Lavelanet

......has a pull on me

On damp, cold winter mornings, Bruce's My hometown trots through my head as I wind round the factories and the          on the back way to school:  Vacant stores, whitewashed windows, seems like there ain't nobody wants to come down here no more, the closed textile mills; these jobs are going to China boys and they ain't coming back....

On a morning like this one it couldn't be more different.

We climb the steep, pitted hill to St Ruffine's shrine then back down to the Bensa Quartier.  A golden Oriole sings a pretty song above the distant sound of the lorries trundling through beneath us on the way to the Spanish border.