Pilgrim's Progress – Long Distance Walks in Europe and the UK

Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet.

Jean-jacques Rousseau

I left the Villa Caline in good spirits, fortified by the previous night’s cassoulet, 10 hours sleep and a clean pair of socks. Such simple pleasures do a a happy walker make.

It was back to three hours beside La Rigole. I was still mystified by the fishing sign beside the canal which indicated that rainbow and brown trout ( as well as barbel, gudgeon and dace) could be caught in shallow channel.

During the 6 hours that I walked beside La Rigole I didn’t see any sign of fish whatsoever. No telltale pattern of concentric rings on the surface which indicates a rise. Catching any sort of fish would have been a challenge as would the task of landing it. For many stretches thr channel was completely overgrown while in others there was a good ten foot drop between the bank and the water. A fly fishing haven La Rigole most certainly isn’t!

Eventually at a place called Naurouze La Rigole disgorged itself into the Canal du Midi which links Toulouse to the Mediterranean.

It was a brief meeting with the Canal du Midi (5 mins) but enough time to enjoy a plaque beside the canal to comemmorate the 220th anniversary to American Independence and raise hats to one of the US Founding Fathers – Thomas Jefferson

I’d been lulled into a false sense of security by the endless hours of flatlining beside La Rigole. Once our paths diverged it was back to back breaking lung busting ascents of villages which appeared from the middle of nowhere.

Toulouse is the industrial hub for Airbus. But why did Toulouse emerge as the centre for the european aerospace industry and what did this have to do with the hilltop village of Montferrand that was a Cathar enclave during the early 13th century and burnt to the ground by Simon de Montfort during the Albigensian Crusade in 1211 AD?

At the beginning of the 13th century Montferrand was a hilltop fortress which protected a community of Cathar heretics. In 1211AD at the behest of the Pope who had launched a crusade to exterminate the Cathar heretics across south west France, Simon de Montfort arrived outside the town walls with 40 knights and proceeded to slaughter the village’s entire population. The church was subsequently closed for the next 40 years to ensure that the heresy did not reappear.

At the beginning of the 20th century in the 1920s, the Compagnie Postale Aeronautique took advantage of Montferrand’s elevated position toverect an 11m high aeronautical lighthouse which helped guide planes flying the route from Toulouse to Dakar and then across the Atlantic to Chile in South America. The beacon was lit by neon and also emitted the letter R in morse code to signal to aviators that they were flying on the correct route.

Descending from Montferrand through gently undulating farmland I met a couple of young walkers from Toulouse out for a day’s hike and took the opportunity to filch a juicy tomato from an allotment to assuage my growing hunger pangs. It was simply delicious in a way that supermarket tomatoes simply aren’t.

Reaching Villefranche-de-Laurageais I was forced to make a 1km diversion out of town to reach a colossal hyper market where I could stock up on provisions for supper snd thè next day. With the help of a jogger I eventually managed to make my way to Les Sérièges which it turned out was the nsme of the house and not the nsme if a village as I had thought. I was greeted by a rather menacing dog to the end of a chain. There was no sign of life in the gite or in the house.

Eventually, Frank, the owner, appeared. He was wearing what appeared to be rugby kit, so I commiserated with about the injury suffered by the star French flyhalf, Antoine Dupont in Thursday’s match against Namibia, an injury which has severely dented the host nation’s chances of winning the competition and plunged the country into a vortex of depression. Frank agreed but looked slightly bemused. I asked him how his rugby match had gone. “Rugby?” he replied with a raised eyebrow. “I have been playing PETANQUE!”