Le Rugby.

Friday 13th October 2017 - Beziers?

In the morning we drove off to Narbonne to check it out.  It's a similar sized town to Beziers just a little to the South West.  It didn't have the hill position of Beziers but it had a very pleasant centre around a canal.

The Hotel de Ville was in an old Archbishops Palace and it was set in a square that was part of the Via Domitia, a Roman road that came through Spain and onto Geneva.  The original road was preserved. 


We had our picnic lunch and later went to see the Cathedral.

It was very tall and short but very beautiful too.  

We returned to the van and went back towards Beziers but stopped at Oppidum d'Enserune which was an ancient hilltop village dating back the the 6th Century BC.  We didn't go into the ruins but we enjoyed the views.

The view  shows a vast circular dip in the land which may be partially natural but I suspect it has been created for irrigation purposes.  I have an image of water being poured out at the edge and slowly running down to a big plug hole in the middle and then being recirculated?  What do I know!

We returned to Beziers to watch the rugby match against Carcassonne.  We were far too early and the car parks hadn't opened  but when they did I managed to get permission to park on the only car park that had no height barriers.  We ate our tea and then went for the tickets.

It is a big stadium with two big stands at either side.  

Beziers play in Red and Blue.  The crowd of about 10,000 were noisy and very partisan.  There was a brass band in the crowd and drummers with some singing and chanting.  A proper French rugby experience.  It was amusing when the brass band played The Beatles 'Yellow Submarine' and Village People's 'Go West' (I said it was a Pet Shop Boys song and Janice said it was Village People - we both turned out to be right but Janice is more right because they wrote the song).

The final score was Beziers 27 Carcassonne 10.  The man of the match was Beziers captain Francois Ramonad who was playing his 200th game for Beziers.  He got a hero's salute at the end and much chanting from the crowd.

We drove back to Colombiers to the same Aire as we stayed last night.  I started a new book....To Kill the President by Sam Bourne.  Although fictional it seems to be absolutely based on Donald Trump and him trying to start a nuclear war with North Korea whilst someone tries to assassinate him.  Totally unbelievable....I'm sure it could never happen!!!

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