About 5 years ago, my mother and her partner, David moved to a lovely little village in the midi-pyrennes called Leran. It's sort of in-between Carcassone and Perpignan. Set in the foothills of the pyrennes. They love it there and have settled in nicely. There is a reasonably large ex-pat population and I tease them that they their village is a cross between 'Allo 'allo and Midsummer murders (especially as there was a murder in the village last year.)
We visit them quite frequently and are getting to know the area as well as their friends which is great. This summer's news was that the chateau had had a fire and the roof had burnt down. Luckily no one was hurt (it's all summer apartments now).
This summer we did lots of splashing around in the swimming pool which was great for Galen as he learnt to swim at the beginning of the summer.
We also went to 'crapahut' which is rather badly named, but is like a 'go ape' adventure park in the woods. There is a little kids section which was fabulous. The kids had to clip themselves onto wires and climb across bridges and down zip wires. They loved it and at €6 each (I think it was extra cheap as we went in the morning) I definitely couldn't complain about the price. Would love to go back and have a go at the adults section sometime.
We spent some time near the local lake, Lac de Montbel. It's a beautiful lake. If you're encumbered with 4 youngsters you can stroll leisurely along the edge, or a bit of it. Or if you're more keen, like Uncle Nairn, you can zoom all the way around it on a mountain bike (roughly 13kms). There is also a swimming area and you can hire kayaks and little sailing boats. And highlight of the holiday, you can go horse riding too. The boys rode little ponies while we walked along side, trying to stop them from eating the grass every 5 minutes. It was fabulous and only €5 each for half an hour. We will definitely be doing horse riding there again.
During the summer months the village hosts a night market every Friday. There are lots of stalls selling different kinds of food and drink. Everyone has a bite to eat, a bit to drink and a boogie at the disco which starts at 9. The kids stayed up late, tried out some of their moves and managed to get home before falling asleep on their feet and narrowly avoiding the thunder storm that put an abrupt end to the festivities.
All in all, a great time was had by all. Thank you Mimi and David for a lovely holiday.
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