HOW MANY BRICKS DOES IT TAKE?

May 5 – Like yesterday today (Thursday) started very dull but improved enormously – the hottest yet of a very sunny and warm seven weeks so far. And Albi, after some appalling traffic management to deal with widespread roadworks was delightful as ever. We first came here about 13 years ago, renting a house via Brittany, just north of the town. It has grown massively but the ancient core is simply wonderful and what has changed has been by way of improvement. The cathedral is ridiculous of course, several million romanesque bricks built to 50 and 80 metres height in massive pillars. It is the largest brick built cathedral in the world. Actually I would doubt there was a bigger single edifice of any sort. It stands on the slight hill that delivers defensible cliffs along the Tarn, of which departement it is the chief town.

Once it was a neolithic site, then a Roman oppidium (fortified forward civic centre effectively), then a first millenium stronghold and finally a Norman period town, with a massive fortified cathedral and a similarly impregnable palace (now a museum). And that's when the building really got started. You look at about 200 years of brickwork and wonder where on earth all the bricks came from. Why isn't the entire area one huge brick field. And even then they hadn't finished – the palace, more churches, walls, granaries, mills – it is simply vast. When you see huge stone buildings you virtually fall down the quarries all around the territory. But the bricks needed clay, vast quantities of it. And kilns. Hundreds of them. So where are the brickworks? Nobody comments.

Inside this masterpiece of excess is equally incredible. It is painted from top to bottom, side to side and in amazing detail. Heaven and hell fill two vast drum pillars with a unifying host – unusually in stone - bridging the two. It is dreary on one level, dark and forbidding. But this was the priest's PowerPoint presentation to ensure his message hit home. Here is hell, there is purgatory, here is Heaven. And the amazing scenes all around you show what actions will take you to each. Read and weep sinners! And see the mighty and saved who have gone before. Hallelujah!

OFF THE TRACK AND LOCING IT....

May 4 - Well we have made the first run with the suspect turbo and it went OK. In fact pretty well. Keeping the revs down to 2,500 meant worrying less about a maximum pressure outage and as I knew anyway gave us decent performance. Mostly the run from Severac west to Rodez and then south west to Albi was downhill. Although one serious ascent was a shock. We were at about 300 metres and I thought the worst was behind us when suddenly we started a serious ascent which ended back at 850 metres! But the car managed OK, bottoming out at 3,000 revs and about 50 mph in fourth.

So here we are in Galliac about 15 kilometres west of Albi in a site we had to find via Google. As a result this is our first municipal in four years. We used to use them, all the time but that was in the season and back then. The rules are different now. Out of season the municipals are required to accept itinerant workers; otherwise known as travellers. To be fair they are tidy and not a lot of trouble but they are not tourists. So they come in two forms – working men who smoke a lot, drink a lot but are out all day. And families who are mostly below school age and on site all day without their men. It makes the site feel utilitarian. Cannot blame them but its just a fact. And anyway, whenever you leave those north-south rat runs the tourists are thin on the ground. So we are it, out of maybe 20 campers!

But hey, this is a wine town. Gaillac is pretty well known, raising merlot, sauvignon both cab and sauv, carignan, some syrah and a few local grapes of interesting if rural potential. They produce earthy reds, sharp white, some interesting doux and a bubble we have not tried. Prices are not bad – between 4.50 and 9.50 a bottle. The wine keeps about three years, although older wines are on sale – hmmm, not convinced. Janet is not keen – too aggressive, too brambly (the reds) and too sharp the whites. I am working at it but keep buying Frontons and Fitous! And Loire Sauv B!!!!

Gaillac is a super town but overwhelmed by the number of stunning medieval houses it has to deal with. Timber frames, jetties, loggias, terraces, balconies, towers abound but too much has been stripped of its stucco and the thin, earthenware bricks are spauling horribly. The cost of renovation is horrific and the town will change its character if everything is stuccoed – as it has to be to protect those soft red bricks! Some have been plastered while leaving he timbers visible – very pretty but it transfers the problem from brick to timber – special treatment will be needed if it is not to lose its strength and flexibility. Oh woe since every street around the old abbey is a joy and the walk down to the old port on the Tarn – source of much wealth back in the day – is wonderful.

Yesterday, in search of an alternative campsite, we went north to a town called Castelnau de Montmarel. It was probably the most delightful hilltop bastide we have ever seen and if we could we would buy a house there tomorrow. No, today. Oddly too the presence of Brits, Dutch and US residents was a bonus – unlike so many such towns it was alive. Busy and bustling and full of stuff. We loved it. Back again soon. The nearby site was no use but another, nearer to the stunning town of Cordes du Ciel is and we may transfer. Cordes awaits our visit. But it is Albi tomorrow.