Sunday 4 July - Saturday 10 July
For most of Sunday we stayed in, reading books & relaxing. We had dinner early again so we could go for a walk, which Roger had spent some time earlier in the day sussing out. This was along the side of the hills towards Fontès, through the gap in the hills on the Fontès road, then to and along the farmers' road towards Caux.
The planned route back over the hill turned out to be on private property, but we took it anyway and didn't see anybody. Then it was back through the vineyards on farmers' tracks to Neffiès. The day had been very hot and it was only just cool enough to walk when we left at around 7.30 pm. It took 2 hours 35 minutes to walk the 11 kms so we arrived back home after 10 pm. The thing that most struck us was the noise of the insects, presumably cicadas, which was very loud, particularly in the trees. We didn't manage to catch a cicada or anything else making the noise but we saw lots of large insects, mostly from the cricket family.
Monday was very windy, so a planned trip to the beach was postponed. I (Roger) cleaned off the graffiti under our letter box, done in magic marker. Google advised Colgate toothpaste and it worked wonders, together with a washing-up sponge and a little effort. It was still windy on Tuesday, so we stayed in and did not very much except the usual reading and lazing about. Went out to dinner in the evening at Les Goutailles, very good as usual.
The wind had gone by Wednesday, so we went to the beach (Serignan Plage), taking our lunch with us. On the way home we bought fruit at a stall near the beach and stopped at Pézenas Intermarché too for a few things. Delia drove there for practice and Roger drove back.
On Thursday I (Roger) took the storage heater to pieces, because Simon had reported that it didn't seem to be working when they were here in the winter. The three pairs of storage heater element connection screws were all very loose, so that probably meant they didn't come on at all. Also the output flap control seemed very sticky. It was very hot and we decided to go to the lake in the afternoon at around 3 pm, via the motorway to give Delia some driving practice, both there and back.
On Friday Roger continued to look at the storage heater a bit to try to unstick the output flap control. It was a bit cloudy (but still hot) and we decided to go for a walk, leaving at about 3.15 pm. This time we went down Chemin de Caux Vieux from the village and through the vineyards east of the Roujan road. There was again lots of noise from cicadas in the trees and vines, which we couldn't see at first. First we saw some on a concrete telegraph pole, then in the vineyards we saw lots flying around and on trees.
Then we more or less followed the stream to Source Mineral de St-Majan, then up towards St-Andrieu and back into Neffiès on Chemin des Geissières. It rained a bit, enough for us to have to shelter near La Grange.
In the evening we went to a Conas church event at Puissalicon. It was a film evening, starting with drinks and nibbles and voting for one of ten classic British films. Then it was the "supporting programme" of news, ads, cartoons etc, from the 1950s, very entertaining. They have a "cinema" in what would normally be a garage, with real cinema seats. Supper was a take-away pizza with salad & potatoes etc. Then it was the main film, the winner of the vote being "The Ladykillers". This was shown outdoors on a screen suspended over the pool; a couple of people even went for a swim while it was being shown. This was to French timing, of course, so the film didn't start until 10 pm. We got home around midnight.
On Saturday we stayed in all day and Roger finally fixed the storage heater flap. We were both fairly tired after our late night.
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