On This Day – Castres in South of France

Even though travel restrictions are easing I am not yet minded to risk it so I still have no new stories to post so I continue to go through my picture archives and see where I was on this day at any time in the last few travelling years.

On 18th October 2011 I was in the delightful town of Castres in the South of France…

Lining the river on the right bank were les Maisons sur l’Agout which is the old medieval riverside quarter where the old tanners’ and weavers’ half timbered houses with running balconies overhang the water and their colourful shutters and windows cast reflections on the gentle water of the river. It reminded me of Girona in Catalonia although this was much smaller in scale and rather more attractive.

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France, Le Tricolore et La Fenêtre

At the top of the climb we went through the charming town of St Pons-de-Thomieres and as we sat in the mid morning traffic we drove past the Hôtel de Ville and in the courtyard there was a magnificent statue of Madame Liberty, the traditional female embodiment of the French Republic with her ample bosom unashamedly thrusting out and exposed to all.

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Muse

“It is said that the stones have a magnetism that draw people back time and time to the city. I’ve heard it’s to do with ley lines.  Carcassonne has the same legend.  At certain points across the earth the energy builds up and creates a pull, a pulse and in these places unusual and mystical things can happen”  Patrice Chaplin – ‘Albany Park’     

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Dreamy

Lining the river on the right bank were les Maisons sur l’Agout which is the old medieval riverside quarter where the old tanners’ and weavers’ half timbered houses with running balconies overhang the water and their colourful shutters and windows cast reflections on the gentle water of the river.  It reminded me of Girona in Catalonia although this was much smaller in scale and rather more attractive.

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Reflections

Lining the river on the right bank were les Maisons sur l’Agout which is the old medieval riverside quarter where the old tanners’ and weavers’ half timbered houses with running balconies overhang the water and their colourful shutters and windows cast reflections on the gentle water of the river.  It reminded me of Girona in Catalonia although this was much smaller in scale and rather more attractive.

Read the full story…

Weekly Photo Challenge: Reflections

Lining the river on the right bank were les Maisons sur l’Agout which is the old medieval riverside quarter where the old tanners’ and weavers’ half timbered houses with running balconies overhang the water and their colourful shutters and windows cast reflections on the gentle water of the river.  It reminded me of Girona in Catalonia although this was much smaller in scale and rather more attractive.

Read the full story…

Weekly Photo Challenge: Dreaming

Dream like reflections in the River Argout, Castre, France

Lining the river on the right bank were les Maisons sur l’Agout which is the old medieval riverside quarter where the old tanners’ and weavers’ half timbered houses with running balconies overhang the water and their colourful shutters and windows cast reflections on the gentle water of the river.  It reminded me of Girona in Catalonia although this was much smaller in scale and rather more attractive.  After we had taken more pictures than we really needed we walked over the river and along the front of these riverside houses where we could see that most of them were now restaurants and cafés with prices to match their enviable position.

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France, Return to Carcassonne

On the way down to breakfast the next morning, knowing how precious the French can be about their language, I attempted some simple communication with the receptionist about the arrangements for petit dejeuner.

I am fairly certain that I selected the right words but graciously concede that I may not have had them in the correct order and this is an annoying thing about the French because they like you to try and speak their language, which is fair, but then ridicule you if you don’t get everything absolutely grammatically correct, which isn’t very encouraging.

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France, Castres and Holiday Reflections

It was a lovely day now and the sun was shining as we left the hotel and first of all transferred the car to an underground car park and then emerged from below ground into les Jardins do ‘’Evéché which were designed and laid out in the seventeenth century by the same landscape gardener who worked as part of the team on the gardens at the Palace of Versailles.

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France, French Icons – Madame Liberty and McDonalds

After breakfast at the Hotel des Poetes we walked into Béziers on a rather chilly morning to visit the market hall which had been closed the day before.  It was a typical French town market hall next to the Hôtel de Ville in the centre of the city and this early hour it was not yet particularly busy.

Our last market visit had been to the Varvakios Agora in Athens which had been a delightfully chaotic affair but this was much more orderly and the stalls were laid out to perfection much like the one in La Rochelle which we had visited a couple of years before.  We couldn’t realistically buy anything of course and take it back in our hand luggage so we stayed just long enough to get our ‘market fix’ and then we returned to check out of the hotel.

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