Castres – Oct 18th

Last night was windy, but warm.  It howls all night.  Mistral winds from Africa?

But Castres is another “why bother” after Montauban.  It’s another one star sight in the Michelin guide book, but after today we have a new rule – one stars are not worth it as destinations, only if they’re on the way to something else.  (These views of houses on the river are "the" sight in town and the guidebooks)

 

 

The town is known for Jean Jaures, the Goya museum, and as one of about a dozen towns large enough to have morning markets.

Jaures is a famous French socialist.  Didn’t particularly care to pay to go into his museum (Tom speaking!).  The Goya museum has the largest collection of Spanish art in France (Spain is only a few hours south), but seeing Spanish art in France seems counter-intuitive.  And the market is suffering from the bad weather (truly amazing strong winds) and the fact that October isn’t high season – there are only 5 vendors occupying less than 5% of the town square.  There are also pretty houses along the Agout River that runs through the middle of town.

So, we take on that most important of French customs (at least as far as we can understand French customs) and go in search of a good lunch.  We find a place on the river, Le Medieval, that got good reviews in TripAdvisor.  Run by 2 older ladies with one cooking and the other fulfilling front of house functions, they welcome us.

Just about every restaurant has 2 ways of ordering.  There are a couple, or as many as four or five, menus of the day.  Usually a subset of their overall menu, they’re typically much cheaper than ordering by the item.  The other way you can order is just that, by the item.  Here though, the woman hands us the “carte” (the item menu) but makes it clear that we will be picking between her 2 menus of the day.  No problem.  The server was also a nice grandmother-type.  I did my usual spiel in French about understanding but not speaking well and she replied, in French, that she would speak slowly in that case.  Lunch was OK but not a place we’d try again so not worth going into detail.

On the road back, we stopped in the village of Lautrec.  It’s another of the “prettiest villages in France” (the official list, you know).  Yet another pretty village…  There’s a windmill.  And the wind was really picking up as we walked up the hill at the top of the town to get to it.  We got pictures though…

Evening was at home.  We filled the gas (diesel) tank and picked up cash at the Credit Agricole ATM so we’d be ready for tomorrow’s excursion.  Went to sleep to the sound of howling winds!