Another good night’s sleep, and a bit of a lie-in this morning, till about 10:30. We got up, did our usual morning stuff, and headed out to Penne-d’Agenias. This is another little village built on a hill with a church at the top (see earlier post) but, for some reason, this place has two churches – one half way up the hill and the other at the top. I think the top church was built first, and then the lower one built later, maybe because none of the locals could be bothered to trudge up the hill anymore. We parked at the lower church and walked up to the top one, wandered round, and walked back.

There was a little café near the first church, so we stopped in for some food and to remind ourselves that we are not, in any way, shape, form, linguists… We managed to order ourselves a couple of sandwiches and coffees without too much trouble. Neither of us could work out what the last question was though – did we want what with our sandwiches? No idea, at all… However, the sandwiches arrived without butter, so maybe that was it.

This reminds me… The first time we went to France we went to a boulangerie to get some bread, and, if possible, some butter. Dad knew very little french at that time, so all the talking was up to me, the 11-or-12 year old son. I got some bread very easily – “Un pain, s’il vous plait?”, and then moved on to the butter… “et du buerre, s’il vous plait?”. Blank look. “Du buerre?” I repeated. “Pain?” replied the baker. “Non, du buerre…” I replied, accompanied with a little mime of spreading the aforementioned dairy product onto bread. Several rounds of charades later, the centime dropped with the baker. “Ah! Du Buerre! Non, c’est un boulangerie… La supermarché!” and I was pointed to a little supermarket down the street. The thing is, to our untrained ears, the sound the baker made when he said “buerre” was identical to the sound I made when I said “buerre”. Dad’s theory is that it was a meeting of two diametrically opposed accents… I think he just got wind of the fact that I wasn’t a native, and decided to be obstructive… Maybe if I’d looked more french it would have been ok – stripey jumper, beret, string of onions, hoofing great truck blocking the way?

Anyway – we ate our paté sandwiches (no problem understanding that particular word), drank our coffee, paid the particularly reasonable bill (nowhere near yesterday’s extortion) and headed off home. We went via Agen to have a look round, but it was raining so we decided against it.

Now back at the gite, and we have had a dinner of almost-spaghetti bolognese followed by chocolate and coffee eclairs, and have just about finished the night’s wine. Stevie Ray Vaughan is singing Jimi’s Voodoo Chile, and almost everything is fine.