Our visit to Carcassonne was a strange one. The road was easy but tiring and very very hot. Thankfully we had changed to our summer jackets, which made a huge difference (they have large portions of mesh in them for airflow, bliss!) but it was still difficult and has me praying that Morocco won’t be any hotter than this!! We stopped for lunch in a dry and dusty picnic area attached to a nature reserve, and I feel sorry for the freshly hatched moth that decided to cross two zoologists’ path! We put it on a tree and watched as it pumped its wings from tiny stubs to near full size over about 30 minutes – something I’ve never witnessed before. We arrived in Carcasonne just late enough to decide it was best to find a campground and visit the old city later or maybe at night. However, that was easier said than done! The campground right near the city was very expensive – we would have stayed for easy access to the old city but it was still some distance out. We then tried to find a campground that was in our GPS list – no sign of it but found another very expensive campground. We decided it was best to head back out to the road that brought us into the city and go to one of the campgrounds we saw advertised there – still 17 euros! By this point, we were getting tired and grumpy and didn’t have any food – I was closer than ever to getting a restaurant meal but Xander very nicely went to the nearby supermarket and kept our costs down with some lovely camp-stove burgers. Unfortunately, the campground had a closed-gates-at-10pm policy (unlike midnight from the night before) so while Xander didn’t feel up to doing night photography in the city, there was no way it was going to happen – barely sunset when the gates close so it meant leaving the bike out the front of the campground, and as Xander had seen a number of vandalised cars on his trip to the market, he didn’t think it was safe. This was also the first campground in France where we did not feel secure and people felt very hostile – lots of staring even if they couldn’t tell we were the ones on a motorbike, and the attitude was a lot more like Britain – lots of noise and not there for the campsite itself. Maybe it was just a different type of people who camp near a big city, as everywhere else we’ve gone (except Montpellier) was in more rural/small town areas.
Our visit to the Carcasonne old city was great though. Like Montmedy, it was a walled citadel with people living inside, but this time with many shops and restaurants as well, and once again free to visit (except the chateau inside the walls). Even with all the tourist hustle and bustle and the shops, it had a great atmosphere and I think it was done just right. Having got there at 9am, we got to experience the place when it was quieter and we spent nearly 3 hours wondering around, including the rather stagnant cathedral that had fantastic 
gargoyles on it and finding the France sticker to put on our luggage, before we visited the tourist office to ask where we might find an internet café in the city proper – turns out one café in the citadel had free wi-fi for customers so off we went! Unfortunately, our computer was pretty low on batteries so we only had enough time to check emails and respond to a couple of important ones (still getting UK mail we have to deal with!!). When we got back to the car park, we found a 
Dutch cyclist who needed to re-pump his tyre after a puncture. We weren’t carrying the right adapter on our pump to help him, but we chatted for a while and found out he was travelling in a very different way – no money, eating food from trash cans, staying wherever he can find and has been doing this mostly in Spain for around 5 years! He’s been in jail a number of times for not having a European identity card or for being vagrant, and doesn’t seem to have any plans to change his life in the near future. Each to their own I say, and I have to admire his ability to live without all the so-called “normal” trappings of life and I feel just a touch ashamed of how we are travelling, but I wouldn’t change it!! He’s certainly losing some of the normal ways of interacting with people – strange chap.We arrived in the Pyrenees yesterday afternoon and, after some flared tempers, decided it was best to stop exactly where we landed for a few days! We’re finding that we’re not communicating as well as we should be, and thinking each other wants something to happen and not knowing we’re wrong, plus the constant travel and not really seeing things or relaxing is taking its toll. So now we’re camping for 3 nights in another fantastic location but I think this is the best so far – right in the mountains, at about 1000m looking at the mountains and down the valley, and while the campground is packed with people it’s surprisingly quiet (apart from the nearby pub