Around 0800h, we heard action outside and went upstairs to see the covered dock being emptied, and Serge arriving with his own barge Hydra, which he had taken to Moissac for the Festival. Soon he was entering the covered drydock to do some work on some underwater welding which had failed, and then later he was going to give Hydra a good overall paint job.

But before he got into that, he started on the second coat of blacking on Kanumbra. Since this was going to take some time, we started off for Barcelona at 1000h.

As we left the Toulouse area on the motorway, we heard a strange noise from under the Scenic, so we pulled over at the next rest area, and luckily found that it was just a branch stuck in the undercarriage. But while we were there, we realised that this rest area was just near Sangliers Ecluse where we stopped overnight last year for the concert on Tourmente.  It brought back memories.

We soon turned off A9 and headed down the A66 motorway towards Foix, on the way to Andorra and then Barcelona. We passed through Foix and headed towards Tarascon, where we found a supermarket to do some shopping. While the girls were inside shopping, I sat in the car and just looked around at the mountains and valleys surrounding the town. It dawned on me that this was a very old landscape, and all the surrounding valleys were pointing to the natural place for siting a town in centuries past.

Since we were at Tarascon, and since we had already shown Ruth most of the places that Pans on Fire had visited in 2014, we thought we might make a slight detour to Les Cabannes to show her Château de Gudanes. We had only intended to show her the Château from the front gates, but when we got there the gates were open and looked very inviting, so we thought we’d drive in and chance our arm. The Château looks just as spectacular as it did 4 years ago.

So we walked up the steps and knocked on the front door, which was opened by Karina Waters. She looked a little puzzled at first, but we only got a few seconds into our introduction when she said “Oh yes, Pans on Fire!”. She then welcomed us inside and showed us some of the work that has been progressing over the years. As we walked into the dining room, we saw Jasmine, her daughter, who we also met in 2014.

We then had a walk around the ground floor, including the kitchen which is now fully functional and used for various events they hold at the Château.

We then sat down with Karina for a cuppa and a chat. Her memory amazed us again when she remembered the name of our painter friend (Shirley Peters) who did the painting of the Château and the Tour de France riders. She then asked about our builder (Nico) and admitted that she had lost his contact details from her previous enquiry, but was still interested in him coming to the Château to do some building and carpentry work. We then had a long conversation about an idea that Rita, Ruth and myself had been tossing around for the past week, of starting a business conducting mini guided tours in France (mainly for Australian customers) using La Maison in Moissac, the barge and a nine-seater minibus. Given Karina’s experience with conducting similar (but more grand) tours using the Château as a base, her insights were invaluable. One of her chief contributions was not to underprice the tours. She made the valid point that if you provide a service that guests will recommend to their friends, then they will not mind paying high (but not exorbitant) prices. You need to make sure you cover ALL your costs, including your own time and any fixed costs, plus make a reasonable profit from the business. We left the conversation with some really useful ideas.

Karina then showed us a sneak peek of a promotional video (starring Jasmine in the lead role) that they had produced for a forthcoming book about the Château. It truly captured the magic spirit of the place, and we will definitely be buying a copy for the Panyard back home.

As we left, after an hour and a half, we posed for a re-enactment of the photo we took of Pans on Fire with Karina in 2014. Not quite as many as then, but the hospitality of Karina and Jasmine and her generosity with her time was still the same. The look on Ruth’s face as we left indictated that she had enjoyed the experience just as much as Pans on Fire in 2014, even though we didn’t get the opportunity to play Bohemian Rhapsody in the stairwell this time around.

Still very much on a high after the Château, we started looking for a quiet place to have some lunch, and found it in a nearby town when we stopped for a riverside lunch at Garanou. The babbling brook was a great soother, and the local birds kept Ruth busy with her camera.

The girls also couldn’t resist the temptation to go for a quick dip, in what turned out to be rather cold water.

Then we continued on the journey and soon began the climb to Andorra. The mountain scenery was stunning, and the gradient of the roads was equally impressive!

Soon we reached Andorra, and the atmosphere changed significantly, with lots of modern buildings, many in ski resorts like that below (just imagine all the ground is white with snow!). We paid a toll as we entered Andorra, but there was no Motorway following, just the normal roads. It’s just Andorra’s way of getting some revenue from traffic (like us) just passing through without stopping. But stop we did, at the customs checkpoint on the way out of Andorra!  We sat in a queue for about 40 minutes, but when we got to the head of the queue we just drove straight though - not sure what was being checked to cause such a queue. But the advantage was that the roads in Spain after that flowed very smoothly, because of the traffic metering that was happening at the border.

The drive through northern Spain was interesting, with some lovely sweeping mountain roads and pleasant rural views. But as we crested one particular hill, we were greeted by this surreal vista. It looked like something from a sci-fi movie set, but on consulting our maps it seemed that it was the Montserrat mountain range. We took many more photos as we got closer, but none captures the lasting impression of this place as much as the initial view seen below. It looks like a place to explore more thoroughly when more time is available.

Soon we were on the outskirts of Barcelona and consulting maps/GPS to see how we could get to our hotel. But it wasn’t all that hard, apart from one last-minute lane change I made which brought out the expected Spanish horn-tooting. Without any further dramas, apart from roadworks in the vicinity of the hotel, we were soon pulling into the underground carpark at the “Capri by Fraser” Hotel for a well-earned overnight rest.