Beziers and moving on

---

Geo: 43.3184, 3.14263

After such a memorable day and evening on Monday, Tuesday was a bit of an anti-climax. We slept in (excesses of the night before, perhaps?) and had a later than usual breakfast, deciding to venture into Beziers, some four miles away, which an acquaintance had said was worthy of a visit.

After leaving the underground car park, we climbed the stairs out into the heat and sunshine of the city which was bustling with preparations for the forthcoming 5-day festival event, the Feria, with its traditions in bullfighting. Judging by the infrastructure, it seems to be more booze-fuelled!

Whether it was the heat or all the activity, but we struggled to get our bearings due to a lack of signage aimed at the tourist and could not locate directions to the cathedral, or for that matter, the tourist info centre. We eventually found the latter after walking up and down the central boulevard and the receptionist supplied a free street map, adding that the Feria programme was due to kick off the following day, attracting over a million visitors - good reason to get this bit of sightseeing out of the way, since we definitely would not be returning to the city over the next few days!

We followed one of the pedestrian walking routes to the cathedral through narrow, cobbled back streets which were not as appealing as some of the cities we have encountered on our trip, such as Arles at the last stop. Not a place for strangers to wander after dark, I would guess. The cathedral, dating back to the thirteenth century, is set on a hilltop with fine views over Languedoc, and whilst it contains some fine stonework and artefacts, it does not rate amongst my favourites, I'm afraid. So far, top prize for that goes to the Basilica of St. Francis at Assisi, and as far as Beziers is concerned, job done. We didn't even take a photograph between us.

With our departure from this site on Thursday and nowhere to go, we were beginning to feel a bit twitchy. We knew that this time of year the sites would be at their busiest, but the ones that appealed to us were coming back as either full or not able to accommodate our length of caravan, so yesterday was mainly spent looking at our plans for the coming weeks and seeking out somewhere to go from here. As we walked up to the village for a few provisions, we popped into the site office and added an extra night's stay to give us a bit of breathing space.

Panic over as on Friday morning we shall be heading for the Pyrenees, on the French side, to a small site near Villefranche-de-Conflent. This is new territory for us though we did the other end of the Pyrenees some years ago.

---