Day 6 - Toulouse to Bergerac

Day 6 Toulouse to Bergerac

Le Central Park

We woke up in Toulouse after a really good sleep, on a hand made bunk bed, and ate breakfast with Lison, Carol, Labert, Alice and Estelle who lived at the place that we stayed.  Carol told us about an idea for a film that she had, which was kind of like Sweeney Todd but with pizza, it was called called 'Pizza Hunt'.  We also talked about Zombie Hippies…

After breakfast we showered and walked to the squat to load the gear and set off to Bergerac.  There were quite a few hairpins on the drive, the Cardis handled it well, she is a fine vessel. Even now, writing this two days later, all the drives seem to blur into one.  France is a very open country and after a while most of the fields look the same. We stopped off at a supermarket for a break and a banana and heard cheering from a nearby local football game.

When we arrived at the venue in Bergerac, it was pretty cold and raining quite hard. Pierre, who was putting on the show, was outside the venue under the awning sheltering from the rain as it hadn't opened yet.  The venue was called 'Le Central Park' and was a motorbike loving pizza place, which, according to Pierre, did "the best pizza in Bergerac".  Bold statement.  Pierre's friend had designed a really cool poster for the show, one of best we have had on the tour so far.

We had half an hour before our pizzas were ready and wanted to have a walk around to see a bit of Bergerac.  it's always worth taking the time to walk around places where you play because otherwise you only get to see the venue and the place where you sleep.  One of Pierre's friends offered to give us a whistle-stop tour of the old town in Bergerac.  He didn't speak much English and we don't speak much French but between us we managed to learn quite a lot about Bergerac… Did you know that it used to be the tobacco capital of France? And that Henry IV was a regular visitor because of this? Well you do now!

On our tourist tour in Bergerac.

After we returned from our lovely tourist tour, we ate our impressive pizzas. I haven't been to any other pizza places in Bergerac but I can say that this is the best pizza that I have ever had… in Bergerac. It's also worth mentioning that Le Central Park had the longest WiFi password ever, the French in general tend to have really long WiFi passwords, they seem overly protective of their internet.

The lovely small old town of Bergerac.

The band playing before us were a band called Sec, which consisted of two lovely lads from Toulouse playing bass and drums.  They were really good and we complemented one another rather well. They also brought had a nice piece of carpet with them, to play on. With Pierre ready, box of ear plugs in hand, we played one of our sweatiest gig so far. Lovely. The choice to have a set of designated playing clothes on tour has proved to be rather beneficial indeed.

Sec playing to the very kind Bergerac people.

We've got into a game of 'speed packing'. The way it began was like when you have a secret race with a stranger on an adjacent escalator, that only you know about, but packing musical instruments instead. We are now fully racing one another when we pack up which is both fun and efficient. It's currently a one way affair (Mike is secretly racing Sam) but things may change.

We bid farewell to Le Central Park and headed on home to Pierre's very nice house with the Sec lads and friends. The 'special occasion' firewater was placed onto the table for consumption, beers were drunk and music was shared. 

A successful and most enjoyable evening!

Merch table. Standard.