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Published: July 14th 2012
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Carcassone
Medieval fortress of Carcassone! After departing the lovely La Ferme de la Rose, we decided to spend a few days in Carcassone en route to our next HelpX in the Pyrenees. Carcassone is a walled medieval city, dating back over 1000 years. The wall used to encompass the city back in the day, but now mainly houses restaurants, hotels and souvenir shops. All of the medieval-themed touristy shops are a bit tacky and tiresome after a while, but it was amazing to picture how the city would have looked back in its hey-day hundreds of years ago. We also enjoyed the abundance of restaurants in the area, trying the local speciality of duck and pork cassoulet! It was a lovely way to spend a weekend!
Our next stay is in a town called Argein, in the foothills of the Pyrenees. We are staying with a young British couple, Matt and Becky, and their two boys, Edouard and Henri (pronounced in the French way, "Ed-war" and "On-ree". So cute!!) We spend our days helping with the 'barn to dining room conversion' project and tending to the veggie patch (200 potatoes, 18 courgettes, raspberries, tomatoes, red currants, blackcurrants, beetroot, parsnip, spinach, broccoli, carrots …..)
and looking after the two potbellied pigs and 9 chooks. The pigs are just hilarious, their names are Percy and Pinky. Percy is the boy, and is a total softie. He loves people and if you give him a scratch, he rolls over, gives you access to his belly and grunts with appreciation. Pinky is not so endearing. She is a pre-menstrual, nasty piece of work that doesn't like people, doesn't like her belly scratched, and attacks Percy if he gets in between her and her food.
Ed and Henri are 6 and almost 4 respectively, and are a total riot! Some of the things they say and do leave us crying with laughter! Abe had a particularly hilarious incident with Henri while picking red currants. Henri wanted Abe to stop picking red currants and start playing football with him. Abe told Henri that he needed to finish picking the fruit and he would play football after. Abe put his head down to continue picking, and when he looked up a few moments later, Henri was standing on the other side of the red currant bush, about a metre away, emptying his bladder. Abe gave a shocked
My new love!
Percy the adorable pot bellied pig. "Henri! What are you doing?!" and Henri looked up and said, "It's ok, sometimes we are allowed to go pee-pee in the garden." Abe said "I don't think you should do it quite so close to other people… and we are going to eat those red currants!" Ed gave his 2 cents worth from the other side of the garden with "Yeah, Henri! Not near other people!"
We were lucky enough to time our visit to Argein to coincide with the village Fete, which happens once a year in the summer. On Friday night, the village get together in the main square for a sit down dinner and plenty of red wine! We went with Becky (Matt was away on a boys weekend to some Classic car rally at LeMans, and the boys were wisely at a sleepover). Plenty of red wine was consumed along with a yum 3 course dinner with about 240 french locals. After the very late dinner (dessert was served at midnight!) and about 5 too many wines and Becky and I were carving up the dance floor like total twits. I broke a thong, and Becky danced on the tables. Apparently she
dances on the tables every year and is known in the town as the wild foreigner!
Saturday was a bit worse for wear (!!!!!), so we missed the lunchtime boozing session and the patonk competition in the afternoon. We did, however, manage to get to the Saturday night fireworks display and dance party with the boys in tow. Henri was the star of the show, dancing by himself in front of the stage to the live band. Ed, being 6, was too cool to dance and we saw him disappear behind the stage quite regularly, which we all thought was a bit unusual, but let it pass
The next day Ed and I were watching the TV and he turns to me and says, "I saw the ladies getting changed last night." The ladies he was referring to were the two singers from the band that had a number of costume changes behind the stage, explaining Ed's disappearing act behind there the night before. Ed continued with "Don't worry, they didn't see me though!" Cheeky little thing!
Le Tour is passing through this area next week and we are looking forward to seeing
Dinner time!
Friday night Fete! some of the stages. On Sunday, the race passes through a nearby town called Foix, and then comes back to the region in the middle of next week for some of the final mountain stages. We're going to watch the Foix stage with Matt, Becky and the boys tomorrow which will be fun! Matt and Becky are also letting us borrow some of their camping gear, and are dropping us off up the mountain next Wednesday afternoon to set up some space for when the race comes through on Thursday afternoon.
After what will be an action packed 4 weeks with Matt and Becky and the boys, we are heading up to Toulouse for a few nights before we head to our next HelpX at another Chateau!
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