Welcome guests

It has been a delight to have Celia and Andy with us for a few days.  Great and undemanding house guests, and they would not be deflected from treating us to lunch out on four successive days.  Corbières views on Monday were rather hazy, but from our usual vantage point near Bouisse they could get a fair idea of the lie of the Pyrenees in the distance.  And the trip offered the usual pleasures of wild flowers (though not so many at this season), cowbells and pizzas at the Grand Café in Limoux!

Tuesday to the seaside at La Franqui, via the Corbières and Perpignan, where I'd spotted in the distance an A400M doing circuits and bumps at the airport.  The first delivery of this much-delayed type is now scheduled for June next year, and it was interesting to see that they're still practising crosswind landings and take-offs.  They had a good day for it at Perpignan, and as we watched it getting thrown about on the approach, we were jolly glad we weren't in it.  The P4lm B3ach at La Franqui was a bit disappointing (excuse the Google-proofing): the others' meals were fine, it seems, but my moules were once again far too salty, though not quite as bad as the previous time, when I sent them back.  I didn't finish them, and complained.  You'd expect no less, eh?  Not that it did any good, except to prompt me not to have them again.  The semi-open location by the beach excuses a lot.  Quite a lot of flamingos on the étang at Bages, but the wind was so strong that we were dissuaded from hanging around for too long.

Celia wanted to see the Canal du Midi, so yesterday got as much exposure to it as she possibly could, short of being thrown in.  We started at Homps, then followed the canal by road to Le Somail, stopping there for lunch.  The Auberge du Somail was recommended to me some years ago, but this was the first time we'd tried it.  Good experience.  Excellent meal, reasonably priced, well presented and served. 

Sad to see so many of the plane trees alongside the canal dying off, though.  I read that munitions crates brought into France from the USA during the war were infected with a fungus that attacks plane trees and cannot be eradicated from the ancient population of trees.  This is very worrying, since France's roads, canals and village squares owe so much of their beauty to the mature plane trees that line them.  Large numbers are being felled and burned along the canal, and I read that they will all have to be replaced over time.  Landowners and local authorities are wrangling over who meets the cost, and I don't think France's is the kind of culture that would support a 'sponsor a tree' campaign.

We took the visitors back to the airport today via Carcassonne, where we had lunch in a familiar restaurant that may be slipping a little.  Elsewhere I've described the Maison de la Blanquette in Carcassonne as an island of culture in a sea of kitsch.  At the risk of horribly mixed images, I hope it isn't emulating the chameleon.  Anyway, at the airport, we were rewarded with another sighting of the A400M, and to Andy's great delight, one of a Beluga taking off.  I think there are precisely three of them in the world, so a rare event in absolute terms.  Daily fare in Toulouse, of course.

Back home to problems with the electrics: three of the socket outlets in the kitchen have suddenly packed up without tripping a circuit breaker.  'Ere we go again.