thelongandwindingblog

On the Wednesday evening, we were invited to dine with Couillas' only other regular inhabitants: the fabulously French Jojo, complete with beret, colonel moustache, twinkly eyes and naughty laugh, his wife Marie-Claude, his sister Jacky and her charming partner Claude. Just like the evening we'd been round for sunset aperitifs, the conversation, laughter and strange liqueurs flowed, with Ali and Ed as translators, Huw inventing some colourful sign language and my GCSE French somehow tripping over itself to be released from the depths of my memory after 13 years.

The food was spectacular: hunks of salty ham from "last year's pig" (tradition dictates an annual pig slaughtering - as a surrogate local Ed was privy to the most recent ceremony), a hearty salad of home-grown leaves and cheese, and succulent ribs from "this year's pig" which I knawed off the bone for the first time ever. (Jack...impressed?!)

After dinner, Ali and I set off to Toulouse station to collect Suze. We got spectacularly lost both on the way to and from the station so by the time we got back it was the small hours and time to crawl into bed, Huw and me under no less than eight woollen blankets and duvets to keep out the mountains' night chill.