Tarn

We got out of the hotel as fast as possible today and headed out to find a topo for the climbing in the gorge. Unfortunately, I discovered that I had forgotten my climbing pants, so despite Chloes generous offer to let me use her pajama bottoms, i had to climb in jeans today. For those of you who haven't climbed before, the problem is that you need a pretty wide range of motion in order to climb, and my jeans are fairly tight. This led to a day of ball crushing, but still enjoyable climbing. The guidebook is now quite a few years old, so we ended up getting a little lost and on routes that weren't in the book. We warmed up on a route called La puerta del sol then on to nulle par ailleurs and then to a few short easy climbs. We found a beautiful climb called rose paille, jaune bonbon which goes up the full height (200 feet in 2 pitches, with P2 alone being ~130 feet!) of the cliff. It goes up the middle of the photo below


After a full day of climbing, we checked into the Chateau de la Caze, which I had found in the Karen Brown guide. There was a problem in the sink of our room, so we ended up getting a suite for the entry level (130 euro) price. This included a huge bathtub, a living room and a super comfortable bed






Here's our porsche in front of the castle and some more pictures of the castle itself







We had dinner in the Chateau's restaurant, which was fantastic, and not too expensive (40 euro for the menu which included entree, plat, cheese plate and dessert). After a few amuse bouches


Chloe had the mushroom ravioli with seared scallops


and I had a gateaux de foix gras


which were both excellent. We both had the grilled bar (not sure what it is in english)
on a bed of cabbage. Normally cabbage is a pretty tasteless vegetable, but it's actually very nice when not cooked to paste. Also, I think that it might have been from the castle garden. The fish had been skinned and the crunchy, oily blackened skin was served on top of the filet


These dishes were all accompanied by a 2001 Bourgogne of some kind -- I don't remember which one. Next came the cheese plate, which was very impressive


All of the cheeses were local (from less than 50 km from the chateau), and in quite a few cases the waitress knew the fromagier personally. There were rustic tommes, some tangy goats milk pelardon, and most importantly: the Roquefort. I knew that we were in Roquefort country, so I asked for it and a few other good looking unpasteurized cheeses. The waitress actually smiled when I chose the Roquefort (pronounced Roque-fort) and said that it was exceptionally good. She went on to say that now (actually october to january) is the best time to taste Roquefort, because in the summer months and September the cheese makers overproduce the cheese, and as a result of this the sheeps milk is less fatty and not as salty. So what you get is a cheese with less character, less creaminess and which requires that salt be added to it. Anyway, I'm not a huge fan of blue cheeses, but this Roquefort was remarkable: it was incredibly creamy and rich, but not overwhelmingly salty. The marbled and slightly translucent slabs were also beautiful to look at. It was a cheese revelation for me.
Dessert was also very good. Chloe had a crumble and I had a chocolate filled chestnut cake with chocolate sorbet (yes, sorbet)






At the end of the meal we filled in a card for what we wanted for breakfast, and at what time, and slowly lurched back to our room.