Apart again

The Apartment suddenly seems to be very large and very empty. The guests left at lunchtime and Debrah flew back to London this afternoon.

Debrah has been here for 10 days - the longer the period we are together, the harder it is to say goodbye, even though she will be back on Friday.

We had dinner with our guests, Anais and KarlHeinz, last night. They are both absolutely lovely and it has been a pleasure having them stay here for the last five days. Before I took them to the station to get their train to Paris, I took them out on a little drive around the town and the Cite so that Anais could get some more photographs for her article on Carcassonne. The article is due to appear in the best-selling womans magazine in Austria, Weinerin, in June, which may well elicit a flood of Austrian enquiries, except that it's not that straightforward to get here from Vienna - oh well. we'll see.

Fortunately, after all the cold, wet and windy weather of the last few weeks, the sun came out yesterday which made for a jolly market and lifted everyone's spirits and allowed for some better photography.

We had a coffee in the square with the lovely lady that owns one of our favourite shops in Carcassonne, Esprit de Sel. I bought a beautiful leather bag from the shop for Debrah's birthday a couple of years ago and we use it every Saturday in the market for our vegetable shopping. I still don't know this lady's name which is ridiculous because she always has time for a chat and she now has our cards displayed in her shop - and after mentioning it to Anais, she went in and took some shots in there as well.

We also went in and apologised to the guys at La Roulotte for turning up so late the night before that they had shut - obviously no other customers. We didn't need to do that but I am glad we did because it looks like a nice little place and somewhere we could send our guests down to and the owner there now has our cards as well.

The glorious spring sunshine and warmth tempted us out in the car in search of a waterfall in the Montagne Noire. We had heard rumour of it but not found it, and then Debrah found a reference to it on a Dutch travel site. It turned out to be in a village (5 houses) buried deep in the woods, that we had in fact driven through before without ever realising what was there - and what a spectacular sight it was - a smallish but swollen Spring river cascading over a 100m drop onto the rocks below.

Despite the warm sunshine, there were still pockets of snow in the shady ditches and hollows and the view of the Pyrenees was spectacular as we headed back down the mountain via Cuxac and Brousses.

The next guests don't arrive until Wednesday which gives me a couple of days to get the two suites straight again and re-stock the cupboards - I made a start straight away this afternoon when I got back from dropping Debrah at the airport.

Have exchanged messages this evening with Debrah and she seems to be particularly unhappy at being back in London which, of course, makes me feel pretty miserable too. The rain has returned with a vengeance as well this evening - so an early night I think and a fresh start tomorrow.