The usual suspects

It's the big agriculteurs en colère (angry farmers) day today so we'd all been advised to leave our cars at home. The autoroute was closed between Narbonne and Nîmes, with traffic diverted, but I thought I'd be safe enough nipping to Lézignan from here on secondary roads. 

How wrong can you be -- I got to Fabrezan and found it gridlocked because, astonishingly, some lorries were diverting via what we call the autoroute des Corbières, which is actually a very scenic narrow departmental road winding across country, through gorges, and over bridges which are inadequate for HGVs. If you know what you are doing you can get through Fabrezan in an artic, but there was one jammed at each end of the village. Plan B: I parked and did what shopping I could in the shop in Fabrezan. By the time I came out the gendarmes had arrived and managed to temporarily create a gap in the gridlock, so I took advantage to nip swiftly into a back street and drive home on a dirt track through the vines.

I had managed to buy the ingredients for my choir cake, a previously untried recipe for cherry flapjacks. "Bake till firm'" said the recipe. I gave it nearly double the advertised time and it was still a pool of bubbling liquid with oats floating in it. I cut my losses and decided to let it cool and see what happened

Well, it did set  ... I would describe myself as someone with a sweet tooth, but I tried a small square and it was overpoweringly sweet, too much even for me. On reflection I should perhaps have balked at a recipe with 350 g of oats, 200g of sugar, and 150 g of honey in it. Annoying -- I'll have to buy more butter and bake something else now. I'll pick a tried and tested recipe this time.

After that I went out for a short walk, only a couple of kilometres. Not as warm and sunny as yesterday but the muted light was nice.