Digger, Pete and the kebab van...

Thursday night saw us take in Carcassonne, a medieval walled city built in the 12th century to fend off the crusading northern French who had deemed their southern compatriots to be heretics because of their cuddly religious views. Our day took us from Andorra through more wonderful mountain roads until we reached the French Pyrenean foothills and lunch in the town of Quillan. Some of our stops do tend to be a little more liquid than they should be and we do do our best to sample as much of the local hospitality as possible. While we enjoyed our lunch, Reidy was accosted by a gentleman who could probably be not unfairly described as the village idiot. In true red lion bikers style Andy was then cojoled into giving the little chap a ride on his Ducati and after those short, sweet few minutes they shared together, which I think meant as much to Andy as to his new little friend, they returned and eventually we managed to get rid of him.

The 35 miles left to Carcassonne passed in a blur as there are moments on our travels when we, as Digger puts it, 'just f***ing nail it' which is a technical term for riding very fast.

The night out in the town seemed to be heading, like most of the others, towards Damp Squib Street until we went to that most French of establishments... the local Irish bar. The place was full of locals and in that unfortunate combination which sometimes occurs, the wine was both cheap and very good and it was 'open mike' night. Not being one to shy away from taking the michael out of oneself, I shall refrain from resisting the temptation to forget what happened next. Let's just put it this way, and there is regrettably video evidence to support it, don't ever let a drunk 43 year old who thinks he can sing but can't and furthermore can neither see the words on the sheet nor remember the tune he's supposed to be singing near a microphone. Apologies to Sting and Oasis...

Now the only problem with drinking too much wine is that it can affect your ability to stand, speak coherently and remember which hotel you're staying in. Reidy and I were lucky and fell straight into a taxi. Digger and Pete weren't so lucky and like the blind leading the blind they spent the next two hours wandering the streets of Carcassonne unable to recall where they were heading. A mobile kebab van eventually proved their salvation as the driver, whom having had a quiet night, gratefully relieved Pete of most of his euros in return for driving the dynamic duo around town in search of their beds. Pete's shorts are now indelibly marked with memories of this experience, he having been the one to sit on the greasy kebab van floor. Lovely. Eventually they made it and at 4am the day was done...