Stopover in Lauragais: and still France Passion!

After a few months "stuck" by the material contingencies of a house found after 15 years of absence and which logically needed a facelift.... the time had now come to hit the road again..

Following an Italian escapade recounted in previous articles, our destination for the month of May will be... Portugal!

After the last brushstrokes, before undertaking the long road to get there, we hesitated on the day of departure on this "super bridge" of May 8 and Ascension combined: Bison futé announcing red on Tuesday and orange on Wednesday: Banco for Wednesday!

As you have certainly seen by watching the news: fatal mistake!

Bison futé had certainly abused the peace pipe .. and this day of departure was indeed the deepest darkness with a record of kms of traffic jams in which we remained stuck for hours ...

But the characteristic of a trip in a camper van is flexibility and so we chose a stop much closer than expected by finally getting out of the traffic jams for an impromptu stop in Lauragais, in the good care of our France Passion app to find a quiet corner in the countryside after these hours of traffic jams ....

New version of the retirement roads in the gentle fertile hills of Lauragais, south of Toulouse, which has remained in history as the cradle of the Cathar rebellion and the sinister Albigensian crusade which repressed it in blood ...

Far from these past torments, the atmosphere of the small country road that looks good is totally serene and ... above all deserted, the streams of vacationers all heading towards the big blue!

The stage proposed by France Passion near the small village of Nailloux will be up to the previous ones with a "spot" of nature of irreproachable tranquility to the sound of frogs and small birds, next to Nicole and Philippe's farm, with in addition the charming welcome of Nicole in her small organic shop, explaining to us the thousand and one facets of the decision to launch into organic farming

Hard work to prepare the cereal harvests to come...

While the city dwellers are under the charm of a flock of sparrows on a branch or the flowering of milk thistle, of which I discover with amazement the long history since antiquity of a so-called reputation for liver and biliary disorders which has led to many modern clinical studies in liver diseases and cirrhosis without ever demonstrating real effectiveness!

The next day, before facing the kms of motorway towards Spain and Portugal again, a little walk 2 kms away, on the banks of the Thésauque lake and its leisure center

Certainly overbooked in summer .. but absolutely peaceful on this long weekend when everyone had visibly gone to the sea!

Well ... ok ... everyone .. except for rare fishermen and a few green collars.

There we find the flowering of the Peruvian squill, a pretty Mediterranean flower that has never had anything to do with Peru contrary to what the botanist who named it in 1700 and some believed!
But apparently there is a rule in botany to never change the original name of a plant and so we kept this erroneous name!
As is often the case when travelling, after a gloomy day in traffic jams, it is the gentleness of the Lauragais hills with the Pyrenean snow in the background that will remain in our memory...