Word Of Mouse

From Figeac, Albi looked tantalizingly close on the map. Just the height of one page's worth of the Michelin France road atlas. (This is how we have done all our French navigation- there is quite sufficient detail to find the minor roads and we have the satisfaction, every couple of days or so, of ceremoniously tearing out another horizontal layer's worth of map pages). However closer inspection revealed a number of worrying features. The first was a long climb out of Figeac.... which didn't turn out so bad in fact. (Maybe we are getting fitter after all). It took us past the ancient hilltop town of Capdenac, which the sign boasted was now a town plusieurs fois millenaire. It gave us a lovely view down into the first of several of the deep river gorges that traverse this high plateau.

As always, the weather was hot. On we went through Villefranche, and through a river gorge the other side, at first welcomingly flat. Along this road, a much anticipated event occurred: our odometer ticked over 1000 miles since leaving Hereford, and we celebrated by photographing the surrounding landscape. A bit further and we came to the first of the possible campsites for the evening- but found it comprehensively occupied by the French military having their summer holidays. Ali declined to spend her evening in the company of a platoon of French squaddies and we decided to press on up the side of the gorge to the next campsite, despite Bramble having had her say by throwing us both off onto the gravel outside a small bar (something which still happens from time to time).

The campsite at Bar was down a spectacular road deep into the bottom of the next gorge. It was an odd looking place- there didn't seem to be anyone around to take the money, but large numbers of schoolkids were around, mostly in the vicinity of the toilet blocks where some serious socializing and smoking were evidently in full swing. I located an elderly woman at the neighbouring farm who told me her son would be arriving shortly, as he indeed did and took my money in the farm kitchen. "By the way," he said as I left, "I advise you to camp down at the far end, the children are beaucoup plus petit and you will be plus tranquille". Fine, I said, hoping Ali hadn't finished putting the tent up. Of course, she had, and her mood wasn't hugely improved by my suggestion that we move for the sake of a quiet night. We did, and had a far more peaceful night than we expected. Ali encountered the farmer the following day fixing a washbasin where one of the kids had evidently sat to have a cigarette, breaking it off the wall. "Qu'est-ce qu'on peut faire?" he said philosophically. "C'est des enfants.".

The following day was the final push to Albi. A long drag up from the bottom of the river gorge was rewarded by a nice rolling ride through farmland full of wheat and cows, through the grim mining town of Carmaux and on to the lovely brick-built town of Albi. We fell in love with Albi instantly. The jewel in Albi's crown is the catrhedral, an enormous brick-built edifice that dominates the town's skyline. Inside it is if antything more dramatic still: the entire inside surface was beautifully painted in the sixteenth century. The overriding theme is dark blue and gold, but overlaid on this are lots of trompe l'oeil effects, biblical scenes and quotations. My favourite was the altar, where the punishments allocated to each of the seven deadly sins were depicted in loving detail: sinners in Hell being boiled in oil and poked with sticks, eating toads (gluttony) or strapped to whirling wheels "turning with the speed of a windmill" (pride), all supervised by a clutch of demons equipped with staring eyes that seemed to follow you round the church. If I had been a medieval French peasant it would have spooked the hell out of me.