Day 5 - Montpellier to Toulouse

Day 5 Montpellier to Toulouse

Les Pavillons Sauvages

How absolutely refreshing it feels to have a glorious shower with hot running water and to be able to wash the ever growing greasy hair, oh the joys of tour. It was a glorious morning (well it was 1pm we walked out of Louie's flat, morning to us!) in Montpellier and stopped at his favourite café where we met his friends having a deliciously smelling lunch, mmmmm..! We were treated to a standard French expresso, which was accompanied with a little chocolate to kick start our little hearts. Montpellier is a nice town in the day time and has lots of lovely looking people, Louis would point them out to us.

We loaded the gear at up and down bar, bid farewell to Louie and headed for Toulouse, making sure to stay off the toll roads. You get to see so much of real French country side when you stay off the motorways and it's just a much more interesting drive. The route to Toulouse took us over, around and through mountains - Montagne Noire / 'The Black Mountain' to be exact. Being so close to Spain you could definitely feel the Mediterranean feel to everything. The Cardis reached a height of over 800 feet above sea level and conquered the exciting hairpins and chicanes Montagne Noire had to offer. We are also noticing that France has a possible epidemic of kamikaze sparrows. The amount of sparrows that wait and fly right in front of the Cardis radiator is mental and we are amazed we haven't hit one… yet.

We stopped for lunch at a really nice view point and had our standard meal of french bread, cheese and squeezy mustard. The 3 and a half hour drive to Toulouse was problem free and a real pleasure.

Squeezy mustard & cheese!

We got word a few days earlier that the basement in the place where we were meant to be playing had been closed down by the security commission, so the show was cancelled! Luckily the owner of the bar organised for us to play at another show in Toulouse.  We arrived at the venue, which was a really cool squat with a huge garden and a number of buildings. We were greeted by Guilhem, a friendly fellow who was organising the show, there were five bands in total who were playing. Thomas who had organised the original show gave our payment to Guilhem to give to us despite us not playing at his venue, which was very kind of him indeed.  We unloaded the gear and were treated to a meal of vegetables, boiled eggs, bread, cheese and chocolate cake.  The venue was the biggest that we have played so far on the tour, it had red leather padded walls and looked like a bit like strip club. We hung around for a while chatting and drinking and watched the other bands who played.  Guilhem's band played in the bar area and were an improv\ambient duo, the other band who played before us were a 5 piece jazz-improv band who had a guy playing hurdy-gurdy.

Somebody has got us some beers!

We played after the jazz-improv band, at about 11pm and there were about 70 people watching us.  The atmosphere was really good, we played probably the best we had played on the tour so far and everyone really liked the show.  The other bands Faux and Chocolat Billy who played after us were really good too! After the show there was the usual drinking and chatting with lots of lovely French people, I think that we might even be getting better at French! As with all the other gigs so far, we've been asked back to play again in the future, I look forward to coming back to this place. We left the venue at around 4.30 and went to sleep at some friends of Guilhem's who had seen us play in Le Mans last year.  All in all a great evening, my favourite of the tour so far.