Day 15 to Castres, 12 km

Laverne to Castres

Very quiet night last night. Eventually the frogs stopped talking to each other. The people staying in the gite (and the reason I got my own room) arrived around 10 pm, a group of women on a roller derby team who had come to play a match tonight in Castres.

Very short day today. Nothing particularly special about the walk. The woman from the gite and her dog walked with me up the hill to the road. And then about 3 km later I was back on the chemin, a few kilometres further along then where I left it. As I was coming into Castres the sky clouded over and there were a few minutes of rain! Light rain but rain. The forecast is for rain tomorrow afternoon and more rain Monday morning. One of this afternoon’s city chores was to buy rubber gloves to put over my other gloves. It’s also supposed to get cooler.

Quiet day in Castres, population a little over 40,000. I was here by 10:30. Had a pretty good coffee, wandered around the Saturday food market. Had a picnic lunch (strawberries, cheese, olives, bread) in a park, where a little boy gave me a chestnut leaf. Bought breakfast for tomorrow. Got money from a bank machine. Pretty much all the accommodations I’ve been staying at want cash. But cash machines are not everywhere! I try not to do the conversion of the amount of money I have been carrying around every day.

I spent most of the afternoon and evening lying on my bed trying to sort out the next few days where there are choices to make between the GR and variants, and where there are not plentiful accommodation options. The main decision later this week will be whether to follow the GR or to follow the Cansl du Midi to Toulouse. I think I have organized things so I can change my mind at the last minute. In any case I was not a good tourist here. I did not, for instance, go to the apparently very good Goya museum of Spanish art.

I am staying in a huge, soulless, unstaffed hotel. You need a code to get the code to get into your room. It could not be more different than yesterday’s gite.

I went to a small Thai restaurant for dinner. Without a reservation. The woman at the door says, sorry, we are full. All reserved. But then she looks at me and says,, come in. Can you eat fast? Generally the answer to that is no. But I said, sure! I ordered brochettes. She said, no! They take too long. You want chicken? I said chicken, vegetables, rice? It was fantastic (but not cheap). And I was gone before they needed the table.

The word is that the exit to Castres is dicey on a busy road. Tomorrow is Sunday and I will leave early so I am not that worried. Tomorrow night I am staying at an abbey with nuns.Read more