3. Esperaza and bikes

Finally a day like we always envision in small-town France: a full-fledged Market in a cool town, with lots of food, smells, sights and people to experience, PLUS dynamite low-traffic biking along scenic roads & paths. WooHoo! Lynn and Paulita arranged to drive to the town of Esperaza, to meet up with Earl and me after we biked there this Sunday morning. It’s on the bank of the River Aude, which also runs through Quillan. WOW, what a Market: it covered most of the open space in that little town, with vendors of every description. Hippy culture is alive and thriving in this area, it seems. LOTS of vendors and customers with handmade crafts, hardware (One guy selling an assortment of enormous medieval war axes, bludgeons, etc.), clothes, jewelry…any THING you could imagine, plus foods, books, drinks, and ingredients galore. The fresh produce booths alone took up almost an entire street. We spent an hour or so visiting with friends of Paulita and Earl while snacking at a table, then shoved off into the crowd explore. I ended up buying a small pocket knife with a Celtic Cross engraved in the handle: what the hell, I may need to cut something sometime! Nearby, an older guy was playing acoustic guitar, strumming and softly whistling and singing some popular French songs from his music book...while standing about 8 feet above the Market ground, facing away from the crowd, so no one could hear anything he was doing. I took his pic while standing on a bridge nearby. He was doing his thing, and if you wanted to hear him you had to put some effort into it! 

Gentleman playing guitar, whistling, singing...facing away from the market crowd. 

Earl and I had biked into Esperaza, via a 6 mile route he and Paulita use most Sundays to visit the Esperaza market. Hey, when you get a chance, always bike with a local! Earl knew a series of unmarked back roads and paths that kept us close to the scenic river and mostly out of traffic.We stopped at a hydro-electric dam on the Aude for pics and an explanation of the concrete structures. See the photos: There’s the actual DAM and water pouring over it, making electricity. Next to that is a concrete wall with blue arrow on it to show BOAT people a safe path through the dam, and next to that is another set of concrete walls and steps to allow FISH swim upstream to spawn! Pretty cool. 

FIRST ride in Quillan! Earl is bemused by my outfit: KitKat socks from my good friend Gavin Shuster, whom I promised I'd wear the socks on my first  ride in France. BTW: even if it looks like an alley, this is our house street: the front door is right beside my bike rear wheel.

Look closely really interesting hydro electric dam! 

We all made it home to Quillan after enjoying as much of Esperaza as we could stand, and after Lynn bought me a ham and cheese galette-to-go for late lunch. However, we first took obligatory selfies at the bridge over River Aude. The bike ride home was even better than the ride out, as we explored a new route that ended up in unpaved single-track along the river. I successfully navigated from Earl’s house to our rental house all by myself, so am becoming more familiar with the layout of this place. More good times to come!

The "Tall Paulita" portrait, you just have to trust there's water under the bridge behind us

Paulita objected to this pic where you can see the water below us...cause she believes it makes her look short!