Yesterday at Palau-del-Vidre was a fairly lazy day. We had another walk around the lake and much to our excitement witnessed people using what looked like a kind of unsupervised “Go Ape”. All sorts of vertigo inducing obstacles strung between trees, maybe as much as 5 metres high.

If you do Go Ape in England its all very safety conscious with each participant having two carabiners attached to a safety line, to make sure there is a back up if one fails and also so when you move between obstacles one carabiner always remains attached. At Palau-del-Vidre they only had one carabiner each and on the long zip lines across the lakes there was no supervision, you just clipped yourself on and off you zipped. A different safety culture.

The highlight of my day was, surprise surprise, that I managed to spot one of the elusive birds I mentioned last time. It was the very pretty yellow European Serin.

My view on the village of Palau-del-Vide was that it was a rather drab place. That was based on my one trip to the boulangerie. This morning Sarah took Skye into the village and went a little further than me and found a pretty square and church. The campsite reception had told us that the village was well known for glass blowing and indeed Sarah found the workshop of one such artisan and an attached shop with some exquisite examples of the work. She said she would have liked something for her birthday, but unfortunately it won’t be open before we leave.

Today we left a warm, but overcast, Paulau-del-Vidre to drive to Carcassonne. As we progressed the clouds came down and rain got heavier. We arrived on the Aire in Carcassonne (43.200236, 2.3525 €14 a night) in pretty persistent rain. However the skies are brightening and we may wander in later. We are booked in for two nights so if not tonight then tomorrow.