Last day in St. Chinian

As anticipated, today was a local day, with a quick jaunt into Beziers this morning to pick up a few final goodies at Auchan. We've really gotten to know and enjoy the drive through this city. I think Beziers has become our new favourite Mediterranean city.
On the way back to St. Chinian we stopped at one of France's great inventions - an outside car wash machine that does it all, takes up very little space and does a seriously superior job compared to those in Canada. In Canada's climate, we could put one of these easily into the garage spaces now used to wash one car at a time and for same amount of money get a much better job.

Then it was time to pack and weigh - unpack, reweigh - repack, reweigh - further redistribute, reweigh - take a trip to the post office to purchase a box in which we could ship the excess home. Of course, Dawn is blaming the wine, but I know that the olive oil and table clothes nicely balance out the wine. Anyway, mission accomplished - one box for a mere 41 euros shipping sundry clothing items off to Canada! After a month in the country, we are clearly missing the 4th bag that we would usually have. As it is, we will pay extra at the airport for the third bag. C'est la vie!
Since it was another scorcher today, we hid out in Aurelie for the afternoon and before dinner, finally ventured out for a little planned walking tour about the town. This is another activity we should probably have done when we first arrived, but, at least we did it.
The walk started off in the gardens directly behind Aurelie. We strolled down the main street and into the parrish church which had in it two noteworthy items - a stone commemorating the height of the flood waters of 1875 and a restored 18th century organ. Every town seems to have an important date and the flood of 1875 seems to be the big one here.


Continuing on from the church we walked along the houses backing on the Vernazobre River and discovered that this town was originally famous for cloth manufacture. The restored and not so restored houses of the millers were found along the way.


Going deeper into this neighbourhood, we discovered some pretty fabulous estates, mostly hidden by high floral walls, but one had the gates open to give us a peek.


The walk brought us back to the plane tree lined market area close to Aurelie. We were really glad we'd ventured out into the heat for this walk. It gave us a much broader perspective of the town in which we've spent two weeks.

For our last night, we opted for dinner in town at La Caleche, immediately across the street from the Mayor's garden and a mere 100 metres from our house. Dawn started with a tomato & mozzarella salad while I had escargots. We both had grilled lamb loin chops for the main, followed by Ile flottane for me and dark chocolate ice cream with poire william sorbet for Dawn. Another memorable meal!