We want to be in Montady on Saturday so that we can lay seige to our old friends and neighbours, Peter and Susi. We still had a few miles to go so we left St Antonin without even having a proper look round the town. Our target for today is an aire at Mazamet -Lac des Montagnes - about 70 miles away.
We had a very pleasant drive, 95% of the time on smallish 'D' class roads but it was easy to just cruise along admiring the scenery. The view from Ruby's windows seems to be getting better and better the further south we go. Its much more hilly around here although luckily nothing too steep. On our approach to the aire we seemed to be going up and up and up. For quite a while there was a red Porsche behind us obviously impatient to get past but there was just nowhere for ages to pull in and let him roar off. I think it was Jeremy Clarkson actually.
Eventually the satnav stirred into life and told us to turn off the D118 along a smaller road through the trees. In a couple of minutes we were at the aire filling up with water. According to the 'all the aires' book (our bible on this trip) there are two parking areas available locally and the second one is supposed to be the best one so we drove slowly round the lake till we found it. This is a lovely place to stop for the night, or maybe two nights. There is a large lake, formed by the construction of a dam in 1936 I think, with a couple of artificial beaches, snack bars, kiosk and kids playgrounds dotted about.. All seems very quiet and peaceful. Only about 8 vans altogether and very few cars parked up. We are well into July now and although maybe the schools have not broken up for broken up for the summer holidays yet you would really expect there to be more people about at a spot like this, its almost empty.
As I type this its almost 6pm and I can tell Lynda is impatient to walk down to the cafe for the crepe I said she could have but I have to finish this first. Weather up here was okay for our walk earlier but has now closed in quite a bit with some rain. We had another walk round by the lake, there was a lot of vapour coming off the lake and the clouds were right down in the trees in the near distance - all very spooky!
Right, thats all for now. Lynda has gone from reminding what the time is into 'nag' mode - time for some dinner.
Okay, we had a very nice supper at the cafe just 100 yards from the aire. We felt quite sorry for the chap running it as it was only us two there and we think he was hoping to be finished for the day.
We had a crepe each containing various combinations of cheese, ham, mushrooms and onion, a green salad and serving of chips to share, a coke for Lynda, a 'pint' for me plus Lynda managed to have a lemon and sugar crepe for desert.and the total bill came to 24.50 euros (15 shillings in UK money) which we thought was very reasonable. They have a menu in English which is handy, most of it makes sense too, even offering a pint measure of beer to make us feel at home.
I mentioned earlier that the lake looked quite spooky. As the day has gone on the cloud / mist has come down further. As we went into the cafe to eat we noticed visiblity had reduced further. By the time we reappeared after eating we could only see a short distance across the lake.
6th July
Totally quiet night as expected, this really is an ideal spot. After breakfast Lynda did some washing before we unloaded the bikes and went for a ride round the lake (sorry Arthur, no photos). Its not a huge lake and it only took us about 20 minutes even though we were only going quite slowly Back at Ruby we are just chilling out waiting for 11am when we plan to go down to the cafe for coffee. I have been asked to point out by management that she is still doing her morning jog - has not missed a day yet.
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| Nice parking spot for the night |
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| Cafe we visited several times for coffee, ice cream, crepes or good old sausage and chips |
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