It’s our second day in Carcassonne, and our last before heading South East to Provence. We spent most of today wandering around within the walls of the old city, visiting the castle and walking around the battlements, stopping only for lunch and the occasional ice-cold confection.

Despite it’s medieval look and feel on the outside, you only really visit the old city for three reasons; one, you’re a tourist staying in one of the incredibly expensive, high end hotels within the city walls; two, you’re a tourist looking for a restaurant or a souvenir to buy in one of the many gift shops; or three, you’re a tourist and you want to visit the castle. As we had a perfectly nice hotel just outside the city, and it wasn’t yet lunchtime we opted to do the latter, partaking of the rather excellent audio tour and fantastic vistas.

Come lunchtime, we were faced with a now all too familiar problem; like in any tourist-focussed area, eating healthily just simply isn’t an option. Practically every restaurant in the old city has a similar menu, largely consisting of highly salty duck or red meat dishes, loaded with fries and with very limited vegetable matter on offer. Even the salads are loaded with meat or cheese, so your pretty much stuck if you want to maintain your waistline.

As luck would have it, the weather in the region has been consistently fantastic, with the temperature being neither too hot or cold and always with a cooling or pleasantly warm breeze. This may or may not be obvious to some people, but for someone who never really “got” the South-of-France, I can now understand why people want to live here.