Albi

Another town for your bucket list. Albi is breathtaking in its beauty and its history. We only came to Albi because Sally read about it in an historical novel last year. Quelle chance we are having on our trip.

For the third day in a row we got lucky with our hosts for the night. They were leaving the next morning on a cycle holiday but managed to squeeze us in anyway. Caroline and Xavier live life to the full. They are constantly doing house swaps and taking as many trips as they can. In France you are legally obliged to allow long term employees to have time off work if they want if. They asked for an 11 month sojourn and went off on a world tour on their bikes. They have never

got the travel bug out of their system. At apero time we descended ( literally) into the cellar under the house for drinks. An astonishing thing for kiwis like us. Dinner was lasagne washed down with a wine from Bordeaux. And long discussions on cycling and travel.

The next day we made the 10 minute dash across the city to a hotel smack bang in the middle of town. We chose it because we could turn up at about 10 am and park our bikes in the garage while we explored town. Albi is not on most tourist maps but it is astonishing. Most of the old town was built in brick including the 100 m high cathedral built by the Cathars. Xavier had given us a 30 second summary of the history the night before.

Catharism was, roughly speaking, a breakaway group from the Catholic church a bit like Protestants centuries later. After they had prospered the balance of power changed and the pope convinced the

king of France to wage war against them. In return the victors got to keep all the lands and the Catholic church got to keep power and a bunch of awesome cathedrals. They made ISIS look like a bunch of amateurs when it came to slaughter and massacre.

We took lots of videos to try and capture the grandeur. After the visit to the cathedral in the morning we split up for the first time on tour. I went to a museum about a French explorer who fought successfully against the English in the American war of independence before spending a decade exploring the Pacific Ocean before finally vanishing without trace until divers found his shipwreck in the Solomon Islands in the 20th century. Fascinating.

Sally went to the museum of fashion. It consisted of the owners private collection. He told me (Sally) that each year he makes an exhibit of 100 or so of his items based on a theme. This year the

theme was flowers and the fabrics and design from 1700’s to the 1960’s were amazing.

Then we spent a couple of hours wandering around the Toulouse-Lautrec museum before getting kicked out at closing time.
Sally spent time on Skype talking to the girls who had gathered at Mandy’s for the annual get-together. A fun time was had by all.

The next day was a real slog to Laguépie where we had yet another day off the bikes to rest our bodies.
Along the way we passed the very famous Cordes sur Ciel where the village clings to a rocky outcrop. As we were drinking a coffee some locals took photos of our bikes especially Sally's guitar bag.

We were expecting a boring little village at Laguépie but we found the monthly fair and many stalls with local foods. We chose to try the sheep's yoghurt which is slightly smoother than cows yoghurt. The Chambre d’hôte is run by Madame Cuvelier who has lived here for over thirty years. It is worth staying just to see the staircase. She had a granddaughter in Wellington so we chatted away for hours and even sent messages to her granddaughter using Skype. The rest of the house is a bit like an antique shop and we love being here. Very restful and calm.