To France and The Languedoc & Le Moulin Blau

Having travelled down to Manchester on the Sunday we were all ready for an easy day with our flight to Carcassonne being at 12:30. And there was nothing difficult about it really, but it was so tedious, with queues for every little move we made. It even started before we got to the airport with a traffic queue that made our supposed 12 minute journey from the hotel to the airport into a one hour crawl. We queued for the bus to take us to the terminal building, we queued to check our bags in, we queued for a cup of coffee. Then we had a break of twenty minutes or so while we waited for the departure board to tell us where to queue next. Ah, gate 49, more queuing, then a queue to get on the aeroplane. In all the hour and a half flight involved three and a half hours stood in a variety of queues, none of them interesting or entertaining.
Touchdown at Salvasa airport and a temperature of thirty degrees, lovely. Into the terminal building and guess what, no one at customs to check passports, so we had to queue while they tried to arrange for someone to check us through. I guess an aeroplane landing at 15:30 in the afternoon caught them out, I mean, they wouldn't be expecting it would they.
Soon we were in our hire car and on the road for Puivert, resolving to drive down in future, it might take us four days but when we did it in the spring, it was far more enjoyable than flying had turned out to be. We had the traditional stop off at Leclerc hyper market near Limoux to stock up on essentials like wine, beer and cheese, plus one or two other bits and pieces to make meals with. We headed up the upper Aude valley to Quillan and turned off into the hills along a steep and winding road onto a plateau surrounded by mountains. At the far end of the plateau lies Puivert and  the Moulin Blau, where we are staying, is just outside the village of Puivert.
The drive drops down off the road to Chalabre to the converted mill beside the babbling river Blau. Not a large river at all, we would call it a beck at home, but a beautiful and peaceful setting.

 Moulin Blau, a lovely holiday location in a delightful setting. The owners have only been there since January, but have already transformed the place into a very comfortable gite, with exceptional outdoor space. Ken & Imke, who own the place, live onsite and are very friendly, but discreet too. There presence was never intrusive and at times turned out to be extremely helpful.
If you fancy staying at Moulin Blau, take a look at their website on www.lemoulin lau.com or you can email them on lemoulinblau@hotmail.com

La Lune

After a balmy, relaxing evening, taking in the natural beauty of our surrounding and the odd glass of local wine, we retired, to get up ready to make the most of our first full day. The sky was clear blue, not a cloud to be seen, so we headed of to Lac Montbel a few miles downstream from here. Our intention was to circumnavigate the lake, a walk of about ten miles. We wanted to enjoy the hot sunshine, do some photography and just see what nature had to show us as we wandered. The lake was very low, much lower than when we had been there on a previous occasion at the same time of year. Parking by the lake we set of along a well marked path. According to the map, the path followed the shoreline all the way around, so no problem there then. There was lots of interest along the way, various Autumn fruits, including a wild pear tree with some rather hard, but non the less tasty pears. There was a few wild flowers including a field with two large patches of Autumn crocus.

 There was also numerous, brightly coloured butterflies to photograph, when they stayed still for long enough.

 After we had been walking for an hour and a half we came across a small beach bar where we bought some more water. It had become a concern that we might have underestimated how much we would need, so we were very pleased to be able to stock up. We continued out onto what eventually appeared to be a peninsula and as we turned the corner at the farthest point we began to feel a bit confused about where we were. I resorted to looking at the map and for a while that just added to the confusion. I could see the Club Nautique on the far shore of the lake, so that helped me to determine where we were. It still didn't look right though. It seemed like whichever direction we went, we were surrounded by water. It became so disorientating we weren't even sure anymore about how we had got there. It almost felt like we were on an island.

I looked at the map again and between the Club Nautique and where I thought we were there was an island in the lake, but I could see no sign of it. Then I had a moment of realisation. We were on the island! With the water level being so low, the island had become attached to the shore and temporarily turned into a peninsula. By following the shoreline we had mistakenly left the path behind and wandered out onto the island. We decided to retrace our steps and then go back the way we had come. We were about half way round the lake, but our island excursion had been quite a large detour. We felt more certain of our route if we headed back the same way. It seems unbelievable that you could get lost walking around a lake, but we did and for a few minutes it was quite disconcerting.
We watched herons and egrets stalking the fish in the shallows and wagtails scuttling along the shoreline. We saw an osprey take a fish from one of the reserve lagoons just back from the main lake. It was unable to hang onto it though, the fish was too large and the osprey struggled to fly with it in it's talons! Eventually giving way and dropping the fish from a great height. Before long we were back to the car and heading back through Chalabre and home to the Moulin Blau.