Travelling again part 15

This week was quite a varied week as far as activities go. The first few days were relatively quiet and were spent readying ourselves for our South African visitors who arrived on Wednesday. They had flown in to Toulouse where they hired a car and found their way to us with the help of a GPS device. We were very impressed as the house is not easy to find at the best of times. Fortunately they had not had a long trip before they arrived because from the next day it was all go, go go! On Thursday, we took them out for lunch at Montesquiou and then walked around the town afterwards. They were suitably impressed with the old buildings but enjoyed, even more, the pencil sketch portraits of all the town’s permanent inhabitants, which hang in the Town Hall. Before getting to our lunch destination, we had taken a detour past Peyrusse Vieille to say goodbye to our friends there and managed to time it exactly, for them to see Ady ringing the church bells – something quite special for foreigners. Our return trip to the house was just as round-about as we tried to show them bits of everywhere, which included Bassoues and Aignan. It was unbelievably hot after all the cold weather and we were all dressed far too warmly but managed to survive. The next day we took them into Eauze to do some shopping, as they will be staying on in this house after we leave on Tuesday. Although the supermarket is not one of the biggest, they were overwhelmed with the variety of goods and we had almost to drag them away before they bought far more than they needed. That evening we entertained my cousin to dinner, to give her an opportunity to meet our friends, and to give them an opportunity to meet her in case they need help with anything after we have left. On Saturday, we repeated our trip of some time ago when we did a huge circular drive which took in Gabarret, La Bastide d’Armagnac, Estang and Manciet. We took a picnic lunch with us, which we enjoyed in La Bastide after having wandered slowly around the town admiring all the wonderful old medieval buildings. After leaving La Bastide, we called in at an unusual church dedicated to cyclists. The gates are made of bicycles and the interior is hung with jerseys belonging to champion and other well-known cyclists. There are apparently over six-hundred jerseys hanging against the walls and the stained glass windows depict cyclists. Very unusual indeed. Today we ate out again, this time in beautiful Bassoues, which was bustling with visitors. And once again we took a circuitous route to get home, giving them quick glimpses of Marciac and Plaisance, and taking different roads to the ones we have used before. Thank goodness they have a GPS to help them get around because by now their sense of direction must be totally confused. I am purposefully keeping this week’s blog really short as I have had an SMS from the service provider to tell me that our data card has almost expired and I am not sure how far the remainder will go. If no pictures accompany the text, it means that the card has run out completely!