Day 50 – Back at the campsite in Foix, again!

Early the next morning I was up, at 7. I wanted to pay and be out before the rush. Now that the tour was over I imagined everyone wanting to leave at once. I still had a 30Km drive back to Foix before my appointment at 10, and I was hoping to get breakfast first.

So get back in plenty of time I did, got the car parked and sat at a cafe in the centre of Foix with a croque monsuir for breakfast.

’Cafe avec cream’

Now the ‘cafe au lait’ I usually ask for means ‘coffee of milk’. They use hot milk instead of water. I think we call it a laté. Often they use so little coffee it’s more like hot milk. More suitable for bedtime than first thing in the morning! Now if you ask for ‘cafe avec crème’ (coffee with crème), sometimes that’s interpreted as a cafe au lait, but most of the time you get something more akin to an Americano, made with water and a little cream added. Just the ‘billet’ for first thing!

The houses

The first place

The agents took me to see two houses. The first was on a 199,000 euro. About a 20 minute drive from Foix and an appreciable distance up a very steep mountain track. The old lady that lived there with her husband and 5 dogs said indignantly “I don’t want to move but my husband insists!!”. The views of the valley below stupefied me for a bit. The garden was very steep... probably a 20-25% incline. It could certainly benefit from some terracing or decking. It was a large single story building of stone with two bedrooms only curiously she was very reluctant to open the door to the second bedroom. Clearly she had murdered her husband in the dispute and was probably in the process of chopping up his body.

The garden

Anyway there were 3 outbuilding; a large wood store, a garage / workshop split in two with the back half used as a wine store (the French call it a ‘cave’), and another wooden shed converted into a large bedroom complete with on-suite. It was actually a much nicer bedroom than the others in the house!

The second place

One of the out-building

The main house

The second place, was just outside another village in the area on the lower mountain slopes (where it wasn’t so steep). This one was on at 160,000 euro. It was absolutely great! The only problem was the garden along with 2 large stone out buildings (both ideal for large workshops) was separated from the house by a small road. The house is actually two attached 3 story stone houses with oak beams knocked into one. Very solid and nice looking from the outside. Inside however... I have never seen such a constrast. It was like being transported back to Victorian times. No kidding, there was mixture of carpet and hideous old patterned wallpaper on the walls every doorway or opening was draped with some kind of old rotting stained fabric in place of a door. The tiny kitchen had no oven or fridge, or place to put one, and more resembled a tiled wet room than anything else. It was simply unusable as a kitchen and half the size of anything I’d ever seen.


Now if I were to take on this house, I would make them an offer of about 120,000 or less, which they probably would except. The French buyers seem to have an astonishing lack of vision when presented with something like this. Maybe the profusion of ‘Grand Designs’ type programs in the UK has shown us Brits the locked up potential in places like this. Next, I would gut it... completely! All the internal stud walls, all the museum piece wiring and switches, all the lumpy plastering (on purpose made to look like a ski mogul field – For the non skiers this is a field of man made lumps to provide a technical ski challenge), all the pipe-work, everything. This double house would benefit half the number of rooms made larger than it actually has. I would even go so far as to enlargen the hole in the supporting stone central wall to make it more open plan-like.


Now as if this place wasn’t already a bargain when we got back to the office they showed me something which took my breath away. This house comes with so much land you would simply lose track of it all; 52,000 m² in about 40 odd separate parcels, scattered all over the mountain. On one piece is an old barn that is also possible to renovate!



Once my business here was concluded I went back to the ‘camping du lac’. They have free WiFi there and I decided to spend the rest of the day uploading the blog. I didn’t realise this before but some campsites have WiFi that is free but you still need to register your email address before the browser works and often as the online instructions are only in French it’s difficult to understand what to do. However with the help of my friendly German neighbours the other day I figure it out. So today about 2 weeks of blog got uploaded. That should keep you all busy for a bit.
Having done my massive dump on the blog (as I’m sure a Dutch person might put it ;-) I went down to the river to relax a bit. This is the second time I’ve come back to this place but neither time before did I really have time to enjoy the lake. And what an absolutely beautiful lake it is too. The sun is low in the sky and shining on the water at an oblique angle in such a way that it highlights all the dust and insects and general bits and bobs of nature floating on the surface. Wow!

This is my favourite picture to date

The clear water close to the bank is emitting bubbles from small holes in the silt. The homes of some small fresh water creatures I guess, and the quacks and squeaks of the various birds over the other side are carried effortlessly across the surface.

Sitting there on the bank staring at the water I seem to have slipped into some kind of trance like state. I’ve no idea how long for. A couple of hours at least. It’s not at all dull, on the contrary, it is fascinating... just sitting there staring at the water... exploring the possibilities in my head. Not for the first time I found myself thinking about the beautiful places and wondering just how far-flung they are in the universe.



Eventually I called a halt to my astral excursions and went home to cook dinner... the last thing I need is to start levitating out across the water! As I was walking back I noticed a bright blue Damsen fly sat on my shoulder.... probably thought to himself, ‘I’ll give my wings a rest and hitch a ride on this human’. It certainly seemed in no rush to be anywhere... so we went back together.

An hour or so later as it as getting dark, I was back at camp, with my table out preparing herbs for my dinner with half a bottle Fitou already concealed in my inner person. It struck me what a pleasant place this is. Everyone is in their own little plot with their table and chairs out, all close to each other, but all going about their business, quietly and respectfully... reading books, cooking, snoozing, star gazing, and occasionally saying ‘bonsoir’ or ‘bon apetite’ to each other. The lake seems to have had a calming, almost hippy like effect on me! Best put some punk music on loud eh?! ;-)