My Grand Faux Pas

Today in summary: Croissants:1; Cheeses: 2 (chevre & vache), Castles:1; Churches: 0; Rain:0; Patchwork Stores: 0 (must be losing my touch); Kilometres walked:15+; Translation Faux Pas: 1 (but a big one)

Well, I have officially failed translation duty. One trip to la boucherie this morning to buy some cold cuts for our pique-nique and we managed to come home with liver sausages. What was I thinking?! And this is after all of David’s admonitions to brush up on my French so that we could avoid eating offal and they were even clearly labelled “foie”. But they looked so good! Who knows, they might even taste OK yet – I’ll let you know. More successfully, we picked up some luscious strawberries from the general store and the fragrance has permeated the house. Yummy!

Today our excursion was to Chateau Puilaurens which is perched on top of peak only a few kilometres away. Our Copacabana training on the stair master proved useful as we zig zagged our way up to the gate. I am discovering a whole new vocabulary associated with castles: parapets, ramparts, barbican, corbels, machilocation (latrines), crenels, merlons and so on. Inside Dame Blanche’s tower, there was even a medieval “conduit voix” – a groove in the brick work that apparently worked as a speaking duct to allow communication between various floors in the tower.

After our self-guided castle tour, we took a circuit hike through some adjoining forest trails where I was able to take this photo from an elevated viewpoint;