Housesitting in Montaigu-de-Quercy - Days 51 to 57

Not all cats immediately come up to Jackie

Where has a week gone? We have loved being here, they really are the cutest cats. William has spent every night on the bed, and most evenings in front of the tv on our laps, while Miel makes the most of him being outside a lot of the day to get her fuss, while deafening us with the loudest purr from a small cat.

Tomorrow Louise returns from England and her caring position, so we are doing a bit of caring and cooking her, and boyfriend, Charles, dinner. Judging by her herbs and spices she’s not afraid of a bit of heat, so Kashmiri butter chicken in the thermal cooker it is. Well actually butter turkey as the supermarket is a bit lacking, but hey...

Not all cats immediately come to Brian, but William cat does!

We’ve done no driving since we’ve been here, there is just something slightly weird about going on a day trip in Big Ted, though when traveling it’s what we do every day. Strange what the head says ... to be fair though, we travelled here so slowly we’ve seen everywhere in the near north anyway. We were tempted to go to a couple of markets on Sunday, but rain was forecast which is never ideal for a market and it appears that the fuel protests are still continuing which is a bit of a surprise. 

A tower on our walk into Montaigu-de-Quercy, but I could find nothing about it

Still we have a full tank of fuel, which should easily get us to Spain, so, hoping for a quick getaway on Friday we are planning a long driving day (3+ hours, it’s all relative....) to Lourdes, which I’m not really sure I want to go to anyway, having been to Knock in Ireland many years ago with Sarah and John. I rate Knock as one of the most unpleasant experiences of my life, the whole commercialism of hundreds of stalls selling Jesus shaped plastic bottles for you to put holy water in, and tacky, plastic souvenirs left nothing for the spirituality of the place. Lourdes may be totally different, and I hope it is, but I’m not holding my breath......

Montaigu-de-Quercy on the hill

Instead we have cycled and walked. The cycle into town (Montaigu-de-Quercy) is easy there, with just a little hill at the end on the way back, and Louise thoughtfully picked us up some walk leaflets from somewhere, so we’ve done some pottering. The market in town on Saturday was well worth a visit, much better than the previous week in Roquecor, we only bought apples, but it was real, not full of overpriced artisanal products.

Looking out from the village

We’ve relearned how to play cribbage, which we have both played in the past, it seems to be good, tactical, game. Read, though I just have to finish the last book, watched some rubbish TV and cooked lots of yummy dinners. We do have an oven in Ted, but it’s only very small with one shelf (I wonder if we can get another?) so a full roast just isn’t on. It’s either roast meat or roast veggies, which to be fair will work, I did roast pork here, which we ate on two nights, cold the second night with lots of hot veggies and gravy, worked fine. 

Fontaine de Prezon on another walk close by

I also did a moussaka as there was an aubergine beginning to look a little sorry for itself, having not been used by Louise for the Grand Bazaar after all, so I had to take pity on it... Crosswords (Jackie), cat cuddling, and piano practice (Brian) have all taken place as well as route planning (B) and sorting out our MiFi unit (J) the sort of geeky computery thing that makes sense to some, but drives the rest of us to drink. The MiFi is a little box, with a data only sim that we can connect phones, iPad etc to. Data is potentially a problem, though we have done ok so far on the 4Gigabytes B has on his phone, what we don’t know is how long this will continue abroad, with the ‘fair usage policy’ and we have had WiFi on a couple of campsites and tourist informations for posting blogs. We used the MiFi at home, where it worked fine, but hadn’t tried it in France, as we’d had no need. When we did, it didn’t work. Funny foreign phone signal..... In an erroneous way, it made sense to have a look at it on Sunday when we arrived, well I could ask questions on Internet forums hoping people would be sitting at home with nothing better to do, and use online chat to communicate with tp-link the MiFi manufacturer and 3 the data provider. Not to mention of course it’s one of those things, you need WiFi to correct your WiFi problems.....

Miel cat ready to come out on a bike ride with us

Motorhome forums were helpful, tp-link were not, and 3 really were, even though it wasn’t really their problem. I did the online chat, he finally decided he’d get someone to ring me to talk me through setting up a new profile which happened, despite the local phone coverage being very poor and Louise arriving home mid way through like a whirling dervish. Tried again this morning just to check, as everything had happened all at once, and ..... nothing. Totally depressed and clutching at straws I took it into town, shopping, as the phone signal really isn’t very good.... phew, it worked, I haven’t got to go through all that again, just as well as we have no gin!

William cat looking like he's disco dancing

So, little more chilling today, though we could do with putting half of our belongings back into Ted before tomorrow when rain is forecast and the temperature goes up! A little temperature increase will be very welcome as it has been very cold, though it’s been good practice for a ski resort....