind that circles the northern hemisphere is messing things up again by being misplaced. As it sweeps from west to east it also oscillates north and south, in…

Dateline: 11th June, 2012 Guillaume had to have his heating switched on! What’s going on? This is unprecedented; here we sit in the south of France in the middle of June and we’ve had to put the heating on. Staggering!…

Yesterday, after our enjoyable visit to the market at Revel, we stopped in at the Lac de Lenclas for our picnic lunch of aligot [a regional potato and cheese goop mixed with a rowing oar] and some chiffonade [paper-thin sliced…

Fortunately, although France is full of both supermarchés and hypermarchés, the French still love a proper, old-fashioned street market. Market day seems to be quite a social occasion with friends meeting and nattering whilst wandering around the vast array of…