celebrating some sort of festival that appears to be going on everywhere). The site manager is really friendly and letting me make a mess of French, and the facilities are damn near immaculate – and there’s even proper toilets with seats and toilet paper!! I don’t think I’ve mentioned yet, but French toilets are very strange – if they are a proper toilet they usually don’t have seats, but quite often there are a mix of normal toilets and squat toilets – I thought this was an Asian habit?! And for some reason they rarely provide toilet paper. So now we’re in the lap of luxury :-) We decided that today we should just relax in camp, which was a great idea. Xander ran out to stock up on groceries (we had nothing left and stores generally don’t open on Sundays or only in the early morning if they do so thought it best to get everything today), and I got some laundry done that in the hot weather took very little time to dry, even in the shade. We decided a big cooked lunch was in order, and Xander made up a brilliant chicken couscous dish – can’t wait till we’re eating that in Morocco! We’ve been chatting with some fellow campers, all of whom are Dutch. One pair of ladies needed help last night with their mattress pump and when Xander helped, insisted on giving us a packet of biscuits! We found out through them that thunderstorms were predicted for tonight. Another couple arrived at the same time as us last night, but only checked in today as they were already staying in a campground down in the valley and said it’s about 10 degrees C hotter down there and they need to move! They invited us over for a drink, and turns out he’s a motorbiker and they have done some travel by bike too. While chatting with them, the storm started brewing and it’s now 3 hours later and a full-fledged thunderstorm with lightning and rain. I have to say it’s rather pleasant after the heat of the day but I don’t know what it means for our plans to go walking and sightseeing tomorrow! (although neither of us were keen on doing that in the scorching heat either!!)
This afternoon we had a first – Xander cut my hair! It hasn’t been cut in well over a year, for budget reasons mainly as I hate paying lots of money for a haircut (especially as mine is so simple), but I pay so little attention to my hair that I generally only get around to cutting it every 6-10 months or so when it gets really ratty. I’ve been telling Xander for months that he’d have to learn to cut my hair because I wasn’t going to waste any of our travel money on it, but somehow we never found time to do it (I think secretly he’s been scared :-) ). My hair was pretty much down to my waist and as I wear it in a plait, the band was sitting right in the middle of my back, and when I leaned on the bike’s backrest it was driving me nuts! So we decided today was the right day and I have to say he’s done a pretty good job too! I sometimes wonder if there isn’t anything he can’t do if he puts his mind to it (maybe singing :-) ) I should note at this point that hair care is going fairly well – the not-so-solid shampoo (see below) works well, and the solid conditioner is also doing a good job (if melting a bit!). I wash my hair at night so it has plenty of time to dry, which in this hot weather is no time at all. Now all I have to do is work out how to wash it in the collapsible bucket when water supply becomes less frequent. Thankfully my long hair needs less frequent washing than short hair, but who knows what I’ll do when there’s no water at all for washing….
The latest batch of things I’ve learned:
- microfibre travel/sports towels make THE best tea-towels and you can use them to mop up anything. Wring them out and start again! Wiping down the seat and helmet visors, mopping up water spilled on the tent groundsheet and rain off the tent or tarp so everything is packed away just a little bit drier – all good!
- screw-top bottles are not necessarily better than pump bottles or pop-on lids – they can still come undone when getting shoved in and out of small spaces in the luggage and leak everywhere! No more leave-in conditioner for me :-(
- using washing powder for clothes washing is sooooo much better than using normal soap – my life has become a whole lot easier on this trip compared to others!
- solid blocks of shampoo don’t stay solid when stored wet in ziplock bags – I now have a rather suspicious looking brown paste to carry in the toiletry bag!!! Cross fingers we won’t get searched…
- universal plugs are great but don’t trust them for a second! When swishing water/laundry around, they will come loose
- you can train your face over a 6 month period to get used to being washed with only soap all you like, but your skin is still going to hate you for lack of decent moisturiser after washing and covering it in sunscreen every morning.