Monday, May 16, I left the Villa Thébaïde for the Monts de Lacaune. But after having traveled the motorway to Béziers on a train of senators to cushion the increase in the price of diesel, I stopped above St-Gervais-sur-Mare in order to regain my bearings with the updating software. on the page of my website after 8 months of sedentarization and IT inactivity; Oops, I got a little old! Crossing deep France in the beautiful month of May, I was assailed by the fragrance of trees and fragrant flowers, what happiness!
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Tuesday, May 17 before leaving the bivouac I hiked on a steep path to visit the Mission Cross with a view on the horizon of the Castrum de Neyran. Then it was a stop on the way to take a look at a statue-menhir whose inscriptions detailed by the interpretative panel are unfortunately covered with lichen. I found a quiet bivouac between the road and Lac du Lauzas.
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| Croix de Mission St-Gervais-sur-Mare |
Wednesday, May 18 I arrived around 9:30 am in Castres with the aim of visiting the Goya museum. But before I was struggling with a parking meter that stubbornly refused to read my bank cards. A native quidam advised me to pay in money, which he usually did. At City Hall, the hostess informed me that the Goya Museum is closed until the end of the year. Of course I leave him with my dissatisfaction, courteously, with my operation of the parking meter. Ultimately she advised me to visit the Jean Jaurès museum. The tribune Jean Jaurès is not my cup of tea. A historian, from the rue d'Ulm, points out that his speeches are often with verbs in the simple future, that says a lot about the character. The perorations of the current populist tribunes, of all persuasions, only engage those who listen to them. Annoyed, I left Castres around 12:00 p.m. to find a bivouac on the shores of Lac du Merle.
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| Castres, Musée Jean Jaurès |
Thursday, May 19 I was going to Mazamet to shop at the local supermarket and at the Orange store for an upgrade in the use of the Smartphone as an Internet access modem; but it turned out that this is not an oversight on my part but gray areas in deep France! Telephone operators do not rush for lack of profitable business, including one of them, a self-proclaimed leftist who made his fortune with the pink Minitel; money has no smell and even less virtue. I headed for the Lac des Saints Peyres, an artificial lake, encased in a pine forest accessible by a forest road. I found a bivouac near the unoccupied communal gite out of season.
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| Mazamet, Lac des Saints Peyres |
Friday, May 20, I left the Montagne Noire where there is no Internet connection to make a publication stop in Revel. I bitterly miss Iceland's internet coverage. In France there are four ISPs who puff their noses to do business as usual in high population areas. The control organization says it many times, there are two too many operators, but does not have the courage to hit the table. Everyone wants their share of the cheese! Perhaps the end of the Orange copper cabling inherited from the incumbent operator together with the pooling imposed by the State will make it possible to resolve this nagging question for years. I then made a stop at the Cammazes dam before setting up my bivouac in Durfort.
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| Lac des Cammazes | |
Saturday, May 21 I will travel roads in the Black Mountain with a stop in
Encalca to visit the monastery of St-Benoît consecrated in 1896 known for
its tapestry cartoons. The tapestries are then made in Aubusson. At the
monastery I acquired CDs of Gregorian chants. On the way to Saissac I
bivouacked on a forest site.
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| Encalca, monastère St-Benoît |
Sunday May 22 I arrived early at Carcassonne parking P1 for the camper about 6 min walk from the Porte Narbonnaise. Of course, unless you are nimble, it is almost impossible to walk the outer wall. Painfully I was going to visit the St-Michel basilica of which only the nave remains. The upper town is a copy and paste of Mont St Michel, a litany of shops and tourist restaurants. Exhausted I returned to the truck to stock up at the local supermarket open on Sunday morning. Then I bivouacked in the Leclerc car park. The temperature rose to 34°C inside the cell, I regretted the altitude of +650 m of the bivouacs of the Montagne Noire.
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| Carcassonne, Porte Narbonnaise |
