When Tom and Sarah and Brian and Sue came to stay..........

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....... it rained quite a lot. But we had a great time anyway. Lots of relaxing meals with plenty of eating and drinking involved. We explored the heights near Tarascon again, striding sturdily up to the Oratoire de Permissol. We visited Lavelanet's Friday market, where our guests sampled so many different kinds of dried sausage that they felt obliged to buy several. We became pilgrims for the afternoon, and walked part of the Chemin du Piémont Pyrénéen, one of the French paths on the pilgrimage route to Saint-Jacques de Compostelle. We were moved by the pre-historic paintings of bison and other ancient animal inhabitants of the area, deep within the caves at Niaux near Tarascon. And lastly, having waited in vain for the sun to shine on us, we gave Brian his wish, and embarked on a via ferrata near Vicdessos.
Here's how its website describes it:

'Via Ferrata (“metal way” in Italian) involves climbing along a rock face that has been equipped with metal handholds, ladders and cables.'

It doesn't seem to say 'vertical' anywhere. Or 'impossibly long way down if you fall'. Admittedly, you're equipped with safety harnesses and clips, but Sue and Malcolm and I felt incredibly brave doing the beginners' route. Brian and Tom and Sarah gained our wide-eyed admiration for attempting the 'difficult' route, all two and a half hours of it, in the rain.

After all that excitement, their holiday came to a tedious end when the staff at Carcassonne airport went on strike, so that the would-be passengers had to be bussed to Perpignan and eventually got back to Stansted some 5 hours late

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Photos

Buying cheese at Lavelanet market
But you have to have lots of samples first!

The Romanesque church at Teilhet
...where our walking pigrimage concluded

We can't show you the caves....
....but this poster showed local examples of cave paintings

The hill we could see...
...from the beginning of the Via Ferrata. We thought it looked like a small kingdom with its castle and high meadowed plateau

Malcolm and I begin climbing
I think it's one of the bravest things I've done in my life

But this is what we saw.....
....way above us, when we went to get hot chocolate. Our nearest and dearest clinging to a distant rock face having just crossed a swaying bridge in the sky

Crossing on the passerelle
No ground in sight

They even dared to look down
Brian took this photo whilst climbing