Vineyards, the Canal du Midi, and home sweet home

Day 7 France 2012

We drove back toward St. Emilion and took more photos of the vineyards and chateaus around the area.  It was cloudy and misty when we started out.  I got out to take some close up shots of the grape vines and noticed that there are baby grapes forming.

The roses here are in full bloom and it seems that everyone has them in their yard.  We noticed them yesterday, too, and they are just beautiful.  We passed fields of newly baled hay all wrapped in plastic.  They looked like huge marshmallows.  Next we passed acre after acre of fruit trees covered in netting.  We think that they are cherries.  The weather got better the farther we drove, and by noon was sunny again.

 The highway we were traveling on followed right beside the Canal du Midi for miles and miles.  At one of the rest areas (aires) we stopped and walked up to get a close up look at the canal and one of the locks.  The canal is bordered on both sides by plane trees, and the rest stop was surrounded with cottonwood trees.  The rest area was covered with the “cotton” from the trees so deep that it looked like snow.

We got off the main highway to visit one of the Cathar towns called Castelnaudary which also proclaims itself as the cassoulet capital of the world.

Our goal today was to get down to Caunes-Minervois where we have a house rented for the next week.  We skirted around Carcassonne and made it to town earlier than we had thought.  We called our landlady and she said we could come on.  She met us in the Abbey parking lot, and we drove up narrow little streets to our house.  We tucked the mirrors in on the side of the car, and she (Ingrid) was amazed that Leon managed to get up to the house without hitting any walls at all.  We unpacked our suitcases, and Leon drove back down to the parking lot.  We walked back up to the house and settled for a while and then drove to the next little village to buy some groceries.

Ingrid had recommended that we have our evening meal catered and recommended a lady who could do it for us.  I emailed and arranged the meal a couple of months ago.  It was nice to have a Camembert/tomato tart and boeuf bourguignon with all the trimmings delivered right to our door.  We even got sticky toffee pudding for dessert.  Ingrid had left a welcome bottle of wine for us, so we went to our little patio and had our wonderful dinner.

After dinner, we walked around the neighborhood just to get acquainted and saw this cat sitting on a window ledge watching birds flying over.  This is a tiny village sort of in the middle of nowhere.  Ingrid is from South Africa and has lived here with her writer husband for 12 years.  She owns 3 of these old houses and rents them out. Our little house has a living room with a fireplace, kitchen, and eating area on the first floor.  There is a little patio off the kitchen.  Up spiral stairs is a bedroom and bathroom, and then up one more flight of stairs is the master bedroom and another bath.  This house is several hundred years old and was once a cobbler’s shop.  There is a huge rose bush growing out of the street ,and it is all across the front of the house.

 Sunday will be a day of rest for us...as well as laundry day.