C'EST LA VIE - THAT'S LIFE

Caillac 22nd June

Progress was slow this morning after our late night of Cultural Immersion, so we only had time this afternoon for a few caches before the next item on the festival weekend agenda. Today’s geocaches took us to churches, laviors and lookout points at Labastide Marnac, Trebaix, Cournou, Albas, Crayssac and Caillac. To give you an idea what we see on these cache expeditions below is a photo from each place, hopefully in the correct order.

Caching out of the way we were supposed to attend a gourmet night market and free concert in Mercues. We made it to the venue and decided rows and rows of tables with Frenchies; with no grass picnic area it wasn’t for us.

Today’s taste of France and French word comes from my lunch treat, a polonaise. Before I start the description the numbers after each ingredient identifies those that contain sugar. A Polonaise is a French dessert cake, it is a cherry syrup (1) soaked brioche bun (2) hollowed out and filled with pastry cream (3) and chopped candied citrus peel (4). It is then topped with Italian meringue (5) and toasted almond slices. Just to add the extra bit of sugar death, mine had a dusting of icing sugar (6) and a macerated cherry (7) on top. No wonder I felt sick after eating it with 7 out of the 8 components containing sugar. It wouldn’t surprise me if they toasted the almonds in sugar.

Today’s Cahors secret garden theme follows on from my fruit flavoured lunch. No.13 is the Flavour Beds and contain eight beds dedicated to flavours such as citrus, aromatics, floral notes, greenery, fruit, woody notes, spices and oriental. My favourite was the aromatics because it had several mint plants tasting of chocolate, raspberry and pineapple etc.