We’re just settling in for the night now, after spending most of the day of traveling to the medieval city of Carcassonne. We’re staying at the Citéa hotel, a basic but modern and comfortable hotel in the shadow of the fortified French town, where we’ll be spending our time tomorrow.

We arrived in the city late yesterday afternoon, after leaving Brive in the mid-morning and travelled another 300km South, just 50 kilometres shy of the Mediterranean coast; typical of the locale, the weather here has been absolutely perfect, being in the elusive “just right” category of heat.

We took an indirect route here, broken up by visits to the Gouffre de Padirac and Pech Merle caves (the latter of which containing paintings made by humans dating back 25,000 years), and taking us through some picturesque (but eerily quiet) villages and beautiful countryside that characterises this part of the world.

With the country lanes being so quiet (and in an attempt to beat the satnav’s ETA suggestions) we couldn’t resist “putting the boot in” and rallying it, and made it to Carcassonne in plenty of time to venture out briefly to grab an ice cream just within the walls of the old city.