Stansted to South of France

Cambridge-King's College
Dallas-University Arms Hotel-Cambridge
King's College
Carcassonne
Christine-our host in Le Vigan


July 31
This morning we hired a taxi to drop our gear off at the BB we had arranged from NZ and went to Stansted Airport and caught a bus into Cambridge for the day. We took the tour bus around the city and then spent quite bit of time looking around Kings College, especially the magnificent chapel started by Henry VI and added on to by following kings, especially Henry VIII. Buildings and grounds are magnificent. There are 35 colleges, and students gain entry to one of the colleges where their studies are supervised and they are prepared for their finals at the end of three years. A strange aspect of degrees from Cambridge is that after graduating, a student can apply for their masters three years later, without doing any extra work! Seems like a pretty good deal to me.
We also had a quick look at Christ’s College and Corpus Christi College. We stopped for a drink in the University Arms Hotel, where John Cleese worked as a waiter while he was at college in Cambridge. Very flash and expensive, not sure that it would have bee the inspiration for "Fawlty Towers".
We returned to Stansted Airport by bus, grabbed a quick bite to eat and then took a taxi back to our accommodation for the night. Tomorrow we fly out of England to Carcassonne, in the South of France.
We had a birthday chat to Liam, and then listened to a very distraught Darcy as he seemed confused about the ownership of Liam’s birthday present which was a castle. Very difficult to understand what he was saying, but he calmed down a bit by the time we had finished. Chatted to Marcel for quite a while, who was delighted that we were going to France, where his name comes from. Nice to chat with Simon and catch up-you certainly miss your family when you are away and the chats you have all the time that you take for granted when you are home.
1 August
Arrived early at the airport, not wanting to repeat our last expensive experience of missing our plane to France a couple of years ago. Just as well we did arrive early as when we weighed in our luggage we found that the limit was 15 kg, not the Air NZ 20 kg limit and we were 12 kilos overweight. We then set about stuffing as much as we could in our carry on bags as they are an extra 10kg limit per person. Doesn’t make any sense at all. We were still about 2-3 kg overweight but the young girl was kind enough to take pity on us-their extra baggage charge is exorbitant.
Arrived in Carcasonne and had to wait about another hour to arrange for the rented car. We had a quick look at the huge Carcassonne Castle, but did not spend too much time there as just about every person in the city was there and the temperatures were in the 30s.
Headed for Le Vigan and Chris and Frances-this was an experience with French signage I would rather forget. After many wrong turns finally headed in the right direction to Nimes and our destination. This all went reasonably smoothly until we neared Le Vigan and ended up on the "scenic route"…a very narrow road through mountainous terrain. Frances is still wondering how we got there! Finally she met us in Le Vigan to take us to their place, a little village about six kilometers away, but in a multitude of directions, small bridges etc. We first of all stopped at our accommodation, with a lovely lady (Christine) in a very old, large three-story house. Bats only in the top floor!
That evening we had a very delicious meal prepared by Chris, good catch up chat and then back to our accommodation.