What a lazy day we have had. The heavy fog let us off going out into the cold to explore until way after lunch. Keith published seventeen blog pages, which will mean that devoted regular readers will have to take time off work. I read, thought and typed. Our wet washing dried in front of the fire and every now and then we stirred ourselves to make cups of tea.
At about three o’clock we headed up the spiralling road to the Medieval stone city of Lauzerte. There was an ancient Gallic settlement here. The name, Lauzerte, derives from Latin and means ‘lamp’ and certainly it had looked like a beacon shining on the hill to us. The Count of Toulouse had built a casteneau (a fortified city with a castle) here towards the end of the twelfth century. Gradually a city square was built and more houses were added to those already there. By then it was impossible to re-design the streets, so instead they settled for two major streets, each running into the square, and made do with a variety of lanes between them. Settlers were lured by offers of land, with the economic basis of the city thus being ensured. It was a great strategic success on the part of the Count of Toulouse and the effort that he put into creating a fine town, with arcades reminiscent of those in Toulouse itself, must have been well appreciated.
The square certainly speaks of glory days in its size and with the beautiful brick arcades. Many of the houses were built from the 14th Century, when trading and being an important stop on the Chemin St Jacques de Compostelle had led to wealth and growth in the city. A sculpture was a corner of the square’s paving turned up, which was intriguing and caused us to wonder what the sculptor had in mind. I later read that it is to promote meditation and reflection, but for me, who is not at all neat, I wanted to press it down or discover more than the simple ceramic pattern if I looked underneath. Keith really liked the idea of it and how perfectly the flipping up had been achieved, so we were both fully engaged with it and discussing it for ages.
A tour of the town took us to where the school children were all out bouncing balls while their teachers supervised. Their building ran along the old wall line, and now there was a walkway below that was built over the old moat in the 19th Century. Imagine the fortifications here – a castle, towers, walls, gates, and a moat, all high on top of a hill with a commanding view of the countryside in all directions. 
The large church of St Bartholomew sat at right angles to the square. Its windows were from the 19th Century. One corner was devoted to panels painted by the artist Jean-Marie-Joseph Ingres and his pupils on a trip to this area, which had once graced a mansion in the area and were donated to the church. Ingres was born in 1754 in Toulouse and was much admired for his paintings of buildings and landscapes in tones of blue.
The pilgrim’s Garden was set out like a board game but, without the dice and rules available at the tourist office, and without a perfect command of French, we were a little lost. It was certainly a great idea, with each spot having an ancient verse relating to pilgrims, some key words in French, English and Spanish, and some instructions, such as to miss a turn because you were attacked by wolves or to move forward because you were now out of the mountains.Many of the houses had double arches on the ground floor. The larger one would have been a commercial entrance and the smaller one, the residential entrance. A row of tiny windows indicated that the next storey was used for storage. The top floor was the residence, with decorative windows and, on some buildings, a little balcony. Clearly these people were doing well.
Several times we noticed posters with people seeming to be electrocuted, talking about antennae and asking what would become of the children. Michel later explained that there are now three antennae for mobile phones, very close to the schools in the city, and although there had been protests, they had gone ahead anyway. One was even on the church.
This is still a living city, while also retaining its medieval character and promoting it. So many times we have commented on how quiet the villages are, with no music blaring forth from houses or sounds of children playing. It was different here, with the voices of children singing rhymes and calling to each other adding to the timeless quality. I looked through the grille into a chamber in the old city wall, and then entered an open door above it. It seemed to be a public space but the door to the stairs leading down was locked.We walked back down the hill to meet Michel, noting the path that we, as pilgrims, should have taken; steeper and rougher than the road that led from the gite. We called at the upper village shops to check closing times, since we would need a few more supplies and then wandered back.
Another pilgrim had arrived, as evidenced by her walking boots by the door. Katya, young German woman, was very tired from the day’ walking. She was keen to have a shower and wash some clothes, so did not want to take up the invitation to join Michel and us in the Medieval City. We headed off on foot, past Michel’s well, which never runs dry. All the houses here have wells that permanently have two metres of water in them. An Australian couple are neighbours who live half the year here and the other half in Sydney, where they are now. Several of their relatives have purchased houses in this area. It seems like a very good idea to me and now Keith is not dismissing the proposal out of hand any more.
Michel loves this town. He spent holidays here with family all his life and is so happy to be living here now. There is no public transport, which is a drawback, however Moissac is only about twenty-two kilometres away and there is a station there. There are doctors, a hospital and all other needs, so it would be possible to live here without a car.
Michel led us to the same little room in the wall where I had been just an hour ago. He had a key to the locked door so in we went. When the city was built, the stone for all the construction above was dug out of the hill, creating deep cellars with wells in them beneath every building. Down here the temperature is twelve to thirteen degrees Celcius all year round.
This particular cave, nine metres deep, is below a school. Nothing is kept here but the space is well used for storage under other places. The lowest storey had moisture running down the stone walls but no water on the floor. A small bat, ahead of its fellows in seeking a place for winter hibernation, clung to the wall. 
Above us another floor was more neatly cut, with vaulted ceilings with little carvings where they joined. They were of the Easter lamb, oak leaves (chêne), a chestnut (marronnier), and a castle with three turrets. 
The information board said that this level may once have been used for court hearings. A well was cut into a recess in the upper storey. So there was city under the city. I didn’t think of it at the time, but later I wondered if the underground rooms were connected somehow, which would have been very handy for times of attack or to visit someone when it was raining or to have clandestine meetings.We called in to see an art exhibition, and to sip some red Cahors wine. Unfortunately only one other person was visiting the show, which was very disappointing for the artists. They told me that it is very difficult for most artists in France, and that there are only a few artists with celebrity status who do well. I was so surprised, imagining that a country with so much public art would have a culture of nurturing and promoting its artists, and also a culture of the public buying art works. Apparently the ‘public’ who buy French art are more likely to be English.
The last thing Michel showed us was a quaint little word joke sculpture. Our French vocabulary was not good enough for us to have got it, but there were three things depicted – a monk, a hook for hanging meat over a fire and a kind of rabbit or hare. They are all called Capuchin.
We had enjoyed walking and talking with Michel, and particularly our visit to the subterranean world. Katya was nowhere to be seen when we returned home, and Michel pointed out that her boots were gone. We went to the nearby shops at the upper village, where a kind shop keeper had given me some extra peppers, and we had spent a while making our choices. When we returned, Katya was back. She, poor thing, had walked all the way down the hill to the supermarket at the start of the town She was feeling a bit low and had had a bad day generally. Michel talked to her about drinking lots of water, about eating snacks, not walking too fast, about resting when your body says that you should. He has done a lot of the walk and will walk on with his niece next year, so he knows how some days can be a bit much and others can be magnificent. He also told us how the path to Moissac had been changed this year, adding two kilometres, and how we could use the old path tomorrow if we were daunted by the distance.Katya and I had a chat, while we thought about dinner, about walking to have time to think things through and about her plan to go over the Pyrenees and all the way to Santiago De Compostela in Spain, through the winter months. Tonight, though, it was one day at a time, with her needing to build herself up to face the walk to Moissac the next day. Our purchases and preferences meant that she and Keith cooked separately, but at the same time. We ate together, all of us using our second language of French to communicate.
Next year there will be a big thirty bed gite for pilgrims here, and the gite we were in will become a gite for people wishing to stay for a holiday. Michel and Bernadette said that we must come back for a visit one day, and they are such a lovely couple, that if we are in France again, we will. Besides, Lauzerte had certainly cast a spell on us.
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