Spotted horses featured in our previous blog post and we saw them again today, the very ones, featured on a giant tourism poster along the motorway as we swept past at motorway speed. Figeac was behind us and we were headed about 500km SW toward the junction between the French and Spanish borders on the Atlantic Ocean.
But first a little about our last two days in Figeac. Rain continued to dribble out of the leaden sky but on the second last day we girded our loins to visit a market at Villefranche something-or-other (de Rouergue), just 40km south of Figeac. Yep, it was raining there too. Here we began to hear some English spoken, by Brits, who appear to have moved into this area in droves to get away from foul British weather. There were enough French people remaining to run the market stalls, but it can only be a matter of time before a stall run by Brits selling shepherd’s pie or the like appears.
No blog about travelling in France would be complete without a French market shot. Here’s ours, and you won’t see any more.
What did catch my eye was this real estate agent’s window display. The prices seem very reasonable so perhaps they reflect the state of the economy.
As the rain showed no sign of letting up we returned to our Figeac base without significant damage to the family economy. Friday was our last full day there and we happily spent most of the daylight hours indoors reading and generally being idle, as it was gloomy outside again and besides we’d seen all we wanted to see. Around five pm we paid a farewell visit to the Champollion Hotel bar, where we were becoming quite well known. By now all we had to do was sit down at one of the outdoor or indoor tables and the waitress would catch my eye from afar and deduce whether she should deliver the usual order or wander over and find what changes were required. This, our last visit, Mary switched to “vin rouge” instead of the usual large dark, sweet and powerful beer she usually had. On departure we bade the waitress a fond “Au Revoir” and hoped, probably naively, that she’d miss us. Seven nights, seven different Figeac restaurants for dinner and six of them, including the last, good, was our score at the end of the evening, wending our way on foot though narrow, damp cobbled streets again back to our cosy base.
Saturday, a day of a long drive, broke clear and sunny! We shared the driving as we usually do.
Mary at the wheel, doing 120kph on the motorway in our little Renault Clio, ten kph below the limit.
Basque country was our next port of call, at the town of Saint Jean Pied de Port, in France, very close to the Spanish border.
Here’s where we are based for the next week. On the map the blue you can see at top left represents the SE corner of the Bay of Biscay; Biarritz and San Sebastian are not far away.
Our first impressions are favourable, even if the weather is still marginal. We’re staying in a comfortable separate self contained apartment in the grounds of a private house in SJPdP. Numerous restaurants and brasseries and, to Mary’s delight, a great shopping precinct, are within a short stroll. The people are friendly and there are strong prospects of some interesting experiences. All we need now is some fine weather and even that looks like arriving by Monday.
Thanks for reading
Kev
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