Life is just a bowl of ...............

It is cherry season here in Languedoc and after much publicity in the local papers, we decided to see what happened at Fête de la Cerise in Trausse Minervois.

We arrived to the sound of a Banda playing in the village square. This was followed by speeches given by the local dignitaries. At the end of the acknowledgements, everyone was invited to the apéros, as usual, which had been donated by the local vignerons. After easing our way through the crowd, we managed to find a glass of wine, ate a selection of saucisson sec, hams and pork scratchings, all of which went very well with the variety of wines that we sampled.

The colours and smells of the fête were lovely.



There are some beautiful, little villages in the region and the fêtes that are held in them gives us an opportunity to see some some of them that we wouldn’t normally have known about.

Spring?

It is exactly 2 years since we left the UK, and it is weekends like this that confirm that our decision to move was a good one. The weather has been fantastic. It has been more like spring rather than the end of January.

Yesterday Richard and I decided to walk on the plateau at Leucate. We have a book of local walks and have tried this particular one several times. In spite of following the signs carefully, we never seem to complete the route as planned. I think we have cracked it now, with a few deviations. The sun was warm, sky was blue and it was lovely to see the almond blossom beginning to flower. Bees and butterflies were flying everywhere. We even found a flock of sheep with lambs.

Today we went to a truffle fair. Again as usual, it is based around food and drink.
There were stalls in the village selling baguettes. There was a choice of foie gras, magret or truffle omelette. I decided to have the magret and Richard the omelette. They were lovely. One could also sample a variety of wines from local vineyards. One of the highlights of this fair is the Banda, Les Bestioles de la Garrigue. Their music certainly put a smile on everyone’s faces and made the feet tap.